The more intentional I have become about minding my thoughts and minding my speech, the more I realise the importance of such practice. We hear it all the time, we profess it all the time. Change your mind change your life! Mindset is key! Change starts in your mind first et cetera, et cetera. And it is true. Where we place our focus will always manifest, even if that focus is being placed subconsciously. Anything that is repeatedly fed to our minds, will soak into our souls, and we will find ourselves professing it and then eventually it manifests. For example, if we listen to the radio constantly, and the same songs are played repeatedly, eventually we start to sing these songs word for word, mindlessly too! So we mindlessly profess whatever these singers are saying and sometimes we wonder why later on certain things are happening in our lives.
The enemy fights us tremendously on the battlefield of the mind because he knows that if he can mess up our thinking he can mess up our lives.
Words have creative power! Read it again, words have creative power! What we say, think or write, good or bad, if we believe it with our whole heart, put emotion behind it, and say it, think it, and write it repeatedly, it will manifest. Other people’s words also have power over us. When people make declarations over our lives, how we react will indicate what will happen next. These words, seemingly harmless, will eventually take root and grow. Why are we not good at public speaking? Why do we walk with our heads held down? If we think hard enough about it, we will remember someone saying we weren’t good enough. We will remember someone saying stop talking so much so now we don’t talk at all. We will remember someone said our voice sounds terrible when we speak, so we remain silent. We will remember someone said this or that and therefore we have become the very thing they decreed because they said it often enough for us to believe. Even when we resisted initially, the fact that it was repeated numerous times meant that we paused and figured, maybe there is some truth to it after all. Lies!
A word of warning to parents and guardians. There is a spiritual authority that is given to parents. Therefore when a parent curses their own offspring it carries weight in the spiritual realms. Likewise, when a parent blesses their children it carries weight. There are enough external pressures in the world, parents should not add to that! If we don’t like what we see in our children then maybe we need to look at what we are speaking over them. No, it is not black and white. No, I am not saying you shouldn’t discipline and so on. However, let us use our words to build up the things we want to see and tear down the things we don’t want to see. I digress…somewhat.
However, in our own day to day lives, as we go about living, let us be intentional. Let the mind that is in Christ Jesus be in us. Let us mind the same things He does. We are already one with God. He says so in His word. So if we are one with Him, we should be like Him. If we are to be like Him, we must assume His characteristics and part of that means that we think like Him. But we cannot think like Him, if we don’t know Him.
Spirituality aside…whatever we desire in life, if we think we can we are right, and if we think we can’t we are also right. I am sure we have all heard that quote. Every witty invention to which we now have access began as a thought. That thought was professed. Upon profession sometimes, the thought was ridiculed. However, if we have convinced ourselves of that particular thought, eventually everyone else will become convinced of it too. Some of us are waiting for mighty moves of God when we need to change our thinking. We need to flesh out our ideas, put our thoughts on paper. If the help that we need should show up right now we wouldn’t even recognize it because, we have not thought about it!
We need to become critical thinkers! Sit quietly and meditate on that thought…interrogate it, inspect it, dissect it thoroughly. Yes we have chores, the kids, life, work, but everyday we need to start and end by being intentional with our thoughts. The time spent minding our thoughts, will save us from the catastrophic results of mindlessness! And yes, sometimes it doesn’t work right away. Does it mean that we have failed, when we thought out our day and it didn’t pan out that way? Not always. Sometimes it is a test to see if we are going to give up or if we are going to persevere.
If we give up at the first sign of resistance, have we truly thought about it? Have we convinced ourselves? What thinking do we need to change right now? What is it about our lives that, if we could just get the right mindset about it, then we could get the right affirmations about it, and we would change? What remains to be created because we are not using the right words or using our words in the right way?
GMW