Where are you? What are you thinking about? What’s going on inside your head? What are you allowing to define who you are?
We are not civilians. Whether we like it or not, we are in a war. And there is no place where this war is as alive and real as in our minds and our thought life.
As you go about your day, are you aware of what you’re actually thinking? Are you aware of how many hours you spend thinking random or reactive or foolish or self-serving or angry or impatient thoughts? Are you doing as the Apostle Paul taught us by taking your thoughts captive and examining them and comparing them to the revealed Truth of the Word of God? Or are you being a passive visitor in your head, floating lazily through…half-conscious of the truly awesome, eternity-defining things that are happening all around you in that amazing little cave we call the brain?
TV, films, media, commercials, social media, magazines, friends, family, demons, wounds of the past, and many other things have the ability to negatively impact our thought life — and in doing so, impact who we are. Why do you think billions of dollars are invested in commercials every year? It’s because it has been proven clinically that these messages actually change how we think and what we do.
“As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” (Proverbs 23:7)
I know — life is tough. We’re tired. We want to just relax and go with the flow. But our demonic enemies do not sleep! “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” (1 Peter 5:8) Good old Peter…he, more than most, understood this truth — and he learned it the hard way.
I am not saying that we cannot rest in our heads. I am not saying that we cannot take time to chill and be still. But before our minds can be safer places, we need to, as good soldiers, do a little mine (mind!) sweeping, so that the area is more secure and protected.
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God — this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is — His good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:1-2)
Nothing can take the place of diligence in this area. It takes TIME and EFFORT to purify and redirect a river. And it begins with us allowing the Holy Spirit more access to our thought “flow”, via Scripture reading and meditation, prayer, worship, teaching and true Christian fellowship (and maybe even a little deliverance — doh!). I know for a fact that this biblical principle works. My own thoughts are much less cluttered and troubling and unproductive now.
Of course, we do not have the power to change who we are, but we do have the ability and responsibility to open ourselves more to the One who can! But as the old saying goes…”Money talks and BS walks.” We prove what we believe by what we do, not what we “religiously” and merely pay lip service to.
As a matter of fact, this is my basic definition of someone who has a “religious spirit”. It is not someone who seems at times to veer into legalism or seems too “over-the-top” spiritually, but rather it is someone who has spiritual talk but not much spiritual walk. In this sense, we actually have to “get out of our heads” (so to speak!) and act on what we know to be true.
And when we do, we find His grace waiting for us — we find the wind of the Spirit waiting to blow behind us and fill the sails of our meager efforts and eventually take us far beyond where we could ever go by ourselves. So…ACTION, JACKSON!!!
loon watchman 
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