February 7                                    Exod 18 - 20

BREAKING MENTAL STRONGHOLDS

MEMORISE: ‘Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalt itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ…’ (2 Cor 10:5)
READ: 2 Corinthians 10:3-6

The passage we have today reveals a very important issue we must deal with if we do not want to miss our Promised Land. Of course we do not fight against fellow human beings. It is a spiritual battle. The battleground is the mind. We fight against strongholds built into our thoughts and imaginations. If we do not cope with them properly, they will derail our walk with God.

For a sick person be to healed, he has to pull down the stronghold of sickness established in his mind that he cannot be healed. At one time or other we have all gone through some form of indoctrination on what the ideals of life should be. Certain value systems had been inculcated in us even before many of us believed in Jesus. After our conversion we still allow some such beliefs and ideas, which conflict with our present faith, to guide our day-to-day activities. No wonder many of us find it difficult to move forward.

Until those beliefs have been displaced from your mind, they will hold you spellbound. Unbelief can be a stronghold. The children of Israel, years after leaving Egypt, could not enter the Promised Land just because they refused to see God as more powerful than the giants that inhabited Canaan. ‘And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief’ (Heb 3:18-19).

The bane of prosperity for some is their refusal to accept that they can be rich in the midst of poor people. They believe that since nobody has been able to make it in their family; since all their pregnant women had stillbirths due to a curse operating in the family; since they do not live beyond 40 years, it most likely will happen to them in the same way. As a result of not pulling down those strongholds that have been erected in their minds, they see it all happen to them as feared. Hence Romans 12:1-2 says not to comfort to such wrong, unprogressive ways and thoughts. Renew your mind by erasing unbiblical ideologies and imbibe the Word of God to help you succeed.

ACTION POINT
In which areas are your ideologies in conflict with the Bible?
Ask God to help you pull down these strong mental barriers in Jesus’ Name.