The Power of Right Believing: 7 Keys to Freedom from Fear, Guilt, and Addiction (17 page)

I
trust that you have been enjoying this journey of discovering the power of right believing. We have looked at how vital it is to believe in God’s love for you and talked about the importance of seeing what He sees. We have also explored the impact of being forgiveness-conscious as opposed to being perpetually guilt-conscious.

Now that you are midway through this book, I want you to be aware that as you begin practicing some of the keys that we have been discussing, you’ll experience some battles in your mind that will challenge your beliefs. Be encouraged to know that you don’t have to be afraid of these battles. I will show you in the following chapters how to win the battle for your mind through right believing. My friend, the battle is not without (in your external circumstances), it is within. It is fought and won in the battlefield of your beliefs and thoughts.

Wrong beliefs and thoughts will keep you defeated.

Right beliefs and thoughts will launch you toward your breakthrough.

That is why Jesus said, “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). Truth sitting on your coffee table doesn’t set you free. Truth lodged comfortably on your bookshelf doesn’t set you free. You may have a copy of the Holy Bible sitting stately in your impressive custom-built mahogany library, but it will not set you free.

It is the truth that you
know
and
believe
that has the power to set you free. That is what this book is all about. It is about imparting to you truths from God’s Word to shape your believing. The more your believing becomes aligned with the truth of His Word, the more you will experience His freedom, grace, favor, forgiveness, and blessings.

There are many people who are actually living in defeat and bondage today even though they may not be aware that they are living in bondage to anything. In some ways they have grown accustomed to their bondages. Let me explain this further. Are there areas that you are now feeling fearful and anxious about? The very areas you are fearful and anxious about indicate the presence of wrong beliefs in your life that God wants you to be freed from. Replace those wrong beliefs with right beliefs based on God’s Word, and you will eradicate those fears and anxieties. Right believing is the key that unlocks the treasures of God in your life. You see, the
grace, favor, blessings, and forgiveness have always been there, but when you begin to believe right, you begin to
access
the fullness of His love and finished work on Calvary’s hill. Every benefit of the finished work is already yours. It already belongs to you. Jesus has already paid the price. The hindrance then between you and your victory is your wrong beliefs. The battle has to do with your beliefs. This is why when you start believing right, you will step into your breakthrough.

The Enemy’s Strategy

The enemy knows that if he can control your thought life, he can manipulate your emotions and feelings. For instance, if he can make you entertain thoughts of guilt, failure, and defeat, you will begin to feel lousy about yourself, physically weak, and even depressed.

Our emotions are flags that indicate to us what our thoughts are. Thank God for emotions. They tell us if something is terribly wrong with our thoughts. Many of us are not cognizant when our thinking slides down a slippery slope to fear, doubt, pessimism, and anxiety. However, God has designed us in such a way that we can quickly recognize our thinking through our emotions.
Try this: whenever you begin to sense negative emotions like fear, worry, guilt, and anger, stop and ask yourself, “What am I thinking?”

Your emotions follow quickly at the heels of your thoughts. If your thoughts are negative, you will naturally produce negative emotions. Conversely, if your thoughts are positive in Christ, you will produce positive emotions.

That is why there is a battle for your mind. The devil wants to keep your thoughts negative so that he can keep you defeated. He is a master of mind games, and he doesn’t play fair. When he first tempted Adam and Eve in the garden, he made them doubt God’s motives by lying to them and insinuating that God was deliberately withholding something good from them. He made God appear stingy, when in reality God was protecting them. The devil’s strategy hasn’t changed—he is still using lies, accusations, guilt, and condemnation to ensnare believers today and to make them doubt God’s perfect love, forgiveness, and superabounding grace.

Many years ago, when I was fairly new in the ministry, together with another pastor, I prayed for a lady who was oppressed by the devil. She was not a believer. While we were praying for her, all of a sudden the woman growled menacingly in a deep male voice, “
I want her mind!
” Whoa! It was the first time I had prayed for a demon-possessed person and the demon actually spoke back! I remember it vividly till this day. Well, we prayed for her and cast the demon out of her.

Now, please don’t worry, as a believer in Jesus, you can
never
be possessed by the devil. He can oppress you mentally. But he
can never possess you. I shared my experience with this woman to unveil to you the enemy’s strategy. He wants your mind! He wants to keep your mind negative, oppressed, depressed, and pessimistic. He wants you to remain in wrong belief, knowing that as long as you continue to believe wrong, you will continue to live wrong. There is a battle for your mind, and we win it through the power of right believing.

Jesus Is Greater

It is important that you be established in this truth. You don’t have to be afraid of the devil because “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4). Jesus, who is in you, is greater than the devil in this world. No matter what the enemy’s evil tactics are, he will not prevail against you in this battle. The devil is a defeated foe. Greater is He who is in you than all the negative thoughts the enemy can throw at you. Greater is He who is in you than the feelings of guilt and inadequacy. Greater is He who is in you than every accusation that is leveled against you.

Stand strong on this declaration: “No weapon formed against you shall prosper, and every tongue which rises against you in judgment you shall condemn” (Isa. 54:17). Wow! No weapon formed
against you shall prosper. The Bible doesn’t say that you will not experience any challenges or be faced with any attacks. But it does promise that when trials come, you can be confident in the certainty that they shall not prosper against you.

Do you know why you can stand firm on this promise today? In the very same verse, God goes on to declare that “This is the heritage of the servants of the L
ORD
, and their righteousness is from Me” (Isa. 54:17). This protection is your heritage. God does not protect you because of your right doing; He protects you because your righteousness is from the Lord Himself!

Notice that the weapon against you could have
already been formed
, which means that a weapon may already have been conceived, prepared, and aimed at you. Don’t be afraid. Whatever this challenge or weapon may be, know beyond any doubt that it shall not prevail against you. This is God’s promise to you today—
no weapon formed against you shall prosper
. Not because your behavior is perfect, but because your standing in Christ is perfect. Your victory is firmly secured through Jesus’ finished work, which is your heritage in Christ.

Pulling Down Strongholds

As you meditate on Bible promises that proclaim God’s truth over your life, you are already beginning to win the battle for your mind. It’s not a coincidence that Jesus was crucified on Golgotha, which actually means “Place of a Skull” (Matt. 27:33). Your breakthrough has to begin in your mind first. The Word of God tells us:

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds.

—2 Corinthians 10:3–4

This battle for your mind is not waged externally. Our weapons are not physical or tangible. Our weapons in this battle are not nuclear warheads, machine guns, or grenades. Our weapons are the weapons of right believing, and they are mighty in God for pulling down strongholds that have kept us bound. Strongholds cannot be destroyed with physical weapons; they can only be utterly torn down by rightly believing in the truth of God’s Word.

The devil can only sow wrong thoughts in your mind, but he cannot control what you believe! When you start to believe right, every lie and wrong thought will melt away like butter on a hot, sunny day. Lies can imprison and defeat you only to the degree that you don’t allow God’s truth to come into your situation to liberate you. Listen closely to what Jesus said: “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31–32). What this means is that whatever stronghold you are trapped in today, truth from Jesus will set you free!

Strongholds are wrong thoughts and lies that have been perpetuated
in your mind over weeks, months, or even years. These entrenched wrong beliefs cause you to live in bondage to addictions and in a state of fear, guilt, anxiety, or chronic depression.

God’s Word tells us in no uncertain terms that the warfare takes place in our minds and is won by us “pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:4–5). There is a battle for your mind, and the place where the enemy launches his attacks against you is in your thoughts and imagination. I believe that once you are aware that there is a war for your mind, and that it is between wrong beliefs and right beliefs, you have already won half the battle!

Anchor Your Identity in Christ

The Bible makes it clear that there is such a thing as spiritual warfare in our minds, and it is vital for you as a believer to understand this. Otherwise you will think every thought that crosses your mind comes only from you. You will then begin to believe those lies, not knowing that the enemy has planted those lies to confuse you.

Several years ago, I preached a message on how the devil sometimes uses the first-person pronoun to plant thoughts in our heads to deceive us. For example, he doesn’t say, “You have an eating disorder,” or “You have an addiction in this area.” The devil uses the first-person pronoun to sow thoughts like these in your mind: “
I
have an eating disorder,” or “
I
am addicted to pornography,” or “
I
am a pervert.” Notice how insidious and sly the crafty serpent is? He makes you think that you are thinking those thoughts of defeat. He wants you to believe that is who you are.

Upon hearing this message, a man who had been trapped in a destructive addiction for many years wrote a letter to me. Walter shared that this strategy of the devil using the first-person pronoun kept resounding on the inside of him after listening to my message. He went home after church, locked himself in his room, and for the first time declared out loud, “I am not an addict!” He just chose to reject this evil mind-set in the name of Jesus, and then he related this: “At that very moment, I felt something powerful happen inside me. I don’t know how to describe this. It was as if life became spectacular because of the love of God, and I couldn’t contain the feeling.”