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

Yes, Jesus loves me!

Yes, Jesus loves me!

Yes, Jesus loves me!

The Bible tells me so.

I
can still remember what happened when I visited a lady from my congregation in the hospital. Heather had suffered a stroke that left the left side of her body completely paralyzed. As I prayed for her, she lifted her right hand in a gesture of prayer. Amazingly, her left hand followed suit, albeit slowly, but this was something that she had been unable to do following the stroke. By the grace of God, she was beginning to experience healing in her body, with sensations starting to seep back into her left arm.

Within a few moments, though, as she lay in the intensive-care ward, intubated and hooked up to incessantly beeping medical equipment, her left arm started to tremble with strain.

“Don’t worry about praying for a breakthrough,” I assured Heather. Smiling at her, I gestured to one of my pastors who was with me and told her, “Leave the praying to us.”

Then, tapping my index finger on the side of my head, I told her, “But watch your mental movies. Make sure that you play the right movies in your mind.”

What did I mean by that? I was telling her to see what God sees
and ignore all the
sounds, scents, and sights that her natural senses were picking up in the hospital environment
. I was encouraging her to fill her mind with mental images of herself being healthy, strong, and basking in the love of her family at home. I didn’t want her to keep seeing all the worst-case scenarios in her mind.

Then I said to her, “It takes a thought to heal a thought.”

It was a word that I had received in my spirit for her. For some reason, I just felt like the enemy had succeeded in planting a wrong thought or mental picture in her mind, and that had to be removed and replaced with the right thoughts, pictures, and beliefs that are based on the unchanging Word of God. Shortly after our meeting, Heather was discharged from the hospital and her condition improved.

Learn to See as God Sees

Learning to see what God sees is a powerful key in right believing. It involves replacing your wrong beliefs with right beliefs based on God’s Word. When Jesus saw the man with the withered hand, He didn’t just see the withered hand, He saw that there was more than enough grace for that hand to be made completely whole. Jesus said to the man, “Stretch out your hand!” The man did as told, and his hand was completely restored and made as whole as his other hand (see Mark 3:1–5).

Now, you don’t say “stretch out your hand” to someone whose hand is obviously shriveled and disabled unless you see differently. Jesus sees differently from you and me. That’s why we need to go back to God’s Word and learn to see what He sees. When Jesus sees a disease, a lack, or someone trapped in fear, guilt, addiction, and sin, He doesn’t just see the problem. He sees God’s healing, grace, and power superabounding in that area of weakness.

You too can change what you believe by seeing beyond what your natural eyes see. Press in to see what God sees. In your very area of lack, struggle, or challenge, see His superabounding grace all around your current situation. Jesus says to you today, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). Give all your weaknesses, failings, and mistakes to the Lord Jesus and see Him transform your weaknesses into strengths.

What you believe is powerful, so are you going by what you see or what God sees? You may not be able to stop negative thoughts from passing through your mind or unhealthy emotions like fear gripping your heart, but you can definitely anchor your thoughts and emotions on the unshakable Word of God. You can certainly ensure that you believe right regarding what God says about you in His Word, which contains His precious promises to you. The more you learn and believe right about His love and what His Word says about your situation and your life, the more your thoughts will line up with His thoughts about you. You’ll begin to develop thoughts
of peace and not of evil, thoughts of hope and a bright future (see Jer. 29:11).

The apostle Paul says, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…” (Rom. 12:2). You see, God doesn’t want us to think the way the world thinks, or see the way the world sees, and be bound by all sorts of fears, worries, and unhealthy habits. He wants us to renew our minds. How? By believing and meditating on the real truths found only in His Word so that we can experience transformation and wholeness in every aspect of our lives.

The word “renewing” is the Greek word
anakainosis
, which is defined by Thayer’s Greek Lexicon as “a renewal, renovation, complete change for the better.”
¹
I like the word “renovation.” Our minds certainly need a complete overhaul by the Word of Christ!

Who’s Your Interior Decorator?

If you are going to overhaul and
renovate
your mind, whom are you going to hire as your interior decorator? Don’t let your morning newspapers, negative friends, or social media channels be your interior decorator. Don’t be conformed to this world!

So many of us are entangled with the information, ideas, and thoughts of this world. We live in an era where we have at our fingertips access to massive amounts of information and knowledge. Need to know something in a jiffy? Just Google it on your smartphone. Yet this mass accumulation of knowledge has not made us
freer or happier. People are more connected than ever before, but have never felt more alone, isolated, and cut off.

Be careful also not to let the devil be the interior decorator for your mind. You can just imagine him choosing the dreariest drapes, grimmest upholstery, and ghastliest furnishing to adorn the different rooms of your mind. The color palette for your walls and ceilings would be selected from his favorite Pantone range of gloomy gray to depressive black. His mission is to keep your thoughts dark, pessimistic, and defeated. If you are defeated in your mind, then for him, the battle is already won.

Don’t Get Coiled Up in Fear

When I was out grocery shopping with my wife one day, a man came up to me and introduced himself. He shared with me how he had been listening to my messages for many years and had been attending our church regularly. Derek was a successful business owner. Business was brisk—doors of opportunities were opening and all his sales numbers were trending upward.

But it wasn’t always so.

In the early days, the stress of running a fledgling business consumed him. Derek shared that during those days, as was his daily routine, he picked up the newspaper one morning and read an article about how somebody that was of his gender and age had suddenly died of a heart attack. He couldn’t explain it, but from the moment he read the news article, it was as if the air in his living
room started to thin, and he began experiencing respiratory difficulties. Fear had begun to coil itself around his heart like a python.

Constriction is a well-documented method used by various snake species to gradually kill their prey. Interesting research has been conducted on how some constrictors kill their prey. Contrary to popular opinion, the snake does not crush and break its victim’s bones to kill it. Instead, a constricting snake like a boa or python kills its prey by suffocation. It uses the momentum of its strike to throw coils around its victim’s body. Then it squeezes (each time its prey exhales) and squeezes until its victim can breathe no more.
²

However, while studying why some prey die faster than it would be possible through suffocation, some researchers have hypothesized that the constriction pressure causes a rise in the pressure in the prey’s body cavity that is greater than what its heart can counter, resulting in cardiac arrest. While research on this theory is still ongoing, it is scientifically proven that certain snakes can exert enough pressure for this to be plausible. For example, a green anaconda has a constriction strength of 6kg/cm
²
which effectively equals a total strength of 4,000kg!
³

How is all this relevant for our study on the power of right believing?

You see, our adversary is a crafty old serpent. It would be prudent for us to understand his strategy against us, for as the Bible says, “lest Satan should take advantage of us; for we are not ignorant of his devices” (2 Cor. 2:11). His methods have not changed, and while he has no real power because Christ has disarmed him at the cross (see Col. 2:15), he knows that he can use negative thoughts to incite fear in our hearts.

Establish Your Heart in God’s Love

The Word of God also draws a direct correlation between fear and heart conditions. In describing events in the end times, Jesus said that fear will cause men’s hearts to fail. However, He encourages believers, “Do not be terrified; for these things must come to pass first…” (Luke 21:9), asserting His firm control over everything that will happen in the future. Assuring us why there is no need to be afraid, He adds, “Look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near” (Luke 21:28).

God wants our hearts to be at peace, to be at rest. His Word tells us, “A peaceful heart leads to a healthy body” (Prov. 14:30
NLT
). Peace comes when our hearts and minds are anchored on His
love
and not on fear. And only a revelation of His perfect love can drive out all fear. I will use many different Bible verses over the course of this book, but I strongly encourage you to commit this one Scripture to memory. It will be a source of great spiritual, physical, and mental comfort to you for the rest of your life:

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. We love Him because He first loved us.

—1 John 4:18–19

Notice how God’s Word states in no uncertain terms that fear involves torment.

My friend, God is not your tormentor—the devil is. God is not the author of fear—the enemy is. Fear and security cannot coexist. Can you truly love someone you fear? Of course not. Fear always leads to insecurity. So God doesn’t want you to fear Him. In fact, Jesus defined for us the fear of God as the
worship
of God—not fear that carries the idea of being punished by an angry God. (I talk more about Jesus’ definition of the fear of the Lord in chapter 15.) The truth is, God wants you to receive His perfect love, complete acceptance, and abounding grace. If you have received any teaching that contradicts this, just remember,
there is no fear in love
. And God
is
love (see 1 John 4:8, 16). Fear is the strategy of the enemy, not God. The devil uses fear to torment you and manipulate your thoughts, just like he did with the man I had met.