Frustrated by life and your actions contrary to the word of God? Dying to one’s self is an easy fix, but not an easy answer to express so I hope you take the time to read and then reread this article. First, don’t think what’s happening to you is an isolated case, 1 Peter 4:12-19. Next, when you feel like you’re in Romans 7, the “things I don’t want to do I do, and the things I want to do I don’t”, even Paul yells out: “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” But thank God there’s another verse after this one and it’s the key to your problem: “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.”
As a Christian you’re a new creation, 2 Cor 5:17, but we still have to fight our minds. Time for some definitions: the mind isn’t the brain matter between our ears. Our brain is just a processor that executes commands we’ve learned over the years from the world. After processing events, it generates a conclusion, a judgment, about the just-experienced event. That judgment, right or wrong, is stored in our mind, that is, our bodies. (Research cellular memory.) So that’s just hearsay, or science mumbo-jumbo right? Well let’s go to the word of God.
Proverbs 18:8 (KJV)
The words of a talebearer are as wounds, and they go down into the innermost parts of the belly.
So words are wounds. Words do hurt and they leave wounds. So we have the flesh, the old man (soul, mind, body), the word of God says, has been taught by the world all its life. Remember the little angel and the little devil on the shoulders of a guy on Saturday morning cartoons? Well sometimes that little devil is our own flesh speaking because of the training we’ve received or experienced. Those bad words (training, experience) are kept in our inward parts of our bodies. They sit there and fester and when the slightest bit of familiar nudging arrives, here come all the emotions, feelings, and thoughts from our previous judgments on the matter, reinforcing the negative.
So what is one to do? Simple, lay hold of the truth of the word of God and ask the Lord to reveal these hidden words within us.
Proverbs 20:27 (KJV)
The spirit of man is the candle of the LORD, searching all the inward parts of the belly.
Psalms 44:21 (KJV)
Shall not God search this out? for he knoweth the secrets of the heart.
David called out to God for help:
Psalms 139:23-24 (KJV)
Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:And see if [there be any] wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
Once the Lord reveals to you your feelings, acknowledge them and send them away. When the feeling of incompetence comes, you say with your mouth:
2 Peter 1:3-4 (KJV)
According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that [pertain] unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature,having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
Here it is, the truth, according to HIS power given to US ALL THINGS, through KNOWLEDGE! So now you must lay hold of this truth to be free and stay free. When those negative thoughts and feelings come up, you claim the TRUTH of God’s promises! Yes, it’s that simple. That’s what “forgive” meaning in Hebrew and Greek: to send away. “I don’t want those feelings anymore and by God’s power I have His promise that I am His, complete and whole.”
2 Timothy 1:7 (KJV)
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
YOU and ONLY you can take this information and apply it to your life. Information isn’t the problem most people face, but the lack of applying the truth to their lives. You can do it because the SAME Spirit that was in Jesus while He was on this earth as a Man is in YOU! Learn to listen to Him.
1 John 2:27 (KJV)
But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.
Now it’s up to you. What are you going to do with this template, this information? Are you going to apply it?
2 Corinthians 3:18 (KJV)
But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, [even] as by the Spirit of the Lord.
The word of God is a mirror showing us our smudges and dirt. It’s up to you to clean it off by the washcloth of His promises! This is the war we wrestle with!
2 Corinthians 10:3-6 (KJV)
For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare [are] not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled.
Strongholds are those stored negative thoughts, feelings, emotions, and YOU must capture every thought and cast it down. EVERY thought!