Romans 12:2(NKJV) 2And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
To fulfill destiny it is necessary that we walk in the spirit. To walk in the spirit, that is with the part of us that is born again in control, we have learned that we must deal with the heart. The heart is not the same as the spirit. The heart is the deepest part of the soul. Jesus said that out of the treasure of the heart comes both good and evil things. If we are going to be successful we must remove the “treasures” stored in our heart that are evil and replace them with good treasures.
Yesterday we studied Isaiah 55 in which God tells us that his word acts on our hearts like the rain and snow act on the soil. As we water our heart with the Word, life will be produced. Changes will occur in how we think as we change what we think. When we meditate on the Word of God, it has the power to reprogram our heart until the “evil treasure” is replaced. This happens both openly, as the rain, and when we do not feel it happening, as with snow.
I want to close this week with a testimony from my own life. I recently lost a great deal of weight. Everywhere I go people ask me how I did it. I tell them I found a wonderful revelation. If you eat less food you will lose weight. I found a tool to help me do that, but in essence that is what my wife, my son and I did. However, there is another side to the story.
This will sound a little strange, but I grew up with an evil treasure in my heart. Now do not start thinking bad things, it is not that kind of evil. It was evil because of the potential for harm to me. You see I somehow got the seed of an idea planted in my mind at the heart level. I do not know how or why this see got planted, but it did. The seed was this. If a person dies before they turn 50 it is a tragedy. If they die after 50 it is somehow not so bad.
I never had a problem with age milestones. I did not mind twenty or thirty or even forty. When I turned fifty something strange was triggered. That seed in my heart produced some bad fruit. I began to feel that I had to wind down. I thought of my father who had a heart attack at 55 and was gone by the time he was 68. Not only did he die at 68, but he was never the same man after the heart attack. This just reinforced my thought that death after 50 was acceptable. I began to think in terms of having, at most, eighteen years left.
I began to focus on all the things I thought I would do that were no longer possible. I began to feel as though I must lower my expectations. I would have an ache or pain and almost expect that this was some kind of disease beginning my inevitable decline. I put on some weight, I was already too heavy, and this made me feel even older. I hated what I saw in the mirror and wanted nothing to do with photos.
This silly seed that came from who knows where was attempting to rob me of my destiny. When I turned fifty six I began to realize that something was not right. This was not the way I should be thinking. As I began to pray about it, I realized that this little seed planted in my heart when I was a child had been a ticking time bomb waiting for me to turn fifty.
At the same time my assistant pastor’s wife, who is a little older than I am, began talking about scriptures that promise us long and productive life. This is something that I had believed for years, but I began to meditate on the promise of God. Moses was 80 when he began his ministry. He lived to 120 with no ill effects of age. Caleb, at eighty years old was physically able to take a mountain from the enemy. Abraham and Sarah were parents at the age of 100 and 90 respectively.
The more I thought on these things, the more I dug that foolish seed out of my heart. One of my fathers in the faith, Pastor Leonard Fox, always said the best days of your ministry are from 50 to 70 years old. That was until he got to be 80 and then he upped to 60 to 90 years old.
At the same time I was introduced to this tool which helped me gain control of my eating. By simply applying the biblical principle “all things in moderation” to my eating I began to lose weight. As I lost weight I felt better and better. I have lost a total of 66 pounds. I feel better than I have in years. My outlook has changed considerably. However, my outlook did not change because I lost weight. I lost weight because my outlook changed.
As the Word of God watered my heart in this specific area of age, the treasure in my heart changed. I began to see life through different eyes. That lead me to changing how I saw eating and helped me exercise self control. It all began in my heart. My spirit was already in tune with God. My body just needed some retraining. It was my heart, how I thought, that needed to change.
This is just an example of how this works and how I was able to change something that had become a stronghold in my life. What are the strongholds in your life. Find some specific promises and attack these strongholds with the Word. You may not feel any immediate change, but do not give up. It may be the winter time of your experience, but the Word is working. The more you put the Word into your heart the more it will change the treasure within.
As time goes by and you feel the change in your thinking, yield to it. Continue to build on it by continuing to meditate in the Word on that subject. Act on the Word as your thinking changes. That is part of why I lost weight. I did not need to be fat and fifty, I could be fit and fifty. I had too much to do to pull back now.
The Word of God has the power to transform. Let it work in you. Be active and aggressive in attacking every mindset you identify that is contrary to the Word. It will change your life. Look at this passage and spend this week applying it.
2 Corinthians 10:4-6(NKJV) 4For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, 5casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, 6and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.
Leave a Reply