THE POWER OF THOUGHT
Negativity (negative thoughts) is one of Satan’s big weapons for his work of deception and lies in your life. It is when you foster negative thoughts that Satan is able to inject his influences of deception and lies to cause you to see things his way and do things his way with the purpose of nullifying the effects of the Word of God in your heart. Because when Satan nullifies them, we stop (for a moment, for a while, or for long duration of time) living the Word, sharing the Word, and depending on the Word. You see, Satan cannot get your soul as one of God’s saved people so he is going to be focused to keep you from encouraging the Word and/or bringing others to Christ. The challenges of this world and our self absorbed nature of want make it easy for us to have negative thoughts of complaint, demands, and defeat. But that is the foothold for Satan to do his work in your life. In God’s economy, it is permissible to have negative thoughts and feelings but He instructs us to talk to Him about them. Not to have that conversation with yourself (which is the same as asking the devil to come join you in your conversation) or project it onto others because ultimately there is only one that can do something about it - God. God’s way for us is to take our negativity thoughts to Him as therapy for our mind but also to seek all the goodness that exists in your life because of God [read 1 Peter 5:7-9]. These are the things I do to deal with any of my negativity and my negative thoughts:
- For every complaint, I find 3 things that are really good in my life [read Philippians 4:8].
- For every negative thought, I think about how much worse things could be or could have been [Isaiah 26:3].
- For every negative thought, I force myself to say positive things to people around me [Psalm 91:1-16].
I work to capture every negative thought at its onset and I tell myself that I just defeated the devil by doing that [read 2 Corinthians 10:5]. I focus on never letting any negative thought take off by itself without having a counter point based on the goodness of God in my life [read Philippians 4:6-7]. Be aware that your thoughts cannot be just freewheeling and not cause potential harm to you [read Proverbs 23:7]. They can and they will if you are not disciplined about managing them. God is with you, in you, and for you so look for Him in all situation which includes those things that cause your negative thoughts [read Romans 8:31-39]. Where God is His goodness is, look for Him, see Him, and recognize His goodness in all situations. Just know that negativity is looking for the devil and his ways. It creates the fruit of frustration, anger, entitlement, selfishness, doubt, fear and pride. Capture your thoughts through the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness) and Satan will flee from you [read James 4:7].
