Silence Troubling Thoughts with God's Word - Here's How!.

God has given us exceedingly great and precious promises that through those promises we might become partakers of his divine nature. Now that's what 2 Peter chapter 1 and verse 4 tells us. You know, all of God's promises are available to us right now, but the only way that we're going to actually become a partaker of his divine nature is by actually receiving those promises into our life. And so I'm going to be sharing again today about one of those precious promises, and that is the promise of his divine peace. And this is all material that's coming from my new book entitled Untroubled, and I encourage you to get a copy of that book for yourself or someone else because peace is so important for our life. You know, one of God's most precious promises is his peace. And I think of all the things that Jesus has given to us, my most precious possession is his peace. Because, you know, there was a time in my own life when I was plagued with anxiety. Now it's been many decades, but I had to learn how to overcome that by the word and by the spirit of God because I understood this as a registered nurse, that medication's helpful, but it's really just a big band-aid and it's not dealing with the root of the problem. And I'm one of those people that I want to find out what's the root of this problem and let me get rid of the root of it so it's over with once and for all. And so if you want to be completely free from these things, you need to do it God's way. And I want you to know I'm a living testimony. My life is free from anxiety today because of the word of God and because of these principles that I teach in my new book. So I encourage you to get your copy. You know, one of the most important things we have to learn in order to effectively live free from anxiety, depression or anything of the devil is how to control our thoughts. And so I'm going to talk today about thought control. You know, this practice of learning to control your thoughts begins with studying and meditating in God's word because if you don't know what God says, you're not going to know when a thought comes that isn't from God. So really 101, the first lesson is learn what the word of God says about your situations in life. The more you meditate in God's word, the more you study his word, the more you get to know his nature, the more you get to know his thoughts. And you know, really, the Bible tells us that his thoughts are not the same as our thoughts. His thoughts are higher. But yet he offers us his thoughts so that we can live a life of victory on earth. And so the way that we take his thoughts is we spend time meditating on what he says. And what he says is all contained in the Bible. So I would also encourage you if you don't have one to get a Bible and begin to read it. You know, you have to know the truth in order to silence the enemy. Satan is our enemy. He hates what God loves. So he hates us most. And he's going to try to get into your life through killing, stealing, destroying. And one of the things he tries to steal is your peace. Now in a previous lesson, we learned that one of the meanings of the word peace is oneness or single-mindedness. And our goal is always to have a line of thinking that agrees with God so that we can have this single-mindedness. You know, the book of James tells us that a double-minded man is unstable in all of his ways. That's because if you're double-minded, you can't really receive from God like you should. Satan knows that if we're double-minded, we're going to lack God's peace. And it will keep his promises from coming to pass in our life. So what is Satan's strategy? He works to gain access to our minds and take control of our thinking. He loves to do your thinking for you. I want you to know that. And so often he's doing it and he's getting away with it because you're not aware that he's doing it. So you know, you have to learn to pay attention to your thoughts. I remember when I first learned that I had to control my thoughts. I mean, I had different reactions to that. First of all, I thought, how can anybody do that? How can we control what we're thinking? Well, I'm going to teach you that you can. But secondly, I had to learn that all the thoughts that come to me aren't actually originated with me. You know, the devil lives in this world. God lives in this system through the Holy Spirit. And so there are thoughts that come at us every day. They come at us through the media, through voices, people that were around talking, conversations, through what you read, what you hear. And so we actually have some control over those thoughts just by eliminating some of the things that we do that we shouldn't be doing. You know, like watching the wrong thing, reading the wrong thing, hanging around the wrong people. I'll tell you, people that aren't full of God, they're not going to offer you God's thoughts. They're just going to offer you thoughts that will steal from you. So we don't want Satan to do our thinking for us. Now, this is exactly what happened in the Garden of Eden. Satan's first recorded activity in the Bible, in the book of Genesis, was deceiving Eve into being double-minded about the Word of God. So we're going to look at Genesis chapter 3 and verse 1. It says, Now, I'm not sure if God ever told her not to touch it, but Adam might have told her that. Now, I want you to notice that Eve started out being single-minded, believing and quoting what God said. And that's what we're supposed to do. We are supposed to believe what God says, and we're supposed to say what God says. And when somebody questions us, we say what God says. But the serpent came along, and he interjected an opposite thought, causing Eve to question the integrity of God's Word. She was enticed to believe another thought about her circumstance. Now, that's exactly how Satan works with us today. We may have the Word of God, but he's always going to work to interject something that contradicts that, and it's going to be something that's believable, because if it's not believable, you certainly won't be deceived by it. So we see this at face value, those thoughts initially seemed harmless to Eve. But that thought moved her eventually, her and Adam, into sinning by partaking of that tree, and their disobedience caused all of mankind to fall into a state of sin. So sometimes we may think, well, this is harmless to think this way, or this is harmless to say that word or that sentence. But you never know, that subtle thought could lead you into a big problem later on. So we want to be careful about these subtleties. This is how Satan works. He's not blatant. He doesn't just get in your face with a pitchfork and a long tail. He is very subtle about how he deceives us. So in this case with Eve, she started entertaining these thoughts. Is this fruit really that bad? Are we really going to die if we eat it? If you take those thoughts and start entertaining them over and over in your mind, eventually they will lead to wrong actions. Is God trying to keep something good from us? And so these thoughts from Satan were certainly lies. Anything that contradicts the Word of God is simply a lie, period. And if you've had thoughts in your own life, well, I don't know if I'm ever going to make it. Am I ever going to get well again? Is my life worth living? I don't know that I have any value. These are thoughts that do not come from God because they contradict the Word of God. They are lies from Satan. And so you have to contradict those lies. You know, when we doubt God's Word instead of believe it, we're not going to be able to receive his promises because faith comes through his Word and everything of God is received by faith. So Satan is seeking to get us to doubt the Word of God so we cannot be partakers of God's divine nature. And let me tell you something else about these subtle thoughts. Some people, like for instance, you might get a thought, you know, we're talking about anxiety and depression. Well, what is depression? It's thinking thoughts of I'm worthless or things are hopeless. Well, you know, if you give yourself the liberty of indulging that thought the first time it comes, then I guarantee that thought's going to come again a second time and it's going to come stronger. And if you continue to entertain that thought the second time, it's going to come back again and again and again. And each time it'll be stronger and stronger until you are really bound by that wrong way of thinking. Before you know it, you're going to be so bound that you're going to start speaking wrong and then you're going to start acting wrong. And that's exactly the devil's intention for you. So if you find yourself battling things like anxiety, depression, know this, that doubt and unbelief are at the root of it. Nobody fell into a deep depression without first believing a lie. Lies come to cause you to doubt the Word of God. So we've got to catch those things and we've got to stop believing them. And even, you know, because the feeling of depression will come or the thoughts that bring depression will come with feelings or emotions that make you feel like you're sinking. And really there's almost a false high that comes with that that makes you want to waddle in pity. You are going to have to muster up the strength to resist that thing or it's going to continue to get worse instead of better. You know, all of us have felt those things before because we all live in this fallen world. We're all here where Satan can try to toy with our emotions. But I'll tell you, when feelings and thoughts of sinkingness or worthlessness try to get on me, I rise up, bless God, and I say, no, you don't, Satan, and I just start rejoicing and praising God. You know, sometimes you've just got to stand on your two feet and start rejoicing. You contradict what that's doing. You violate those feelings. You don't let them stay. Amen. You've got to control your thoughts. Amen. So how do we start this process of controlling our thoughts? Well, by giving attention to God's Word. In Proverbs chapter 4 and verse 20, it says, So this means that by reading God's Word, by meditating upon God's Word, which really, when you're meditating, you should be saying it out loud, by hearing God's Word preached every opportunity that you have throughout the day, that's how you give attention to God's Word. So, you know, I found this when I was afflicted with anxiety over 30 years ago. I had a panic attack, and I wasn't sure why I had it at the time. I wasn't thinking about anything particular. But if you get my book, you'll read the story in there. I sat down after putting my kids to bed one night and, you know, got quiet and was going to watch Christian television, and then, boom, I was hit with this panic attack. Well, it was very unsettling. I tried everything I knew at the time, and I couldn't get it to go away. By morning, I was still plagued with it. And so what I found was I had to spend every waking moment reading the Word, hearing the Word, speaking the Word, praying, rejoicing, worshiping. I gave diligence to the Word. That's my point. If you're serious about being free, you've got to give diligence to the Word of God. And so when you get diligent about it and you give attention to God's Word, you can begin to overcome those troubling thoughts. Now, I want you to know there's a good ending to this. Within two weeks, I was completely free of every trace of panic or anxiety. But it didn't come through just laying in a corner. It came through diligence. I had to put God's Word first, and you will, too. But I'm telling you, it pays rich dividends. It's so wonderful to live free. It's wonderful to live in peace. And so I encourage you to do the same thing. When you get troubled by thoughts, don't let those thoughts stay. Catch them. Stop them. Talk to them. Say, no, you don't. Get up and begin praising God and worshiping God. And make sure that you're filling your day with what God says so that you're sure to catch those lies as soon as they come. Amen. We've been teaching out of my new book, Untroubled. We're going to be teaching out of this in upcoming episodes. But I encourage you to go ahead and get a copy. And also, I want you to know that this message is meant to help set you free. So if you're thinking, oh, I don't know if I can do this, I want you to know you can do it. If I could do it, you can do it. God doesn't give us something hard to do. He gives us something that works. Amen. So praise God. I hope you were blessed by today's message. And if you were, please like and share and subscribe. Also, until next time, I want to remind you that God has a purpose for your life, and it's so much greater than you know. God bless you.