THE BATTLE IS YOURS PART FIVE

It has always amazed me that people will go to a healing service believing for a healing, and get those healing. They turn around and go straight back to the church they are in that doesn’t believe healing can happen in this day and age and then wonder why they get sick again. Did they loose their healing? What they did is step back into the traditions that let them believe that healing was not for them.

Ask yourself, is what I am doing producing what I want out of life? Is what you are doing producing what God says I can have in His Word? Well, if the answer is no, then change what you are doing.

Don’t sit and wish, change them. You can’t keep doing the same thing and expect different results. To get different results you have to do things different. Strongholds are what keep many down. A stronghold is anything that holds you down. That is not hard to understand. A stronghold always, every time involves wrong thinking, or in many cases no thinking.

Many people just don’t think for themselves. Start asking WHY. It is a good question to ask. Many people just grow up and don’t ask anybody why they do something. We need to ask why.

Momma used to do certain things in the kitchen when she was cooking. I never asked her why she did things the way she did. I just knew that if I did it her way, it would come out right. Except for rice and beans. Momma told us that if the beans and rice weren’t burnt they weren’t right. One day Daddy told me he was going to teach me how to cook rice. Now in our family daddy never cooked. To this day I don’t know how that man knew how to cook a perfect pot of rice, but he did. Momma was not home, and we would never tell her what daddy showed me that day. It just became my job to cook the rice. Daddy showed me his secret and here I am 40 years later and still have not burnt the rice. I changed the way she had showed me how to cook rice.

There is a right and wrong way to do things, but sometimes we need to ask questions. If we don’t ask someone else, we need to ask ourselves. Because change is good.

We have to learn to think for ourselves. Learn to ask ourselves why we do the things we do. If we have never learned to be carefree and relax or trust then how can we know how to do those things. Why do you response the way you do? Where do you get the things you believe? Who told you that anyway? Why do you believe what you believe?

Think, don’t be a mindless person that just believes what they are told. We have to learn to think for ourselves. Read the Bible and see what Jesus tells you to do, and follow Him. It is much better then just going by what someone else says.

Breaking strongholds involves a battle, and difficult decisions. One of the biggest is leaving what God tells you to leave. We have to become detached from our attachments.

Genesis 12:1-4Gen.12
[1] Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee:
[2] And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:
[3] And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
[4] So Abram departed, as the LORD had spoken unto him; and Lot went with him: and Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran.

God made a covenant with Abram, and this covenant comes to us through Jesus Christ. Look at Genesis 12:1-3. God starts out by saying leave. Leave your father and mother. Leave your relatives. Leave your country. Leave your home. Why did God tell him to do all that? Abram lived in a pagan country. His relatives were idol worshippers. There were bad influences all around him.

God has to get you out before He can get you in. Look around you and see what influences you have that is still with you. I will list a few that might be in your life: distrust, violence, anger, abuse, cheating, resentment, bitterness.

Some of us have to get out of the pot we are in! Get in a new attitude, get in a new culture, or we will never grow. The culture we are in will never allow the growth of what God wants to do in your life.

Let us look again at Genesis 12 and verse 4 and "Lot his nephew went with him." Did God tell Abram to take Lot? No God did not. By taking Lot with him, Abram was dragging part of his past with him. God had told him to leave everything, leave it all. And by bringing Lot with him, Abram was not obedient to God, and Lot caused Abram to have problems he would not have had otherwise.

Leave it. There is no other way to say it. Leave it all behind you. We need to continually be learning and striving and growing in the places we go. If you are in a place that is not helping you grow-go somewhere else.

There is dead and living dead. Get where you can grow. Get to a place where they are not going to give you a list of do’s and don’ts and get into a place where you will be loved where you are, but encouraged to grow. You can leave and be blessed or stay and enjoy the mess.

To do this you have to have a new mind set. A whole new set of attitude. You have to get yourself out of this culture so you can think different. You have to learn to talk different.

It is all about making changes. Are you ready to make those changes?

God Bless
rECj