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Whatever you believe about your life is going to influence what you can see happen for you and through you. Your perspective is very powerful. In other words, how you see things can determine the outcome of conditions and trials and what you’re trying to accomplish.
Some doctors have seen this with their patients. The right kind or the wrong kind of thinking affects their health. If they cannot get the patient to believe their health will become better, then what the doctor can do may be limited. It’s been said, “What the patient expects to happen can be as potent in touching off biochemical processes as any medication.”
They can see good things happen if their thoughts are saying, You are getting better. Body, you are changing for good. Sickness is going. Disease is defeated. My body is improving. That touches off a biochemical reaction in their body to respond to it. They are molding their health.
In fact, the Journal of the American Heart Association printed some research on this. They found that the people who experienced despair-type of thinking had a twenty percent greater occurrence in their arteries becoming narrow. Just by their thinking, they were doing damage to the arteries of their heart. The Association said, “This is the same magnitude of increased risk that one sees in comparing a pack-a-day smoker to a non-smoker.” In other words, allowing despair to shape our thoughts can become as bad as smoking a pack a day of cigarettes. So just as a smoker kicks the habit of smoking, we need to kick the habit of thinking wrong.
Now you see why God wants to mold your thinking. He has to get it going the right way. If you’re thinking that only bad is going to happen, you’re setting off a reaction in the spiritual realm. So He can’t mold you into what He wants you to be because your thinking keeps working against Him. It actually rejects what God is saying to you.
Isn’t that what the man Gideon was having a problem doing? Check out Judges Chapters 6 and 7 where his story is. Gideon was facing terrible conditions. The Midianites had pushed the people of Israel out of their property. So they had to exist in caves and holes and whatever else they could find.
So God made a visit to him to change his thinking about the deliverance of Israel. You see, Gideon was one of those despair thinkers. The kind where it equals a pack-a-day smoker. He didn’t have any good thoughts about his future.
When the Angel of the Lord appeared to him, Gideon was having one of those hard drudge days. He was grinding wheat, just trying to make it. You know those days when you’re not too happy. Life is tough. So you can understand why he reacted when God said to him, The Lord is with you, you mighty man of [fearless] courage (Judges 6:12). Wow, what a mind-switch. This is not how Gideon has been thinking.
That’s what God does when He molds your thinking. He does a mind switch. You’ve been going one direction with your thoughts and now He takes them a different direction. Gideon couldn’t accept that, so he objected. When he did, God got in his face and said, Go in this strength that is yours. Save Israel from Midian. Haven’t I just sent you?” Strong words. But you know sometimes even when God gets in our face, so to speak, and tries to change our thinking, it takes more than one try. Especially if we’ve been hurting about something for a while. We can’t seem to do a flip-flop on the way we are thinking.
So Gideon began to object again to what God had said. But when God hears us talk that way He just keeps His hands going. He keeps molding that brain. He’s going to shape those thoughts so we’ll obey instead of just giving reasons of why it won’t work.
God said to him, I’ll be with you. Believe Me, you’ll defeat Midian as one man (Judges 6:16). The two most important words the Lord said there were, “Believe Me.” And that’s what it comes down to. We must believe God when He tries to mold our thoughts to go a different direction. Believe what He’s saying. Accept it. And act on it.
Gideon eventually did this. As soon as he began to change his thinking, he set off a mighty powerful reaction in the spiritual realm. That’s when he rose up from that despair and defeated the enemy. That’s what will happen when you allow God to mold your thinking. You’ll rise up from the conditions you’re facing and defeat the enemy. Victory is waiting for you as you submit to being molded by Him.
A Spiritual Powerline to say out loud:
“I BELIEVE GOOD IS COMIING!”
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