Keys to Answered Prayer #3
 

KEY TO CHANGING HOW YOU THINK

Changing how you think can require a major overhaul of who your soul thinks you are. Your soul is made up of your mind, your will, and your emotions, all of what makes you who you are. You can get very frustrated if you just try to think your way through to changing your soul’s status quo in all these areas. You’re going to have to pray your way through to this goal and the Keys of the Kingdom can help you accomplish this. Matthew 16:19: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (NIV).

Some of the original Hebrew and Greek meanings of the word bind in the Old Testament and the New Testament are to:

Some of the original Greek meanings of the word loose in the New Testament are to:

We often forget to think about how we are thinking. That is like expecting the fox to notify you if any holes and weaknesses pop up in the hen house. It is to the fox’s benefit to keep you from knowing of those weaknesses so that he can take advantage of them. It is to your soul’s advantage to keep you from thinking about the wrong thoughts it keeps rerunning on you.

One believer who was very tired, discouraged, and struggling recently said, “I just have to believe that I cannot believe anything my mind or my emotions are trying to tell me right now.” This is true because your soul takes advantage of your fatigue by going into overdrive to convince you that every negative thought or emotion it is putting forth is true. “It’s all true,” it cries! “You’re not going to make it; you’re failing on every front, and no one cares!” At the first sign of any weakness in your body, your soul knows this is the best time to chip away at your spiritual beliefs, your hopes and dreams, and your relationship with God. Until you have surrendered completely to God, your soul will always try to bring your thoughts and feelings back under its control.

When you accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior, your soul probably (just like at least 99% of all new Christians) backed up, dug in, and said, “We’re not going there!” Then it begins to try to lock down whatever territory it has been controlling in your thoughts and emotions.

Some people say they just take authority over their thoughts and emotions. Unfortunately, this does not work. Your soul may try to deceive you into thinking that it is subject to your decision to take authority over it by temporarily backing off on running its wrong thoughts and emotional reactions. All the while, it is already deep into planning to come at you another way.

The part of you that takes authority over something is your will. Rarely (if ever!) will your soul stand up against itself; and therein lies the key to understanding why the Keys of the Kingdom prayer principles can be so valuable to you! In order to exercise any kind of authority over anything, there must first be a guaranteed source of authority (existing because of a reserve of genuine power) that will back up any delegated agent of that authority.

God certainly fits the description above as a guaranteed source of authority with a reserve of genuine power to back up His delegated agents of that authority (His children). You must, however, understand exactly what God will or will not back up when you try to take authority over something. For example, if your motive in trying to take authority over something or someone or the enemy is to show others how much authority you have, watch out! God will not back that up. If your motive to take authority is to help someone come out of bondage without any fanfare or recognition for yourself, God will show up! He wants His authority used to show His love for all.

God will not back up your attempts to take authority over the consequences of your wrong choices. You can try to take authority over an empty gas tank all day long, and your car still won’t run. God probably warned you to get gas earlier, but you didn’t listen. You can try to take authority over a stack of unpaid bills all week long, and they still won’t be paid. God has probably been speaking to you about your finances for a long time, and He is not going to supernaturally pay your bills to back up the authority you have tried to take over them.

You can speak with the authority of Christ only when it furthers His plans and purposes—not when you just wish to get yourself out of the unpleasant consequences of your own wrong choices.

Nowhere in the Bible can you read that God will use His power to override and change your thought life. You can pray with power (power is another word for authority) to clear wrong beliefs, wrong thought patterns, and wrong attitudes out of your soul to make room to receive from Him. Set your goal, and then focus on loosing all worldly, soulish, and the enemy’s distractions that would try to interfere with your goal. What are worldly, soulish, and the enemy’s distractions? The attempts of others, your soul, and the enemy to convince you that God will never give you what you are hoping to have, so you had better do all you can to get what you can on your own.

Successful athletes exercise self-control as they are training because they have a clearly defined purpose or goal: they want to win! Having a clearly defined purpose or goal for your Christian walk and destiny helps you to focus on thinking right thoughts. Having little self-control over what you think has a lot to do with not having a clear spiritual goal in your mind.

As Paul wrote his letter to the Philippians from jail, he said in Chapter 1:20 (The Message): “I can hardly wait to continue on my course. I don’t expect to be embarrassed in the least. On the contrary, everything happening to me in this jail only serves to make Christ more accurately known, regardless of whether I live or die. They didn’t shut me up; they gave me a pulpit!” Being thrown in jail did not affect Paul’s goal; he only saw a new pulpit to preach from! This is an incredible way to think about something that would floor many, if not most, of today’s Christians. Paul was able to think this way because he knew what his goal and his purposes were. If you were suddenly wrongfully thrown into jail, could you see that as an opportunity to begin a jail ministry?

Paul did not worry about what he had not yet done in his life, been able to own, or be recognized for if he was to suddenly die. Instead he said (Philippians 1:22-25, The Message): “As long as I’m alive in this body, there is good work for me to do. If I had to choose right now, I hardly know which I’d choose. Hard choice! The desire to break camp here and be with Christ is powerful. Some days I can think of nothing better. But most days, because of what you are going through, I am sure that it’s better for me to stick it out here.”

That is right thinking to the max! Do you have a clear cut spiritual goal? Here’s an important goal for you: CHANGE THE WAY YOU THINK. Having a godly goal makes it is easier for you to make right decisions every day because you can line up any choice you face with the fixed limits of the goal you have set. Pray and bind your will to God’s will and His timing for your goal, and then loose any worldly, soulish reactions, or distractions of the enemy. If God tells you that a goal you have set is not His goal, then believe that He has a better one for you.

Regardless of your motives or goals, God will not control your negative thoughts and emotional reactions for you! You cannot permanently control your negative thoughts and emotional reactions. But you can loose, smash, and destroy them with the Keys of the Kingdom. Binding and loosing prayers can help you dislodge and destroy wrong thoughts that arise in your mind as well as wrong thoughts that can keep answers and supernatural help from showing up. Reading the Word of God can then help you plant new patterns of thinking in the areas you have just cleared. Reading the Word will help you learn how to think the way He thinks!

One Christian in ministry was in a financial struggle which included owing several hundred dollars to a hotel for a conference held there. This minister began to rationalize that this massive, beautiful hotel could afford to wait for the money more than his ministry could afford to pay it at that time. He mentally filed his obligation to that debt away as a to-do-some-day action. He said later that praying the binding and loosing prayers suddenly caused a breakthrough in such rationalizations when a certain verse got right up in his face! Psalm 15:4 (The Message), "Keep your word even when it costs you.”

He hurried to the hotel to ask their forgiveness, show them that verse, and write out a personal check for the full amount.

It is amazing how many people allow their souls to distract them from identifying their wrong thought patterns for so long that they don’t even notice them anymore. Christians can shout amen and agree enthusiastically with everything their pastor is preaching in Sunday service and then go to lunch with other Christians and gossip about the pastor. Those who would insist that they love the pastor, and can’t believe anyone would think they didn’t, have wrong thinking. If you would say you only wished the pastor could see what he is not doing right, you have wrong thinking. If you would say that you really weren’t aware of what you were doing so that doesn’t count, you have wrong thinking. One funny cartoon showed a lady walking out of a public bathroom with her dress caught up in the back of her panty hose. The caption said, Ignorance does not change the facts!

If you have the goal of changing how you think, admit you may have a problem with your thought life. Admit you may have a problem with the words of your mouth. Admit that you probably don’t always welcome correction even when it is made in love. Without a solid goal to think right thoughts, your soul can find dozens of ways to rationalize and justify wrong words you speak out of wrong thinking patterns.

God is not asking you to find all your weaknesses and failings and correct them by yourself. He wants you to be aware of your shortcomings when He or one of His delegated special agents points them out to you, and He wants you to want to do something about them. So what do you do? First, realize that you cannot become patient or kind by commanding yourself to be these things, but His grace will work in you as you follow this pattern:

  1. Pray with the Keys of the Kingdom to steady yourself and perform self-surgery on your soul by loosing all wrong patterns thinking and self-deception from it.
  2. Take action on (practice) what He reveals to you.
  3. Practice (take action on) what you learn from reading the Word.
  4. Enjoy the fruit of the experience you gain through doing this and share it with others.

Every wrong thought pattern and the words spoken out of them will bear fruit. Kind thought patterns and words will bear the fruit of kindness, blessing, joy, peace, and love. Evil or cruel thought patterns and words will bear the fruit of death, ruin, and calamity. The choice is yours. The help you need to make the right choice comes from His abundant supply of love.

Let’s Pray
Blessed Father, I want to think right thoughts. I bind my will to your will, Lord; I obligate myself to your will. I bind my mind to your mind, Jesus; and I bind my emotions to your healing balance, comfort, and support, Holy Spirit. Help me to recognize what I need to change and I will surrender all that you want me to surrender. Show me how to represent your delegated authority in the ways that please you, not in ways that my soul thinks will benefit it.

I loose, smash, crush, and destroy all of my unsurrendered soul’s rationalizations and justifications about the wrong thoughts that go through my mind. Forgive me for the things that feed those wrong thoughts: wrong magazines, wrong movies, wrong television shows, gossip, nosiness, and whatever else You want to reveal. I want to think on things that Christ wants me to think about. I want to do what the Apostle Paul told the Philippians to do: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things” (Philippians 4:8, NIV).

Forgive me for failing to take my wrong thoughts captive. Once again I bind my mind to your mind, Jesus, and I loose all of the wrong thought patterns in my soul that I have never challenged. No more, soul! No more! I will be on guard and ready to loose whatever tries to form in my mind. I want to practice thinking, speaking, and acting in love to bless others. I know you have already made the choice to bless me, Father God. I bind myself to your timing and I choose to learn how to be patient. Help me to remember that you are with me even when you are working behind the scenes and I don’t know what you are doing. Thank you, Amen.

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