Time for a replacement

Romans 12:1-2 - it is time to train our minds (Craig Groeschel) - the greatest power to overcome the lies within our minds is the truth.

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

The more we think a thought, the easier it is to think it again. The more we think a thought, the more we make it the dominate thought pattern, it will freely emerge without us having to think upon it with very much effort. We develop a casual relationship with that thought and it just comes naturally to us. This is good if the thought pattern is a good one, but it isn't so exciting if the thought pattern we are following isn't good or virtuous. We have to train our minds - to focus on whatever it is we should be thinking upon rather than allowing our minds to cross the same pathways that are not taking us good places. A stronghold is a place in our minds where a thought pathway has been crossed time and time again. We need to focus on the right stuff!

Our mind rarely drifts into areas of truth, but rather it drifts into areas of thought that say we aren't enough, we don't have enough, or that we are not 'bad' in thinking a certain thought. We have to focus on truth if we want to regain strongholds in our minds. We have to form new pathways of thought. We have to know what is holding us back in our minds. When we identify the thought pathway where we are being held back as a result of thinking as we have been thinking, we take the first step to be free of the thought stronghold. We make progress toward a new pathway when we can identify any pathway of untruth and begin to focus on the opposite spiritual truth that can demolish that stronghold.

Truth sets us free - this is more than a nice statement. It is something that we need to embrace - there is the potential of renewal. Write it down - think it over and over again - confess it over and over again - and eventually that new pathway will be formed. We don't have to dwell upon wrong thoughts - we can take control of them, but it takes work. We have to identify the wrong pathway and we have to make specific effort to 'rethink' that thought pathway. Then we have to remind ourselves of the truth each and every time the wrong thought pathway tries to get us to follow it down that negative rabbit hole!

Renewal isn't instant - it is us traveling the new pathway over and over again until it gets worked into our minds. A pathway that is in an opposite direction of the stronghold pathway we have been following that has led us into sin, compromise, and negative impact. We need to give thought to truth - that means we have to take time to figure out what it is that we have been thinking that holds us bound to any untruth in our lives. We are not always going to be....  Jesus says clearly we are a new creation - that means we are not always going to be whatever it is we have pursued because of negative thought patterns in our minds. We can change our focus - write it down, think it over and over again, go back to those truths and confess it until you begin to believe it.

Our lives are always moving in the direction of our strongest thoughts (Craig Groeschel). Think on that one for a while today and then begin to identify that pathway you have been crossing that isn't the right thought pathway to be crossing. Identify that stronghold - call it what it is and then ask God to show you truth that points you in the opposite direction of that dominant pathway. It is time to replace truth where we have been believing lies within our lives! Just sayin!