From a message from Andrew Wommack @ AWMI.net
Are you a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ?
Then you have a say in what you do and how you think...
Who's in Control Here?
We have an authority as believers that most Christians have missed.
Satan doesn't
have any control over your heart and circumstances — he
cannot control you unless
you let him.
In Deuteronomy 30:19, God speaks
through Moses, "I call heaven and earth to
record this day against you,
that I have set before you life and death, blessing and
cursing:
therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live."
If you were to diagram this sentence, "you" is again the implied
subject: therefore,
you choose life.
God gave you the choice over your
heart. This is powerful, but again, people have
missed it and have
allowed themselves to justify feelings and emotions that are
contrary to
God's Word.
For example, we say,
"Sure, I'm supposed to love my brother and
sister, and I'm supposed to walk in love." We try to do that at church
and sometimes in the world. But everybody has one person
who really gets
under their skin.
So we justify feelings that are contrary to what God
commanded us to do.
We say,
"Well, God can't expect me to love that
person."
A Marriage of Convenience?
In my marriage counseling, people invariably say to me,
"But look
what this person did," and they begin to tell me all the terrible things
that their spouse has done.
The purpose of this is to justify their feelings.
They say, "I know I'm not supposed to be depressed and discouraged. I
know I'm
not supposed to be angry, but look what they did."
What they're really saying is, "Well, this justifies my feelings,
this justifies my
depression, this justifies my actions.
" But there is
nothing that justifies our being less than what God called us to be.
It doesn't matter what comes your way — death, physical problems,
financial
problems, relationship problems — whatever the devil
is fighting you with.
God has given you the ability to overcome it. But
you have to choose. If you
identify with discouragement, doubt, and
depression, you set a precedent that
will enslave you the rest of your
life.
A Lot of Knowledge Can Be a Dangerous Thing
You can find all I'm ministering in John 14, 15, and 16, you can
learn about faith,
you can learn about confession, you can learn
everything the Bible says.
Yet, in your heart, if you've taken offense,
if you've been hurt, if you submit to
feelings of depression or
discouragement, you'll wipe out everything good.
Nothing good is going to
work.
That's why some people can take all the steps people outline for
them, memorize
them and carry them out, but if their hearts are
discouraged to begin with,
it won't work. Because they never were standing in
faith or belief.
Again, the first thing you have to do is grab a hold of your
emotions and say,
"In the name of the Lord, this thing is not going to
get me."
You have the ability to do that. The Bible says that He set
before you a choice.
He even tells you which choice to make.
So,
obviously, we have the ability to choose.
It's a lie that you cannot
control your emotions.
Our generation has been saying that you can't pen up feelings and
emotions, you need to vent these things and let them out. Really?
This
psychology has had a greater impact on the church than most of us
realize.
I agree that you aren't supposed to bury things and let them
fester.
But you are supposed to get delivered of them, reject them, and
resist them.
Giving vent to emotions that are contrary to what God tells
you is not a positive
thing.
It's a negative thing that allows Satan to
have freedom in your life.
As a Man Thinks...
Proverbs 23:7 says that as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.
Are
you depressed?
You've been thinking about things that depress you.
Are
you sick?
You've thought about things that make you sick.
Are you
discouraged?
You've been thinking about things that are discouraging.
You may not have said, "Well, I want to be sick."
But your thinking
is sick, and that's the reason you are sick.
You may not have said "I
want to be poor,
" but your thinking is poor, and that's the reason
you're poor.
You may not have said "I want to be depressed,
" but you're
thinking on depressing things, and that's the reason you're depressed.
We are 100 percent what we have chosen to be. It is vital that we
understand this.
You cannot say that a person is 100 percent a product
of their environment
because
I can show you people whose parents were alcoholics or drug
addicts or child
abusers, and they chose to go the other direction and
live victorious lives.
As a matter of fact, some of them say,
"Whatever
happens, I'll never be what I've seen." And they do it.
Therefore, our experiences are a results of our choices, not our
environments.
Environment is a factor, but our choice is the deciding
factor.
Unbelief, fear, and panic are choices. Wrong choices.
There may be
many reasons we have been taught to respond that way,
but ultimately,
the decision is ours.
It is choice we each can make as to what we will accept and dwell on!
A Fork in the Road — Choose One
You can react two ways when a crisis hits you. You can choose to be
encouraged
or discouraged. You do not have to be defeated in a crisis.
You do not have to fear. You do not have to be depressed.
Even many churches preach that you have mountain tops and valleys in
your
relationship with the Lord — up and down, up and down.
But you
don't have to be that way. If you're not having a great time with the
Lord,
if your relationship isn't a constant upward trend, it's not
because God makes it
that way, it's because you've followed wrong
thinking.
You believed a lie, and you allowed your emotions to go up and
down.
You're following your emotions instead of following your faith.
So the first thing you have to do in a crisis situation is grab a
hold of your
emotions, grab a hold of your heart, and set it in the
direction you want it to go.
Don't allow circumstances to dictate how
you feel and how you're going to react.
That's pivotal. It's important
that the moment something comes against you,
you make a decision right
then.
Thou Hypocrite!
That decision does not have to be based on how you feel.
You may
feel hypocritical in saying, "I'm going to praise God even though I feel
depressed."
** You may think,
"Well, I'd be a hypocrite if I went ahead
and acted like every-thing's okay."
You're actually a hypocrite when you go on your feelings because the
true you,
your spirit (the born-again part of you), is rejoicing with
joy unspeakable and
full of glory all the time.
(1 Pet. 1:8)
8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see
9 for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
------------------------
There is
always love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
meekness, and temperance in your spirit (Gal. 5:22-23).
So the decision depends on which self you consider to be the real
you.
If you consider the emotional part of you to be the real you,
you're a hypocrite for
acting differently. But if you see yourself in
Christ Jesus, recognize that you are a
new creature, and look
at yourself through the word of God, the true you,
your spirit, will come
out.
Your spirit never gets depressed, it never gets discouraged, it
never gets fearful.
If you feel anything contrary to that, then you're a
hypocrite —
from God's standpoint — if you go by those feelings.
For
example, let somebody says something that hurts your feelings.
What are you
going to do?
You've got a choice. You can either get down and gripe and
complain about it, or
you can grow up and forgive the person.
Mark 11:26
But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven
forgive your trespasses.
Train Up a Child...
That's what we're really dealing with here — growing up.
The same
principles used for child training apply here.
Most of us never grew out
of doing whatever we felt like as children.
But it doesn't have to be
that way.
Take children, for example. We give them certain responsibilities
and
they do them.
We don't care whether they feel like doing them or
not.
There are some things you just have to do. You just have
responsibilities.
I teach my kids that.
We've adopted that attitude as far as work goes — we have to get up
and
go to work. There are other things we have to do — pay taxes, obey
the law, pay our bills, etc.
But in our relationship with the Lord,
we've gone back to being like children
in a lot of ways.
You don't feel happy?
Well, grow up!
Who cares how you feel?
Stop
caring how you feel — you are blessed (Eph. 1:3).
You've got the joy of
the Lord inside of you.
You can choose to be happy if you want to be
happy.
You can choose to be blessed.
You can choose to be excited about
the Lord if you want to be.
Some people may be thinking,
"Now, wait a minute. You don't know my
situation. I agree with what you're saying,
but sometimes you just can't
overcome."
Well again, you're putting your experience, your natural
feelings, above what
God's Word says.
God gave us a command to not let
our hearts be discouraged, to not let them be
troubled. You can do that.
God would be unjust to command us to do something that we don't have
the power to do.
In Deuteronomy 28:45-47,
the Lord said He was bringing judgment on
the children of Israel
"because you have not served the LORD your God with
joyfulness, and with
gladness of heart, for the abundance of all
things."
** Did you notice that - He held them accountable for their emotions!
In John 16:33, Jesus said, "In the world ye shall have tribulation:
but be of good
cheer; I have overcome the world."
In this one verse
Jesus made it clear that His
command to be of good cheer was not just
for the good times.
But even in tribulation, be of good cheer!!
You can and must control your emotions!
Got it yet?
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