Reflections of Grace 19: Tearing Down the High Places in our Minds

Reflections of Grace 19: Tearing Down the High Places in our Minds [ 15:24 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Deuteronomy 33:29 says “Your enemies will cower before you, and you will trample down their high places.”

• Christ is our life and our breath and our hope and our courage. In him we live and breathe and have our being. And apart from him, we can do nothing (John 15:5). But once we have accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior, received his death in our place, received his forgiveness for our sins, invited him to take his rightful place and rule our heart, we will never be apart from Christ again.
• 2 Corinthians 10:5 ….what it means to take every thought captive.  God doesn’t require us to avoid every thought about anything or anyone other than Him.  He desires to keep us liberated by helping us deal victoriously with those things that capture our minds.
• What is the difference between casual thoughts and captivating thoughts?  Casual thoughts can easily turn into captivating thoughts.  Most captivating thoughts were once casual thoughts not surrendered to the knowledge of Christ.
• Remember the enticing fruit Satan used to snare Eve?  Our thoughts can be held captive to someone or something that builds up our egos or satisfies our fleshly desires and appetites.  Captivated thoughts are controlling thoughts…things you find yourself meditating on too long.
• Taking thoughts captive to Christ doesn’t mean we never have that thought again.  It means we learn to ‘think the thought’ as it relates to Christ and who we are in Him. It means to be aware and guarded when it comes to your thoughts.  Resist it.  Replace it with truth.
• Remember in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loves us.
• Recognize the captor.  Many of our biggest captors began as seeds in the thought life, and we watered and cultivated them by continued meditation until they grew out of our control.
• The steadfast mind is not a matter of denial.  It begins with admitting the truth.  With our cooperation Jesus begins to strip the power from the controlling thoughts, so they no longer hold destructive power over us.
• In the Old Testament ‘high places’ were monuments of idolatry.  Some of the kings who otherwise followed Gods ways still failed to tear down the high places of idolatry.
• Many believers who otherwise serve and have a genuine affection for God overlook and thereby fail to tear down the high places in their own lives.  God’s words exhort us to cast down ‘imaginations’ and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God.  Those ‘high things’ are the people, things, or circumstances that outgrow our thoughts of God.
• Anything we exalt over god in our thoughts or imagination is an idol.  Idolatry is not only a terrible affront to God but it is also an open invitation to disaster.
• In 2 Kings failure to remove the high places led to full blown depravity.  If we do not cast down the high places they will eventually cast us down.

We don’t have to love something or someone to idolize or exalt it in our minds.  We can easily idolize something we practically hate.

• Each time Joseph was thrown into a pit it placed him in a position to achieve higher Kingdom purposes. He must have learned to control his thoughts or he surely would have been overcome with the bleakness of his life.   I think that is what this is about.
• Are we willing to say, “Lord I’ll gladly go wherever you want me to?   We have to learn how to control our thought life to get there.

Do we pray, “Lord give me your eyes so I can see what is ahead?”

• But I know many believers who are afraid to dream in faith; who would rather stay in their present pit than risk a move to higher ground, for with that move comes testing.  And a great need for truth over doubt and unbelief.
• So we sometimes hang on to those familiar “friends” of mediocrity and compromise in our thought lives.   We would rather stay with the destructive patterns and darkness in our lives than be willing to accept and move out into the unknown in faith, Because we don’t totally trust Him to have our backs and take care of  us in what could possibly be ahead.   Or maybe we just fear pain.
• So, we try to fly under the radar.  And we are ineffective in the Kingdom of God, so we won’t be a threat to the enemy, in hopes we won’t get tested.
• Sometimes God has greater ideas and plans for our lives.  In fact, He always does.  More than we think we are capable of doing.

It says in Psalms 119:105…

“His word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.”

• He promises to light my path even when I can only see my feet.
• We want the maturity and accolades but without the testings to mature us.  When you see someone that God is using mightily and find yourself envying their life, be careful.  Are you willing to walk in their shoes awhile to see what has been burned out of them with fire, to make them what you see today?

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