Fighting the Fires of Dangerous Thoughts.Sample

In Deuteronomy, Moses and the Israelites are in Moab and are preparing to take over the Amorites. Moses said to them, “the Lord has placed the land before you; go up and take possession of it!” God was leading the way and told them not to fear! God had promised them victory!

But the Israelites seemed to be rooted in their fear and in their past pain. They didn’t keep their eyes focused on God and his Word. They allowed those roots and the negative talk from each other to drown out the truth. Scripture says that they were grumbling. They were talking about the fears and “what ifs” with each other. They allowed their past experiences to stop their future. They seemed to have allowed their negative thoughts, to be the loudest voice they heard. They ultimately allowed their thoughts to stop them from entering the Promised Land.

We do that too though, right? We have doubts about something, and so we start venting it out with someone, and then they share their negative thoughts about it and then you’re both on a tangent about it, all worked up and ready to start a fight. When in reality nothing new has transpired that you didn’t know; it’s just that you kept replaying it in your head. Then you gave it validity in your mind by saying it out loud, and when someone else heard those words said out loud, they felt validity in it too, and the dangerous wildfire thoughts then became actions.

Sound familiar? What thoughts are stopping you from God giving you what he has promised?

God has all these beautiful things waiting for us, but if we are sitting in our negative thought fires, brewing, stirring, and focusing on all that we don’t have, then our eyes won’t look up to what God has right in front of us.

It’s so easy to do that with negative thoughts, and the enemy knows that.

And what we have to learn how to do is identify our negative thought pattern and intentionally stop it so that we can replace it with truth—God’s truth. Our thoughts change when we accept that God's truth (His Word) is our truth. Our lives change when God's truth is our foundation.