My New Challenge

Last year the Lord started to speak to my heart about stretching...I wish He'd have meant doing stretching exercises but that isn't what He was getting at at ALL! As I stewed, prayed and began to ponder I began to understand that He wanted me to stretch in my learning more about how to teach. I mentioned that I was praying about teaching to my friend Patti and she looked at me and said, Finally! I have been waiting for you to step in and use your gifts! That was pretty neat for me to hear.  Anyway, timing didn't work out for it until just recently and we started a new bible study on none other than Joyce Meyer's Battlefield of the Mind! EXCITING!!! 30 plus women signed up and or showed interest and I am so excited by what God is going to do in this next 9 - 12 week season of time as He teaches us about our minds and our ability to control our thoughts, or, as it says in the word, take our thoughts captive.  

Think about that for a second.  I have.  Seriously.  If someone were to come into my home and take me captive, it would mean that I would be bound and gagged and not allowed to make any noise or allowed any freedom of movement, I would be restricted in every way and I would be subject to the one who was master over my movement, over my ability to communicate or do any thing that might bring life to anything I wanted to do.   As I think about what that means in the spiritual realm I can see how the Lord means for us to operate  in taking our thoughts captive unto Christ.  Of course, me being held captive has all sorts of horrible connotations and ideas with it but the idea of binding thoughts follows that line of captivity doesn't it? I can take those thoughts, in the power of Christ, and bind them, I can take them captive, not give them any breathing room, any life, any ability to move or grow or make any noise! I can move freely about the room with the Lord making me free, with Him helping me to take those thoughts and not let them rule me.  

How many of us have lived most of our lives in our heads? I sure have! I have a very active imagination and can write entire stories in my mind. I create a cast of characters and a story line and then my mind would wander for hours down the corridor of non reality.  As I began to learn about the mind being a battlefield I began to discover that a wandering mind, a fantasizing mind, is not what the Lord intended for me.  I don't mean that to say that a creative mind in making up stories in my head is bad, its just when it takes me from life,  and keeps me from paying attention to things around me, then I am not doing what He wants me to do because I am not building relationships with others.  

This week I issued a challenge to the ladies at bible study. They aren't my words but they are powerful and bold nonetheless, "THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE THINKING ABOUT"  I had several women tell me this morning that WOW, that has been hard!  Yep, thats why they call it a challenge! I found myself, just today right after church driving along, floating in space (enjoying the non commitalness of it) and thinking all sorts of things that were either not of the mind of christ or not relevant to anything. I started chuckling because I was sort of having a conversation with the woman in the car ahead of me (our kids are getting married at her house next week) and I realized about mid sentence that she couldn't hear me! Oh my goodness I thought to myself...What in the world AM I thinking about?  Do I even know????  Nope...It was kind of funny and for the rest of the way home I focused my thoughts and started to feel less fractured and less stressed out.  

God is amazing and I cannot wait to see what He does in this group of women and what kinds of things He does in me!