• Español: Renueva tu cerebro

As a Christian woman, I kept waiting for God to change things in my life.  I had a very fixed mindset about how things should work. Literally, I was rolling around in the mud of a helpless “poor me” mindset.

Shifting out of  “poor me” to an  active and positive  mindset  that propels you forward is the only way to keep growing spiritually. We must want personal growth and change. We need to be able to look back over the year and say yes, I grew. I changed. I made progress.

It’s about standing our ground and saying ‘no more’ to the thoughts that debilitate us.  Let’s make choices and grab hold of the opportunities that are available to help us break out of old patterns of thinking that have become strongholds in our lives;

“The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.” (2 Corinthians 10:4)

There are two kinds of strongholds. There are demonic strongholds that entrap us and must be removed in Jesus’ name.

The second type of stronghold is one that we are responsible for changing. It involves incorrect thinking that has molded itself into a pattern of thinking and a way of life.

This type of stronghold is built when we accept lies about ourselves and dwell on them as being true. Often they involve how we think about ourselves and even God.

These false strongholds have the ability to affect our feelings. They affect how we respond to various situations in life, and they play a large part in binding us mentally and emotionally.

It forms an imagination that is a false concept that we believe true about ourselves but in reality is not.

These imaginations can only be torn down by the “renewing of our mind,” that the Apostle Paul talks about in Romans 12:2. It is about changing the way we think. It’s about installing new patterns of thinking and re-wiring the brain.

We get to choose our attitudes and whether we want to break free from patterns of thought that affect our choices and actions.

Some people can have a very negative mindset or stronghold.  They only see what is wrong with situations and people. Even when good things happen, there is always something they can find to criticize. They have a mindset that nothing good can happen to them and seem to wallow in negativity.

Yet this is so contrary to what the Bible says. Paul writes:

³ Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. (Ephesians 1:3 NIV)

The word blessing means “to speak well of.” God speaks well of us. God believes in us. God has good things for us. We need to start believing the truth of God’s word.

We must step out of our fear of change and make choices and choose experiences that will help us break out of old patterns and create new ones.

Renew your mind, change the way you think. This is what God wants for you.

–EZ