11/21/2024
Winning the War in Your Mind | Insights: Rewriting the Script | Emery B. Barber
What are you battling with in your mind? In the 119th Psalm King David asked the question, "How can a young man keep his way pure?" By inspiration of God, the answer follows quickly. "By guarding the pure way!" (Emphasis added)
Well how do you guard the "pure way" when we are inundated with so much stimuli, so much data, so much information? Trying to respond to such ends up pulling one in multiple directions making one dizzy, disoriented, confused, and often lost after falling down a rabbit hole that appeared to be random, but was specifically designed for your demise.
The Word of God calls it "blown about by every wind of doctrine." God calls us to be guided by One Wind, by One Word, by One Way. This is what we witness and experience in the directive that David has been inspired to share with us today. "I write Your Word upon my heart that I may not sin against you." David acknowledges that his heart is at the center of the decisions that he has been making, and if he is going to have any level of victory in living a life that pleases the God who has created him then the very programming of his heart is going to have to be rewritten. There is a glitch in the system of our hearts that had to be corrected. Not because God made us that way, rather that we - humanity, influenced by the enemy, have tampered with God's system formerly programmed in our hearts and minds.
So, David essentially states that he is returning to God's prime directive for his life! This is the posture of repentance. It is that place where we recognize, by God's grace, that on our best day, with our greatest efforts, we are finding ourselves not in wealthy, healthy, and prosperous places, but desperately wicked and destitute places in our lives. In need of a change of direction! In need of a breakthrough that will never happen until we change - until we change direction. Here we see that repentance isn't just changing direction. It isn't just moving from one set of "best practices" to another. It's turning from our decision to make the best decision for ourselves and surrendering that very privilege to God.
When we write God's Word upon our hearts, we have made the choice to let "His Word be a lamp to our feet and a light until our paths." Jesus is that Word, Jesus is that Way, and the Wind that blows us along that Way to God is His Holy Spirit.
May our hearts and minds be governed and guided by the Word made flesh, by the Wind that watches over our very souls, to the glory of the only One who can lead us to and in the victory, through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, Amen.
By His Grace,
Pastor Emery B Barber
Shepherd's House, Brooklyn-ENY
Winning the War in Your Mind
