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January 22 - February 2, 2021
Winning the war of words inside your soul means learning to defy your inner critic. But that’s easier said than done.
When we allow our thoughts to go unchecked, a steady drip of lies cements the wrong patterns within our minds, building a Berlin Wall of bad beliefs.
And it’s not just what this chatter says that makes it dangerous. It’s what it keeps us from hearing.
God is the only person who can be simultaneously 100 percent task driven and 100 percent relationally focused. That means He is equally concerned about what He’s doing in me and what He’s doing through me.
Every second you spend wishing God would take away a struggle is a forfeited opportunity to overcome.
He has not chosen you blindly but intentionally, even while knowing you inwardly and intimately.
You’re spending too much energy assessing other people’s assessment of you. I want you to reinvest that energy into aligning your life with My acceptance of you.
Think about it: the chatterbox can’t keep you from winning, because the battle you’re fighting was never yours to win. Therefore, you can’t lose. The Enemy can’t keep you from being who God says you are. But he can blind you from realizing who God says you are.
If he can’t keep you from winning, he will do everything in his power to keep you from walking in full awareness of your victory.
But the critical mistake we make isn’t usually because we have the wrong information. It’s because we engage in the wrong conversation.
The first Adam was led away from the will of the Father by questions that contradicted the clear word of God. Jesus fulfilled the will of the Father by contradicting the devil’s questions with the clear Word of God.
We don’t have to fear what we face when we know whom we’re trusting in. The only thing we ever have to be afraid of is that we would ever live one moment of one day outside the protection of the One who can command the wind and the waves to be still.
anytime Jesus is on board, the storm is outranked.
Don’t let a battle that you are afraid to fight keep you from a victory that’s already won. Go back the way you came. Get back to work. I don’t change, and neither do My promises.
When you look at it this way, I guess, technically, Jesus isn’t the reason for the Christmas season at all—I am. And you are too. The reason He came was to redeem people just like us. And He redeems us in the middle of our mess, not after we get it all cleaned up.
This is the language of condemnation underscored by the passivity of regret. It’s a dead language. The thing is, you can’t un-sin. You can only repent.
The chatterbox takes what is glorious and ruins it. But God takes what is ruined and turns it into something glorious.
Our sin is our personal responsibility, but in Christ it is no longer the center of our identity.
Freedom is not to be found in denial; neither is freedom to be found in deprecation. It is only to be gained by embracing the paradox of the Cross.
The Christian life is a perpetual paradox. I am crucified, yet I live. I have sinned and continue to sin, yet I am without blame. Not because of the good in me, but because of Christ in me.
If you haven’t had a head-on collision with the devil lately, it may be because you’re running in the same direction.
How do you come out the prison of discouragement? The same way you come into the presence of God: with praise.
A spirit of discontent can make even the greatest blessing seem like a burden. A spirit of gratitude can find a blessing within any burden.
I refuse to forfeit a victory that God has already given because of a battle that I don’t feel like fighting.
