That you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness. Ephesians 4:22-24.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
Just keep believing in My love for you and that I am leading you. Follow and do not worry. If you prayed before a project, meeting, or testimony and did your best effort, then know I took care of the rest and be at peace. Stop thinking about what you should have done or said in the past, even an hour ago, and move forward. You must die to yourself, that is, to your feelings, regrets, worries, and fears to rise up again.
“For you will go out with joy and be led forth with peace.” Isaiah 55:12.
You have to forsake your old way of life (“the old man”) with the tormented mind to rejoice in the freedom of your new way of life in Christ (“the new man”) of the sound, controlled, peace-filled mind. And renewing your youth depends on your mindset for it can age you and make you weak and sick or it can renew you and make you strong and well.
The mind set on the flesh will pull you down to death and torment, the mind set on the Spirit will pull you up to life and peace.
In the process of metamorphosis of a caterpillar (the old man) to the butterfly (the new man), the old is entirely destroyed and reformed to the new. The butterfly is formed when the caterpillar dies to itself in its determination to forsake entirely its former manner of life to be transformed into the new. But the new is formed from the old substance but with a new mindset. It is born again from earthbound darkness with dim nearsightedness to the light of heavenly freedom with amazing clarity of farsightedness.
What am I telling you? That in order to have the abundant life of freedom, vision, beauty, peace and light that Jesus came to give you, that He died to give you, everything in your life must go that is not of Me. And what is not of Me? Anything that is not of love. Anything done without love. And anything that is not of faith, for faith works by love. And both faith and love produce joy. So a life with no joy filled with torment and regret, lust and addiction, will never be a life of freedom and abundance. Never. There has to come a point when you are serious about this or you will never change though you have been born again in your spirit.
IF YOU WILL NOT TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR MIND BY YOUR SPIRIT YOU WILL NEVER RISE UP TO A HIGHER LEVEL OF LIFE.
It is time you woke up to righteousness. It is time you woke up to who you are in Christ. It is time you took hold of the life that is life indeed. It is time to enjoy your life. It is time you stop letting YOURSELF beat and defeat you.
And you do not have to have perfect conditions around you, which you will never have in this world corrupted by the curse Adam opened his dominion door to and invited in the adversary as his master, to have a new life of freedom and peace. No, you have to learn how to overcome storms, trials, and fiery tests and ordeals. I am not bringing those but your adversary, the devil, is testing your faith. He is sifting you like wheat to see if you really mean what you profess and declare.
But Peter kept saying insistently, “Even if I have to die with You, I will not deny You!” Mark 14:31. And Satan went and sifted him like wheat on that one. And Peter was not quite prepared for the attack, even though Jesus had warned him. But he repented and his faith did not fail. He no longer looked back with regret and disqualified himself. He let that go and rejoiced in My forgiveness and I promoted him. And next time the devil hit, he knew how to handle it. He never fell again.
And Peter, under the inspiration of My Spirit, told you how he did it.
Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you. Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you. To Him be dominion forever and ever. Amen. 1 Peter 5:6-11.
First, he cast all his care and anxiety on Me, then he stayed on the look out for the tactics and temptations of the devil, and then whatever attack came he resisted the devil standing firm in his faith knowing that he was not the only one suffering these tests but that his fellow believers were together with him undergoing the same trials (the devil limits himself to certain tests that seem to work on most believers). And he knew from experience, for Jesus had warned him of the trial but also told Peter that He had prayed for him that Peter’s faith, that faith was the key to overcome adversity as well as personal failure. And when Peter returned after getting through the trial and his failure, just as Jesus had foretold, he encouraged other believers who had also failed a test. But more than that, he could show them that I would bring them through the trial stronger so that they could face the next one and take it down by My grace through faith. This so impressed the other disciples that in his letter James sees trials that come in opposition to your faith as opportunities for building up your skill in obtaining victory as occasions for joy. Overcomers, like champion wrestlers, appreciate a good fight. Fight the good fight of faith and you will always win.
The joy is not that you never have a trial again, Jesus told you that you will have trials in this life, but that you will become skillful overcoming them so that you never fall into the trap of fear and regret (a tormented mind) again. Instead you will live a life you love—a fruitful, peaceful, victorious life, even when all things seem to be coming against you from every side.
“Jesus is Lord” is the truth you need to know. Jesus, and what I did for you in Him, shows you that nothing is impossible for Me. You were dead in your sins and I raised you up out of that in Him and sat you in Heaven with Him holy, blameless, and beyond reproach before Me. And I did that for you in Jesus and you receive it, not by arduous works, but by faith. Faith in the love I have for you that is not based on your performance but on your faith in My love for you. Faith that in My great love I justify the ungodly, you only have to come and receive that.
Faith in the love I have for you honors Me and is the victory that overcomes the world. Faith in My love is all you need to move all the mountains that get in your way and level all the valleys in your life.
But there are three things you must do if you want joy and peace in your inner man at all times, and you must be diligent to do them constantly, but once you get into the flow, what joy and beauty you will know!
First, DO NOT THINK UPON WHAT I HAVE TOLD YOU NOT TO THINK UPON.
You must not permit your mind to go to thoughts contrary to My Word. You must be severe with yourself about this. Each time you detect fear, worry, anger, resentment, grief, ill ease, agitation, depression, and any loss of joy, you must answer that thought with the truth and cast it down. And then you must make yourself rejoice in the truth of My promise and that I am taking care of it in worship and praise.
If it is lust or addiction, answer that unclean thing that it has no place in you and tell it “no you don’t!” And in Jesus Name cast it down under your feet and tread on it as you declare your freedom, purity by the blood, righteousness, and your sound mind in Christ. And ask Me to pour My purity and goodness into your heart. Then we will have a good laugh that it thought it could get away with that in you with Me in you by My Spirit.
Stir up the anointing in you. The Holy Spirit is in you if you have received Jesus as your Lord and all you have to do, but you must do it I cannot stir it for you, is stir the anointing up by putting your mind above in prayer in the spirit, reading the Word, especially the Psalms, singing praise and thanksgiving and shouting joyfully. You may not feel like it when you start, but once you get the anointing stirred it will raise you up and lift the burden and destroy the yoke.
The Word stirred the hearts of the dejected disciples on the way to Emmaus as revealed to them by Jesus. Their cold hearts stirred up to fire. Fanned into flame by My Word. It is time to fan your cold heart with My Word of power!
My thoughts are higher than your thoughts, so why not forsake your tormented thoughts and think My higher ones?
Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Isaiah 55:7.
I send My thoughts down to you by My Spirit like rain giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, both as written and as spoken in your spirit by My Spirit. Take in My thoughts and let them blossom and grow to harvest in your heart, yielding thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold of My promises in your life.
When you have had enough of worry, fretting and torment and have come to the end of your rope, so to speak, it is time to put off the old you that has kept beating you down and defeating your life, and it is only then, that you will seriously embrace the new. You have to get fed up with the feedback you are getting from your tortured mind. It is only when you are willing to die to your old habits and ways of life that you can embrace the new. You must die to the old self to rise to the new.
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. John 12:24.
You have to stop putting up with an uncontrolled mind. You must be willing to put aside the old to be put on the new. You cannot just put the new on the old. You have to get out of the old and put on only the new.
Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved. Matthew 9:17.
Do not think of anything but what is ahead of you, even at this very moment. Concentrate, that is, put your attention on what is ahead and not on what is behind. You cannot change the past now in the sense of acting differently in those past situations and saying what you now perceive you should have said or should have done. That is over and gone now, but you can change what you do as you go forward by walking it out with Me. I am doing something new and that is where I want your attention, otherwise you will not perceive it.
But one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:13-14.
But Jesus said to him, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” Luke 9:62.
Let go of the encumbrances of the past and run, keeping your eyes fixed on Jesus, your good Shepherd, who leads you out to lead you in. And He does it with joyful singing and shouting.
What your mind is on is what you are trusting in. I can only keep you in perfect peace if your mind is on Me, and not just what you imagine Me to be, but on My Word. I am My Word. Jesus is My Word. You will only be in the flow of constant peace if you keep your mind on My Word. Memories of past abuse, anger, mistakes, failures is not where you should have your attention. Do not take your mind and put it where I am not. I am not in fear, condemnation, guilt, shame, blame, anger, hatred, darkness, depression and regret, so get your mind out of there and onto Me. Draw up My Words. With joy you will draw water from the springs of salvation. I cannot hold you in peace if you put your attention on the things I have told you not to dwell upon and magnify in your life. Disobedience does not bring peace.
Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, think on these things. The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you. Philippians 4:8-9.
Peace does not mean the absence of opposition; it means you have already chosen what you will allow your mind to dwell upon. You must answer anything that is not in line with My Words and not allow it in you. It may be that everyone around you is out of peace and is trying to pull you out of peace into their squabbles as well, but you do not have to enter their flow. Hold yourself apart by not answering them in like kind. You overcome evil with good and angry words with calm answers and only absolutely necessary words.
Discipline your mind or you will let Satan tear apart your mind and your body.
So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old man, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth. Ephesians 4:17-24.
Now the second essential thing follows the first: DO NOT SAY WHAT I HAVE TOLD YOU NOT TO SAY.
You take a thought by saying it.
“Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Matthew 6:31-33.
Do not say whatever comes in your head, judge the thought and if it is does not agree with My Word, reject it and answer it with the truth. Instead of the lie, say the truth, and say it out loud. My Word is truth, the only absolute truth that sanctifies and cleanses you. Never say filthy, obscene, devilish words, they will make you unclean and open to unclean spirits. Cursing is like oil that goes down in your bones and rots them. And jealousy does the same.
So what to you speak upon? Not gossip, slander and wickedness, and certainly not of worry, doubts, fear, and complaints.
Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you. Ephesians 4:29-32.
Jesus said His Words were spirit and life, that they were words of everlasting life. He only spoke My Words, and the result was He did My Works and that is the third step.
Third, DO NOT DO WHAT I TELL YOU NOT TO DO.
But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the Word, this one will be blessed in what he does. James 1:25.
Do not merely hear My Words but do them. Apply them in your life.
“Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” Luke 6:46.
If you want to be like the man that built his house on a rock foundation that did not collapse in the worst of storms, you have to both hear and do My Words.
“Therefore whoever hears these Words of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. But everyone who hears these Words of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.” Matthew 7:24-27.
It is time you left off the deeds of darkness and came into My marvelous Light. I have called you to My own Kingdom and glory. I have made you a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people set apart to do excellent works. The works Jesus did and greater. In Him, I have prepared a life of good deeds for you in advance that you might walk in them and enjoy a good and fruitful life. A long satisfying life.
Work out what I am working in you. I have fully equipped you for every good deed and excellent work. Philippians 2:12-13; Hebrews 13:20-21; Ephesians 2:10.
If you love Me you will keep My Words and I will come and make My dwelling with you.
Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me.” John 14:23-24.
And here we are back to love again. Imitate Me as My dear children and walk in love. And that is what will give you a youthful vigor and vim. Love makes everything easy that is otherwise tedious and hard.
So Jacob served seven years for Rachel and they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her. Genesis 29:20.
I love you. And that is why Jesus counted it all joy to save you. He endured the cross and despised the shame for the joy that lay before Him. Your salvation. Your freedom. Your eternal life.
Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To Him who loves us and released us from our sins by His blood— and He has made us to be a kingdom, priests to His God and Father—to Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen. Revelation 1:5-6.