Hearts and Minds Set Free

I think guilt is one of the biggest hindrances in the Christian life. It has been for me and I see it trip up so many others also. Way back in the first few years of walking with the Lord I went through a time of feeling separated from God a lot. I did not think I was doing a very good job with my life. I had so many inner struggles. A prophetic man spoke into my life at that time and said he saw walls between God and me. The problem was that the walls were of my own making. It was not God. I didn’t know at that time in my life about how our thinking can put those walls up. I also didn’t know there was such a thing as false guilt. How could there be false guilt? That sounds crazy! Who would knowingly put guilt on themselves? It is false because we keep ourselves in bondage over things that God has long since forgiven and forgotten. It might even be something that we don’t even need to be forgiven for. Maybe we just think we do! It is our thinking about it that keeps the wall up. Decla...

There are times in my life where practicing what I preach becomes vital. I just went through a some of these in the not too distant past. I have some areas in my life where anxiety still tries to come on me and take me out. A few years ago when I had an over-an-hour commute to and from work, I had an experience happen to me where I felt a flutter in my chest and immediately my thoughts started with what if I am having a heart attack and I kill myself and others on the freeway. All of this escalated to the point where the road was moving all around me, I was dizzy, freaking out and I had to get myself off the freeway and to a parking lot. I eventually found a back way to get home through some back roads. I went to the emergency room the next morning and got thoroughly checked out and my heart was fine, but this did not stop the insanity. Instead the anxiety got worse. I missed some work because I couldn’t do the drive, but then I just had to get through it. I struggled with the what-if...

There are many ways we get stuck in our heads. If the voice of should is in our heads it can cause a lot of problems. It is almost impossible to use our minds to make a good choice if the voice of the should is playing in our heads. I have to take my focus off of all shoulds or opinions and turn my focus to the moment at hand, sense God inside of me, change any negative self-talk to positive and move forward. It seems like a lot of work, and sometimes it is, but it has become the natural default for me. Most of the time it is pretty easy for me now! Sometimes I struggle and I have to remind myself of the process, but for certain my life is 99% better than it used to be when I lived in my head. A mind not polluted by the head can become a beautiful thing, because “We have the mind of Christ!” I believe our heads is the part of us the enemy uses to try and mess us up. If he messes with our heads then he doesn’t have to do anything more because we do all the work of messing up for him. O...

I write a lot about our heads and the need to stay out of the head, so I thought it was time to explain what I mean between the head and the mind in case my readers don’t understand what I mean. When I say we need to stay out of our heads it doesn’t mean that I am saying we shouldn’t think. I will try and explain what I mean and hopefully I can help people that don’t understand and make it more clear to everyone. I will begin with myself. I did not do well in school. I had a very hard time learning and concentrating. I could not make choices. I wavered and vacillated and I did not know why. I would get anxious because of it and depressed. I know now it was because I lived in my head. Living in my head kept me from feeling or living in reality. My head was full of little conversations that I had with myself. They were about many different areas of insecurity and what I thought I needed to be okay; shaming voices that played in my head that I was less-than. I wanted to be anyone else bu...