THE TOIL IS OVER!

 "I HAVE DOMINION OVER MY THOUGHTS" 

Winning the Battle in Your Mind 

By Pastor Michael Olawore
New Wine Church, London

Sunday 31 July 2011

Foundation Scripture: Luke 5: 1 – 8

We are continuing on our journey of understanding around the prophetic declaration ‘The Toil is Over’, drawing substantially of Peter’s life-changing encounter with Jesus as recounted in Luke 5: 1-8. From Peter’s we can be confident that God will visit our lives and turn our situations around, but we must be able to able to discern the hour of our visitation. Over the past few weeks, we have developed our understanding of the power of the seed, the power of positive attitude, the importance of having dominion over our thoughts and standing on the word of God. Today, I want to look in greater detail at having dominion over our thoughts.

Victory or defeat starts in the mind. Whenever you encounter someone who is winning in life, check what is going on in their mind. Likewise, whenever you come across a person who appears to be defeated by life, their mind is where the real defeat has occurred. If you win in your mind, you will win; similarly, if you lose in your mind, defeat is inevitable. Dominion takes place primarily in the mind. If it does not happen in the mind, it will not happen. If you are not victorious in your mind, you cannot be victorious. The Bible makes clear that as a man thinks in his mind so is he. We are the sum total of our thoughts and our lives therefore, consist of what we are thinking about. What you think about will determine your actions and therefore in looking at your actions I am given a very clear indication of what is going on in your mind.

Nothing limits achievement like small-thinking and nothing releases possibility like unleashed thinking. Isaiah 14:24 says ‘The Lord of hosts has sworn, saying “surely, as I thought, so it shall come to pass, and as I have purposed, so it shall stand:”’. Jeremiah 29:11 says ‘For I know the thoughts that I think towards you says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not evil, to give you a future and a hope’. God’s thought-processes bring about what we see in the physical realm. God has good thoughts towards you and what He has thought of concerning you will come to pass.

In the account of Simon Peter and Jesus in Luke 5 when Jesus told him to launch out to the deep, Peter’s response, as captured in verse 5 ‘but Simon answered and said to Him, “Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing; nevertheless at your word I will let down the net.’ ‘But’ in this verse is an enlightening revelation of what was going on in Peter’s mind, it is suggestive of the struggle that was going on inside as his mind began to get in the way of what God was engineering. The conflict, contradiction and hesitation reflected in ‘but’ may have been a result of Peter’s experience, his perceived reality or a reflection of his projected outcome. Like many of us, he had begun to conclude on the basis of his experience that a change in the situation was not possible. As a believer, you must not fall into the trap of assessing and drawing conclusions upon the future on the basis of the past - there is hope in your future!

Like many of us, Peter was faced with a dilemma: he could either choose to submit to the word of God or hold on to past experience. Every believer, to one degree or another, faces a battle of this nature, a battle for control of the mind. Your mind is the battleground. I want us to look closely at Peter’s life and extract the keys that enabled him to move from doubt to faith and complete victory.

You must be able to control your thoughts. Everything in life begins with a thought. Isaiah 14:24 makes clear that everything that God does begins in His mind. You were a thought in the mind of God before you became a physical being. You are not an accident. You existed in the mind of God as a blueprint and when His design for your life was complete, you were released into time and this physical world. There is nothing about your life therefore that is incomplete. You are unrivalled, unparalleled and unique. You are fearfully and wonderfully made and as God is perfect, and you are made in His image and likeness, as far as God is concerned, everything about you is perfect, regardless of what people may have told you. Whose report will you believe? The blind beggar healed by Jesus in Mark 10, (blind Bartimaeus) had become defined by his challenge; refuse to permit your circumstances to define you. 

The word of God is an expression of His thoughts and similarly, your words are an expression of your thoughts. Jesus said in Luke 6:45 ‘A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of evil treasure of his heart brings for evil. For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.’ Heaven and earth were concluded in God’s mind before creation. God’s thoughts towards you are good and clues to His thoughts are dotted throughout scripture. You can be confident that irrespective of your circumstances, God’s thoughts towards you are good.

In life, you will face three distinct representations: what God thinks about you, what Satan thinks about you and what you think about yourself. What God thinks about you is truth. Jesus throughout His ministry was synonymous with the truth. He confirmed that His word was truth and that indeed He was the truth (“I am the way the truth and the life” John 14: 16). God is truth. Satan on the other hand is synonymous with lies. Jesus described him as the father of all lies and a liar from the beginning. There is nothing truthful about Satan and everything that he says is a lie. In the same way that it is impossible for God to lie, it is impossible for Satan to tell the truth and therefore why pay attention to anything that he tells you? There are many people who fall into the trap of believing what the devil tells them. The devil’s lies have no power over you unless they become your thoughts. In the same vein, the word of God in all its limitless power will not work in your life unless there is agreement from you. This is illustrated, you will recall, in Luke 1 when the angel Gabriel visited Mary and told her that she would conceive a child by the Holy Spirit and give birth to the Messiah her response in verse 38 was “Let it be to me according to your word.” The word of God will not work for you unless you co-operate with it. There must be an agreement. Similarly, the word of the enemy cannot work unless you agree with it in your thinking.

Peter response to Jesus “I have toiled all night and caught nothing; nevertheless at your word” reflected his refusal to be limited by his experience and apparent reality and his ability to see beyond, into the realm of possibility. I am glad that he was able to embrace possibility, despite his experience. How many of us however fall into the trap of believing the lies of the enemy and stop short of believing what seems to be impossible?

Behind what seems to be nothing, there is something. Unless God says it’s over, it is not over. There is nothing that is impossible. As long as you have Christ, it is not over. Do not give permission to Satan to control your mind.

God is not a time-waster. ‘Nevertheless at your word’, reflects the reality that everything that God says is the truth. Whatever He says to you is truth. Everything is possible.

You may be wondering what the source of the transition from ‘but’ to ‘nevertheless at your word’ was. Let’s consider this closely as this is the key to victory in every battle in the mind.

Each of us are made up of three distinct components: spirit, soul and body. You are a spirit, you have a mind and you live in a body. The mind is the control centre and as long as the spirit is receiving the word of God, the inner-man is strong and the mind is productive and the body is disciplined as the regenerated spirit is in control.  When the spirit is not receiving the word of God the mind is susceptible to the dictates of its environment and most dangerously, the lies of Satan. The body demonstrates and functions in the manner directed by the mind. It is our responsibility therefore to strengthen the spirit man with the word of God as it directs the mind, which in turn controls the body.

When Peter loaned his boat to Jesus in order that He could teach the multitudes, he remained closely by, receiving the counsel of God. This built up his spirit man and this enabled him to connect with Jesus’ instruction to launch out again which of course led to the miraculous catch of fish.

You need the word of God. You cannot afford to go through life and not be in fellowship with God and His word. In Daniel 11:32 we see that ‘the people who know their God shall be strong and carry out great exploits.’ Knowing God is being in His presence; knowing God is spending time in fellowship with His word. I am talking about doing more than reading the bible to avoid feeling guilty but diligently studying the word of God. Your spirit, the real you, relies, depends and needs you to be intentional about feeding on the word of God. You cannot afford to neglect yourself and starve your spirit man. If you are weak it is because your spirit man is weak. Similarly, your strength arises from the strength of your spirit man which depends on the degree to which you have fed it with the word of God.

I challenge you therefore to determine to feed and nourish your spirit man with the word of God. In doing so, you will win the battle in your mind and be empowered to take control of your thoughts, your actions and ultimately, your life; this is the master key to a life of dominion.