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PROGRAM D-7366

I want to share a principle from God’s Word that is frequently overlooked, and yet it holds the key to your success in being the person God has planned for you to be.  If you who are willing to apply this principle in your everyday life, it offers you great freedom:  The freedom of a captive mind.

Did you know that there is a great battle going on to capture your mind and your thoughts?  The god of this present age, Satan, is doing everything possible to control your mind.  He is well aware of what Scripture clearly teaches us—that what you think is what you are, and if he controls your thinking, he controls you.

In 2 Corinthians 10:5 Paul says we are to “bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.”  Being open-minded is not God’s way.  He tells us that our thoughts should be captives, that we should put limits on our thinking, strange as that sounds to our modern ears.

Well, how do we do this?   Let me read Philippians 4:8:  “Finally, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.”

The secret to controlling our thought life is for us to agree to these limits and to bring our thoughts into these parameters.  Let me illustrate it this way. Perhaps you have skated on a lovely frozen pond in winter time.  You can go anywhere you like on that frozen surface with freedom and pleasure.

But if you decide you want to skate further than the pond extends, you’ll find it a little difficult.  Once you leave the frozen surface, your skates will bog down, and you will lose all the freedom you’ve had on the pond.  So, you decide to stay within the boundaries of the frozen pond, knowing that any other decision is foolhardy.

Do you get the picture?  God has set boundaries for our thinking, and within those boundaries we have tremendous freedom.  When we refuse to stay within those restrictions, we lose our freedom because we become victims of our own thinking.