BATTLE FOR YOUR MIND // One Church Podcast, 27th October 2025

We are one church. We love God, love people, love

His mission, and love His church.

Welcome to the One Church podcast.

Last week we saw that our minds are very powerful.

I wonder, have you ever let something out of your mouth that

was in your head and you never intended it to come out of your

mouth? Our eldest son Samuel was very

well renowned for this. And at one time when I was

working in a school as a teacher, the children were

teenagers. And I was really trying hard to

be a witness to the head teacher of this school who was called

Andy, who respected me. But he held very different views

to me about God. He didn't actually believe in

God. And one day when the boys were

teenagers, Samuel answered the phone and it was Andy on the

other end of the phone and Sam answered it and he turned around

and he shouted to me. Mum, Andy, the atheist's on the

phone for you. I'm not quite sure what I said.

I think because I'm quite polite, I probably would have

said, oh, hello Andy, lovely to hear, you know, just ignored it.

But we've all experienced the thoughts in our minds that we

just cannot shift. The times when we lie awake at

night maybe, and a thought is going round and round in our

head. The times when the thought comes

out of nowhere, it seems illogical and it can paralyse

us. And I wonder as well, have you

ever changed your mind? You know, somebody once said to

me that you can tell a really good leader by how decisive they

are when they're choosing something on a menu in a

restaurant. And I have to say, if that's

true, I'm still definitely on a learning curve because I never

find it that easy to choose what I'm going to eat.

And sometimes when my food actually comes, I have a try

really hard not to look enviously at the plate of

somebody else who's ordered what I might have ordered and looks a

bit better than mine. But, you know, indecision is not

a good thing. But there is a sense where

changing our minds is very important.

You know, from when we come to know Jesus, we begin to have our

minds changed. The new Foundations course, it's

a new course for new believers. It's going to keep on rolling.

So people can join us at any point.

And they just go through all the sessions.

And once they've done that, they go on to other things in the

life of one church. But we're expecting that God's

going to renew minds through this course.

People are going to be changed to have the mindset of their

creator just how he intended it to be.

And this is going to change everything over time.

So why is the mind so key? Well, just to recap, there are

two kingdoms in this world. We're in a spiritual battle and

when we join Jesus Kingdom, we have an opposing Kingdom which

is ruled by the enemy who Jesus called the Father of lies.

What does he want for us? Romans 12 says the mind

controlled by the flesh is death.

Our enemy wants to steal, to kill and destroy.

Jesus said that himself in John 10.

He wants to steal our peace. He wants to steal our joy, our

destiny in God. He wants to kill our hope.

He wants to kill our fruitfulness.

He wants to destroy our purpose in life and the ability to live

for Jesus to the full. And the mind is where the battle

is won or lost. So what does God want for us?

Well, the mind, it says in the second-half of that verse in

Romans, the mind controlled, governed by the Spirit is life

and peace. Wow, isn't that what we all

would love? A mind that is governed by life

and peace? And we learned last week that

our enemy, the devil, is at work to build spiritual strongholds

in our minds. I think we might have a photo on

the screen of my favourite castle in Northumberland, which

is Bamborough Castle. When I was a child, I remember

taking my family every weekend. I did a project, we lived up in

Northumberland and I did a project on the castles of

Northumberland and there were a lot of them.

And I made my family go to a different castle every weekend

just to study it. I think they loved that.

They loved me but maybe didn't love that quite as much.

But you know, strongholds are like a sort of castle that is

built in our mind, if you like, out of lies and cemented

together. Every time we agree with a lie

that comes our way, it becomes stronger and stronger.

You might think of it as well, like thought tracks.

I know we saw a picture last week of the neural pathways in

our brain that every time our thoughts go down a certain

track, even science agrees with that, that track becomes

strengthened and reinforced, and it's easy for our thoughts to go

there. So for example, if I constantly

think I am unimportant and my mind goes there every time I

face a hard situation or I have an opportunity to speak out.

And this used to be me in my life, I used to always think,

well, I'm unimportant. What?

What do? Why do people want to hear what

I've got to say? And every time we respond to

that and we agree with that lie, it reinforces that pathway, if

you like, in our mind. And we shy away from

opportunity, we miss moments and the enemy loves that.

It immobilises us. And also the enemy can plant

unseen bombs in our minds. Recently a story popped up on

local BBC News where Leicestershire Police, it said,

explained a loud kaboom heard in Thorpe Rd, Melton Mowbray.

It was actually a controlled explosion of two unexploded

bombs. 2 incendiary devices that have been in this house

apparently since the Second World War, and they were found

quite unexpectedly, it says, by a member of the public while

sorting through belongings inherited from their stepfather

at his house. Not what they expected and it

was taken somewhere safe and exploded.

But like an unexploded bomb or a landmine under the surface, a

stronghold often lies buried underneath until something

triggers it and then causes it to surface and kaboom causes

havoc. Have you ever wondered where did

that thought come from? These strongholds are built over

years and they have their root in experiences, in our own life,

in things from our own past, usually.

So for example, let's say you struggle with people pleasing

and your sense of value, your sense of worth is always driven

by a constant need to perform well or to gain approval.

And when you make a mistake or you let somebody down, you find

it really hard to recover. And when you complement it,

even, yes, you feel good for a moment, somebody says, oh, you

did so well. But then the feeling just fades

really quickly. The thought patterns you might

have that go with that might go like this.

Well, people would only love me or accept me if I do everything

right. And if I please them, I'll

always fail. I'll never be good enough.

Or I must earn love. I must earn approval and the

root causes, the things that might cause that in our life

could be things like rejection, fear, pride.

They might in turn come out of life experiences such as maybe

emotionally absent parents or absent parents or high pressured

environment that we've grown up in at school or in at home.

Even being bullied or having siblings who've overachieved or

being rewarded for performance rather than for character.

There's many, many as well other patterns, other strongholds that

conform as we learnt last week. So are we powerless?

Are we passive? No, as we learnt last week, we

have the victory in Jesus. And as we sung today, Jesus name

breaks every stronghold. Yeah.

And we can see our thinking and we can can see our behaviour

change. So this is a message of hope.

Today we have victory and we have weapons.

We live in the world. We do not wage war, says 2

Corinthians 10, as the world does.

The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world.

On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish

strongholds. We demolish arguments and every

pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God,

and we take captive every thought and make it obedient to

Christ. Can you see this is quite an

offensive sort of as in when I say offensive, I mean as in an

attacking sort of verse. So we can choose to use

spiritual weapons, take every thought captive last week and

this continues today. We are learning that those three

major weapons, three major weapons are the word of God

praise because it focuses our attention on him, releases his

power and prayer. And as with every other aspect

of the Christian life, change comes to us both.

Suddenly we can have moments of encounter and then there's other

times in the Christian life where change is gradual and it's

just a gradual like hammer, hammer, hammer away at these

things and we see and we look back and we realise, yes, we

have changed. I remember a moment of encounter

for me being when I was a quite a young Christian and I was just

troubled and troubled by thoughts of inadequacy, you

know, what could I bring? You know, And I think a lot of

it came maybe from some of my past where I was encouraged not

to speak out, not to, you know, to be just polite to, to stay in

the background. And I just struggled with some

of these feelings and struggled to put myself forward for

things. And I remember actually in

prayer one day being in a prayer meeting before I started my day

as a teacher and just feeling a sudden, like just an anointing

almost to, to do something about this.

And I remember in prayer, literally pretending to pick up

a sweeping brush that wasn't really there.

But I remember like, just sweep it, literally doing the action

of sweeping out these things. No inadequate, you're going to

go. No Fear, you're going to go.

And I just really like went at these things.

And I remember that being a moment where my life changed.

And that doesn't sort everything because we're still on this

journey. But that was a sudden moment of

encounter and that's our youth leaders retreat.

David and I drove in terrible weather, I have to say, last

Sunday night up into Derbyshire to join our wonderful youth team

from one church on their their retreat.

They had last Sunday night to Monday and they were asking us

loads of questions as well as us talking to them.

And one question they asked us was how have you changed?

Is there anything you used to find hard that God has helped

you with? And I have to say, that whole

thing for me is it all started in the mind.

It all starts in the mind that for me it was all about

confidence, releasing of my voice and a continual battle

just to believe. No, I've got an instructed

tongue to know the word that sustains the weary.

That's the word of God. I have an anointing to teach and

so on. So what about the continuing day

by day? What about the living with the

mindset That is right? How do we keep getting better,

if you like, at minding our own minds?

For the rest of this morning, we're just going to focus on one

passage mainly from Paul's letter to Philippians, verse 6

to 8, Philippians 4, verse 6 to 8.

Philippians 4:6–8

I absolutely love this passage. I've read it so many times.

It's changed my life so many times and continues to.

And it's a passage I've used loads and loads of times when

talking to other people as well and praying for people.

So let's listen to it. Let these words sink in.

They'll be familiar to some of you.

Let them just sink in and speak to you again.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by

prayer and petition, with Thanksgiving present your

requests to God, and the peace of God, which transcends all

understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ

Jesus. 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.

Whatever you've learnt or received or heard from me or

seen in me, put into practise, and the peace of God will be

with you. Thank you God.

No anxiety, Thanksgiving, peace. A guarded mind, thinking in line

with God's thoughts, a mind at rest, whatever's going on.

Is this really possible? Well, this was written by Paul,

the great church leader back in the very early days of the

church. We might think, well that's OK

for him. He had it all together.

He surely didn't battle in his mind.

But I just, I was just thinking about his life and some of the

potential areas where Paul really would have battled in his

mind, I'm sure, and carried damage and needed the peace that

passes understanding. For example, we can read an act

how he was rejected, how he was misunderstood.

He was treated with suspicion when he changed from being a

Jewish leader to being a leader in the church to following

Jesus. At times he was persecuted.

He talks about being flogged, imprisoned, stoned, shipwrecked,

starving, cold, stripped naked, and more for the sake of Jesus.

It's very possible he also carried feelings of guilt

because he'd persecuted the church.

He probably sent Christians to their death.

He'd been responsible for many going to prison, and it said he

actually actively dragged people out and took them to prison.

He also wrote about how he was glad to be single, but was he

lonely at times? He describes himself as the

chief of sinners. So I think he it comes over that

sometimes he might have been tortured by, for example, some

of those things in his past. He fell out with people, Peter

Barnabas, at least for seasons. And he talks in his letters of

carrying the pain and the responsibility of all the

churches that he'd planted. And then he talks about

individual people. He says things in like in one of

his letters he says, Demas, he deserted me.

Surely with all this in his life, his mind really was a

battlefield. But here he gives us this

amazing picture of what our minds are supposed to be like

and how they're intended to be. Now we're in Christ, so it is

possible. So how do we go on taking ground

in our heads? There's some of us in this room

and we've not been a believer very long, or maybe we're not

even yet there. And we've had all these years of

thinking that has taken us down the world's way, if you like,

down the tracks. Just we've thought and believed

whatever has come into our mind, it's going to take time to

change that. Some of us still have that one

area of weakness or maybe 2. And I believe the Lord's going

to bring breakthrough even today as we apply this at the end for

you. Some of us are really desperate

in the room for change in our mind, and this feels really

urgent. Some of us have slipped into old

ways. We've had more victory in the

past in our mind than we have right now.

And we want to regain that ground.

And today is just a further call to action, to being deliberate

and to training for victory. Because, you know, the opposite

of grace in the Christian journey is not not to do

anything. The opposite of grace is to be

striving and trying to run God's approval through what we do.

But that's not what we're talking about here.

We're talking about action. And this, this needs action.

You know, this makes the enemy tremble.

Just even this sort of talking because he loves it.

If we believe lies, it hampers us.

It holds us up. It stops us being effective as

we might be. And he loves nothing more than

that. I was reading about Ariana

Walker, who's the leader of Mercy Ministry.

She had this dream just to give a very short retelling.

She's sitting at a table in a restaurant with some people who

she knows are joy, peace, wisdom, all the good things of

the Christian life. And she sees these shadowy

figures in the corner who are, you know, she says to God, but

in a dream, well, who are these? And he says, well, these are

your enemies because this restaurant, like your mind is

open to the public. And then they they start moving

nearer and near to the table. And in the end, the one that's

called fear stands behind the chair at her table where faith

is sitting. And God says to her, well, you

know, you can choose to invite fear to your table, but actually

the choice is yours, you know, because there's only a certain

number of places at your table, but you choose who's going to

sit there. And when she opened her eyes and

to wake woke up, she realised that God was saying to her that

the battle that you are fighting is going to be won or lost in

your mind. Not to be passive in this area,

but to take action. So take action Don't believe

first of all, everything you think.

Do not be anxious, says Paul, about anything.

But in everything, pray with Thanksgiving, present your

request to God and the peace of God that transcends all

understanding. It is not logical.

It is not something from the world, but it will guard your

heart and your mind in Christ Jesus.

Learn to be aware what is in your mind, for a start, what

state it's in. You know, we naturally can feel

that anything that comes into our mind is going to be true

because it's just come from us, we think.

But that's not the case, you know, I mean, I think if we

think about it logically, we would know this isn't true

because we've all probably seen, for example, those reality TV

shows where the proud mum pushes out their son or their daughter

and they say, oh, she's so talented, so gifted.

What an amazing voice. Oh, and the person themselves,

you know, the young lady, they've been trained by their

parents to think they can do absolutely anything.

I can do anything if I just believe in myself.

You know, that's not a, not a true mantra, don't you?

And when they open their mouth, it's very obvious that they do

not have talent. This is not a place where

Britain has talent. This is, this is not talented,

you know, just because you think something or believe something

doesn't mean that it's true. Scripture does speak of minds

that are the opposite of a mind of life and peace.

Just to give you a few examples. Scripture talks and you can

maybe do some study yourself and look some of these up.

The confused mind, you know, confusion is never from God.

A closed mind, an evil restless mind.

Ecclesiastes says the day of their labour is filled with pain

and grief and even at night their minds cannot rest.

It's all meaningless. Yippee.

Troubled mind. A depraved mind in one Timothy.

A sinful mind. A dull mind.

A blinded mind. A corrupt mind.

The world puts suggestions in our minds that are false and

we're bombarded with these false ideas all the time.

And social media does not help. It just sort of polarises

opinion and so on. And that's why even these

conversation nights that have been advertised on our family

news are really important because what we want is for us

as one church to be people who look at big issues, even the big

issues in the world today. We if we look at social media,

it'll tell us what we want to think because it'll keep on

reinforcing you keep getting sent through the algorithm,

you'll be sent back things that you really want to read.

So why don't we look at it through a biblical lens?

And that's what we want to do on these nights.

So I'd really encourage you to get signed up for those to log

your questions and even to bring young people, because young

people need to know how to talk to their friends about some of

these things in a a really biblical and balanced sort of a

way. But in every area the enemy

wants to plant lies in our mind. We're living in a fallen world.

So how on earth can we choose, as Paul says here, not to be

anxious? For example, the verse here ends

with saying that if we do what this verse says, the peace of

God will guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus.

So it is possible, but don't believe everything that you

think. Learn to be discerning.

And secondly, guard your mind from rubbish.

Finally, brothers, whatever's true, noble, right, pure,

lovely, admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy,

think about such things. In a few weeks I'll be going

back to visit our mission partners in Kenya.

Really looking forward to seeing them again because I haven't

been there for two years. On one trip, quite a few years

ago, I went to visit Dandora Dump in Nairobi, which is where

Pastor Samuel Moonai, who's the the leader of the church out in

Kenya that we link with as a church where he grew up in the

slums there. It's an open mountain basically

of all the city's waste. You can go there.

I remember going there, we just come on Kenya Airways and go in

there and you could literally see them tipping out all the

stuff that had come off the aeroplanes, all the champagne

bottles. All the, the tissues, all the,

all the stuff that had been used And you'd see the there were

kids and well, people of all ages actually, who live on this

dump sorting through all the rubbish and huge vultures sat on

the skyline. And the thing I most remember

was the smell, the stench. It was literally horrible.

It made you want to be sick. And rubbish, you know as well,

can pile up in our minds and it stinks.

Where does rubbish come from? Well, it comes from negative

thoughts, destructive thoughts, anxious thoughts, impure

thoughts. In the early days of the

computer there was a saying, garbage in, garbage out.

If you put bad data into a computer, you'll get bad

results. Proverbs 1514 says a wise person

is hungry for knowledge while the fool feeds on trash.

Wow, are we going to be fools and feed on rubbish?

We need to watch our ears, watch our eyes.

These are the gates of our mind. Is there anything I wonder

today? I'm not going to be specific,

but anything that you need to stop, anything you need to

cancel, anything you need to throw away, anything you need to

remove from your devices, it may be obviously wrong, in which

case get rid of it. Or it may just not be helping

you. And you know that for, for now,

for a while, I'm just going to stop this in my life.

And in a positive sense as well. There are two ways in this

passage that will help us to guard our minds from garbage.

So that's a -1 not to think about certain things, not to

have those things come into our minds.

But what about the positive? Well, there's two things here it

talks about. 1 is conversational prayer and the other is

concentrated focusing. Don't worry about anything but

pray about everything. Conversational prayer.

This is like a running conversation, which means we're

not on our knees because you can't be on your knees when

you're in the bus or when you're walking through the park or when

you're driving. But we can at all those times be

talking to God, having a running conversation, developing A2

track mind where we're doing something, even talking to

someone. But as well, in the back of our

mind, we are focusing on God as well.

And secondly, Paul says we guard our minds as we fix our

thoughts. He says think about these

things. So how do we do that?

Well, concentrated, focusing on good things.

Don't merely resist the thought. You know, the more we resist

something, often the more our attention's drawn to it.

Have you noticed that what you merely resist persists?

Now, is anyone feeling hungry? OK, so have a little look at

that photo. And now try not to think about

Sunday lunch. Try and resist thinking about

Sunday lunch. Try not to think of those lovely

roast potatoes and the gravy. And if you're a vegetarian, you

know, the corn, whatever it is, or sausage or whatever it is

you're having instead. But try not to think about it.

You know, the more you try not to think about something, the

more you often will think about it.

And the Bible actually here tells us to focus away from

what's bothering us instead of running it round and round in

our heads. You know, F1 drivers, Anyone

here like F1 Formula One, they're told don't focus on what

you want to avoid. So when you're going round a

corner, for example, if you're going at speed particularly, you

don't want to look at the corner, otherwise you're just

going to drive in there. My mum once when she was

learning to drive, drove around a roundabout and said, oh, look

at those lovely flowers in the middle of the roundabout.

Before we knew where we were, my sister and I were in the back.

We were in the middle of that roundabout.

Because the more when we focus on something, we veer towards

it. So the Bible says, instead focus

on what is good, what is true, honourable, just pure, lovely,

commendable, excellent. If there's anything worthy of

praise, think about those things.

So think about how we can do that in our lives.

Focus on the good stuff. And I was thinking, who is the

embodiment of all those things is Jesus.

The more we fix our eyes on Jesus, the more we will not be

thinking about these other things.

My eyes are fixed on you. I read this this morning

actually in my Bible reading. My eyes are fixed on you.

Keep me safe from the traps set for me, the snares laid for me.

Let the wicked fall into their own Nets while I pass by in

safety. Let me remind you again of our

main weapons, the Word of God. Praise and prayer.

Remember about the targeted use of the Word of God.

We talked about it last week. Let's do the work.

Identify the lies that affect you and replace them with the

truth. Even as practical as using a

word search on the Bible app on your phone or your iPad or

whatever. I'm finding a verse that is

related to the opposite of what the lie is that you're thinking

about. If I give you give you a few

examples, OK, but that you have to do the work on this

yourselves though. For example, the false belief

I'm alone anybody think that nobody really cares how I feel

or what I do not true. The truth is 1 Peter 57 cast all

your anxiety on him for he cares for you and the declaration you

could use from that is God is always with me.

He cares. He sees how I feel, he comforts

me. So you write your own you can

write your own counter action of a lie that is in your mind.

For example, if there's a lie in your head, I'm not worth much.

I don't deserve anything good. Ephesians one says all praise to

God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who's blessed us

with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms in Christ.

I've been blessed, you can say, with every spiritual blessing in

Christ. I'm a child of God and I'm an

heir of his Kingdom. That's going to make you feel a

whole load better than thinking the early lie, the lie here.

Who here thinks they're really good looking?

Well, the Bible says you are, so you might have this lie.

Well, I'm not good looking. I'm not very attractive, you

know, once my mum, and God bless her, she's lovely and she's a

lovely mum and she always cheers me on.

But when we were teenagers, she said something that really

impacted me at the time because we were looking into a shop

window and there was our reflection was looking back at

us and she literally said, oh, we've never been a very good

looking family. And that sort of stuck in my

mind. You know how sometimes just a

little thing can stick in your mind.

And I grew up with this feeling, oh, I'm not attractive.

I'm not good looking. But you know, the Bible doesn't

say that. What?

Whoever we are, it says this to us.

You created my innermost being. You knit me together in my

mother's womb. I praise you because I'm

fearfully and wonderfully made. We can say instead God made me

in his image. He's made me wonderfully and I

look good. Just turn to your neighbour and

say, I look good, I look good. See how easy you find that to

say? We might say, well, all I've

done, I don't think God can possibly forgive me.

The Bible doesn't say that. The Bible says in one John one,

if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just and we'll

forgive all our sins and purifiers from all

unrighteousness. We can say instead Jesus paid

the price. When I confess, God promises to

forgive me and make me clean. I'll just do one, one or two

more because I think this is helpful to you, just to see how

you can do some of this work yourselves.

I'll only be happy if I succeed. Does anybody think that?

Don't be afraid, says Jesus. You are more valuable to God

than a whole flock of sparrows. In fact, the Bible says you are

his treasured possession. You can say instead, my value

and worth don't come from temporary worldly success or

achievement, but from being a child of the King, loved and

treasured by him. Anybody here say I'll always be

sad, I'll always be depressed? Well, the Lord anointed Jesus to

bind up the broken hearted, to free the captives, comfort all

who mourn, to give a crown of beauty instead of ashes, oil of

joy instead of mourning, a garment of praise for a spirit

of heaviness. We can say in Jesus, I have real

hope. He can heal my pain, He can lift

my burdens, He can give me joy and so on.

If you say I'm afraid, he says actually 366 times, fear not.

You know that there's there's one for every day of the year

and the leap year. God has not given me a spirit of

fear, we can say, but love, power and a sound mind.

So I am not afraid. Let's be people of the word do

the work. What about praise?

Praise breaks the chains, opens doors.

Look at Paul and Silas in prison.

They praised God at midnight, the darkest time, and the doors

flew open, it says, and their chains were released.

We've got some friends in another city and they had a

terrible thing happened to them where something started going on

in their next door in the house next door to them that was

really impacting their life. It was just a a situation you

can't possibly comprehend. And this got really got on top

of them. They lead a church and it was

beginning to impact their lives. And they decided one Sunday

night they felt, no, this is enough is enough.

We're going to put on this particular song.

We're going to praise God. And they praised and praised

together in their own place. And you know, by 9:00 the

following morning, the situation next door had been resolved.

In fact, there had been a complete turn around.

Praise puts our attention on God.

Praise brings his power and prayer.

Notice Paul says here to pray about everything.

You know, if we were to pray as much as we worry, we'd have a

lot less to worry about. You know, sometimes I find it

easy, easy. I like to go and shout

somewhere. I don't know if you can, if you

can identify with this, but sometimes that just brings a

breakthrough to go somewhere, preferably where you're not

going to freak somebody else out, but you might want to wind

the window up in the car and do it in the car.

Or just go and find a hill somewhere and walk up and just

have a good old shout. You know, Jesus, you are the

world. I trust you.

And sometimes just that can break something, can break

something in prayer and the peace of God, it says here,

which surpasses all understanding, will guard your

heart and your mind in Christ Jesus and the God of peace.

He himself will be with you. Isn't that wonderful?

I felt it was important for us each to do some work with God in

our own hearts and then to determine that we're going to

keep on doing this works. Remember, it's both sudden and

it's gradual. So keep on doing this work as we

go through our week, as we go through the days ahead in our

own heart with God. So take heart everybody.

Take heart because your mind is not what it was and it's in the

process of becoming the mind of Christ.

If you know Jesus, then you're becoming someone who has a life

and a mind full of joy and peace.

We're in a war, yes, but we have complete victory in Jesus, the

enemies at work to take our thoughts down these well worn

paths. And you know, the more we agree,

the stronger that will be. But the less we agree and the

more we can track those lies with the truth, the more those

strongholds will be broken down, the more those pathways will be

made new. And we have his powerful

weapons, the word of God, praise and prayer.

And you know, we can truly live without anxiety and know that

peace that passes understanding. Thank you Jesus.

So if it helps you, why not close your eyes and just focus

on listening to Jesus And you know, if you're in this room and

you don't even yet know him, just use this moment to reach

out for him in your own heart and to say, Jesus, here I am.

Show yourself to me. He's here and he loves you.

We're just going to invite the Holy Spirit to speak to us, to

reveal any lie that we might have been believing, any place

where we might have allowed agreement or stronghold to be

built, or where we find it hard to change.

So just pray with me. I'm going to pray a prayer.

You pray in your own heart. Just agree with my prayer.

Holy Spirit, I invite you now to come and speak to my heart and

my show me where I've believed the lies of the enemy or where I

need to change. Bring something specific to my

mind right now. Thank you Lord.

Now whatever has come into your mind, just bring it before God,

remembering that He loves you. If it's a lie you've been

believing, just tell him, I'm sorry, Lord, for believing this.

I'm sorry. And now I'm going to just say a

little prayer, just choosing to nail this lie to the cross and

break agreement with it. So you might want to say this

out loud after me under your breath.

I choose to nail this lie to the cross.

I break agreement with this lie. I now take this thought captive

and I break agreement with the enemy.

Set me free to think your thoughts, Jesus, and I pull down

any stronghold in my thinking in Jesus name.

Now this is a process. Somebody once said you can't

stop birds flying over your head, but you can stop them

nesting in your hair. Remember, you don't have to

entertain every thought that you have.

So when that lie pops up again in your mind, because it

probably will, remember that you are free and focus on what's

good and true and noble and on the truth and on Jesus himself,

and let other thoughts fly off. This is no longer who you are.

If the sun sets you free, says Jesus, you will be free indeed.

So let's just thank him, Say thank you Lord, that I can have

a mind governed by the Spirit, which is life and peace, life

and peace in Jesus name. Just to finish, I was going to

put some personal truth declarations to get the hearts

racing. So we've got some declarations

on the screen from God's word. We're just going to speak them

out together because these are positive words that you can use

that are not just words. This is the very word of God.

This is words straight from His mouth that can come out of your

mouth. So think what power that has.

So let's just speak this out together.

I am a child of God. I am free from condemnation.

I have the mind of Christ. I am completing Christ.

I am forgiven all my sins. I am confident and fearless.

I am secure. I am loved unconditionally.

I am gifted. God is my refuge and strength, a

present help in trouble. His grace is sufficient for me.

His strength is made perfect. In my weakness I am fearfully

and wonderfully made. Marvellous are your works.

I am being made new in the attitude of my mind.

The mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.

Jesus said peace. I leave with you.

My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the

world gives. Do not let your hearts be

troubled, and do not be afraid. I will not let my heart be

troubled. I will not be afraid and I

receive your peace. Amen.

Amen. The Lord bless you and keep you.

The Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you.

The Lord turn his face towards you and give you peace.