SPEAKER_00: Let's lift our Bibles up and wave them around and make Jesus glad and the devil mad.
SPEAKER_00: Let's say this together.
SPEAKER_00: Say, Heavenly Father, I'm glad for Wednesday night.
SPEAKER_00: I've come to be replenished and refilled with the Word of God.
SPEAKER_00: I'm excited about what God is doing in 2026.
SPEAKER_00: I fully expect to be a participator in kingdom business, not just an observer, in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Let's look at 2 Corinthians, please.
SPEAKER_00: Two places, chapter 10 and also chapter 4, and we'll read our foundation scripture there in 2 Corinthians 10 verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, we'll back up to verse 3.
SPEAKER_00: For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And then we'll flip back to chapter 4 and start reading with verse 3, 2 Corinthians 4, 3.
SPEAKER_00: But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost, in whom the God of this world or this age hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
SPEAKER_00: And so tonight I wanted to share a message entitled Winning the Battle of the Mind.
SPEAKER_00: Winning the Battle of the Mind.
SPEAKER_00: That's the biggest battle we have, is right up here between your ears, your thinking, your mind.
SPEAKER_00: That's where you're assailed with every type of thought.
SPEAKER_00: The God of this age, and we'll talk about that in just a moment.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of people say, well, that's the devil.
SPEAKER_00: Well, it is, but it's more than that.
SPEAKER_00: It's more specific and just some being.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll get into that.
SPEAKER_00: In 2026, I'm going to be announcing the prophetic uh emphasis on this year.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we've had the last few years, I think it was 23, we had the year of power, 24 was the year of momentum.
SPEAKER_00: Uh last year, the year of milestones.
SPEAKER_00: This year is going to be another year, and I'll announce that Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: But this message is vital for us to be practiced in winning the battle of the mind.
SPEAKER_00: We've got to learn how to release our supernatural weapons.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, they're not of the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: They're not natural, but they're supernatural, they're powerful through God.
SPEAKER_00: Um and the emphasis in the last while is for us to possess our inheritance.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I read about the children of Israel, you know, when they crossed over the Jordan and into the uh promised land, they all had uh their designated uh territories that they were given, each of the twelve tribes.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, we know the two and a half tribes received their inheritance on this side of the river.
SPEAKER_00: And when they first uh told uh Moses, well, no, we this is ours.
SPEAKER_00: We can't get any better than what we just went right here, this is ours.
SPEAKER_00: And so he got kind of mad at them.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, Oh no, you know, you're gonna have to help your brothers and possess theirs.
SPEAKER_00: And so they agreed, even though that they already had theirs identified, that they would go across the river with their brothers and help them possess theirs.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, we know by reading our Bible that none of the 12 tribes ever fully possessed their inheritances.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because they didn't dispossess uh the people that were on it.
SPEAKER_00: You know, they had trespassers, and they had uh, you know, uh poachers, and they had squatters.
SPEAKER_00: You know what made them that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, God made them that.
SPEAKER_00: God released uh the children of Israel to take land that wasn't originally theirs.
SPEAKER_00: The earth is the Lord's and the fullness of the thereof, the world and they that dwell therein.
SPEAKER_00: So nobody owns anything of their own accord.
SPEAKER_00: I get tired of this Native American, Native this, and we're on stolen land.
SPEAKER_00: All the land belongs to God, sweetie pie.
SPEAKER_00: And nobody has a right to it unless God gives it to them.
SPEAKER_00: And so this is an American soil, and every, I mean, I'm sorry about the Native Americans, they were not treated right, but it's not their land.
SPEAKER_00: It's not their land.
SPEAKER_00: They they don't have a right to it, or they would have never been, God would not have given us permission to have manifest destiny.
SPEAKER_00: Does anybody ever heard that term, manifest destiny?
SPEAKER_00: That was that was possessing this country from the East Coast to the West Coast.
SPEAKER_00: And uh we did it, and we couldn't have done it without God.
SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, in your own land, in your own area, your your inheritance is not necessarily just about land or your house or anything like that, but it's it's all the promises of God that you have through the baptism of the Holy Ghost.
SPEAKER_00: It's your health, it's your it's your life.
SPEAKER_00: And in order to possess your inheritance, you've got to learn how to dispossess the trespassers, the poachers, and the squatters.
SPEAKER_00: And you'll find I'm not even talking about demons now.
SPEAKER_00: I'm really talking about contrary thoughts.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody say thoughts.
SPEAKER_00: See, uh old internal dialogues.
SPEAKER_00: You know, uh a voice that's in your head that goes around and it seems to just be on an eight-track tape.
SPEAKER_00: You know, Gladys worked at a, you know, at an insurance agency when we first married, we moved to college station, and and here she is a young woman, just 21 years old, and she's one girl in a 10-agent office.
SPEAKER_00: And uh they sold life insurance, and they're so cheap that they they had a stereo system, all right, but they only had one eight-track tape.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, an eight-track tape back then you could buy for three or four dollars, you know.
SPEAKER_00: You could go to the go to the music store and buy a whole truckload of them for nothing.
SPEAKER_00: And they only had one, it was Roger Miller.
SPEAKER_00: And all day long, you know, that was on the eight-track tape, and an eight-track just keeps playing.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't, it doesn't stop.
SPEAKER_00: It just plays through ten songs and then starts over and plays through ten songs, and so all day long she's listening to Roger Miller.
SPEAKER_00: You can't roller skate on a buffalo herd.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, dang me, dang me.
SPEAKER_00: It ought to take a rope and hang me all day long.
SPEAKER_00: She'd come home just kind of cross-eyed.
SPEAKER_00: But an internal dialogue is like, an internal dialogue is like an eight-track tape, it's repetitive, it goes around, and it's, you know, you're you're you're you're you don't measure up.
SPEAKER_00: You're you're, you know, you woulda, coulda, shoulda.
SPEAKER_00: You should have done this, your shortcomings, your failures, your sin, your the different things that people battle in their minds, uh, then really these are the trespassers, the poachers, and the squatters, and just like uh the children of Israel, it it because they did not dispossess the enemy, then they uh they it hindered them and they began to worship the same false gods that the trespassers did.
SPEAKER_00: And and so what that how does that uh affect you?
SPEAKER_00: Well, if you don't engage in winning the battle of the mind, it's going to hinder you, and you're not, it's gonna hurt your faith, it's gonna affect your confession.
SPEAKER_00: Wasn't that awesome, Sunday, how Brother Mark is just able to bring back, you know, uh the confession, the great confession.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we've heard it over and over, but somehow when he comes and presents, it's just it's like fresh manna, it's like a fresh wind.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm excited about having a systematic discourse will tell me, listen, a bad thought life can interrupt your systematic discourse, and it can interrupt uh God's victory in your life.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm talking about winning the battle of the mind.
SPEAKER_00: So all of the world's system is is uh programmed negatively because of the fall of Adam.
SPEAKER_00: And as soon as Adam obeyed the devil, you know, he followed his wife.
SPEAKER_00: His wife was deceived, but Adam knew better.
SPEAKER_00: That's what you have to understand.
SPEAKER_00: He knew better.
SPEAKER_00: She was deceived, but he knew better, and he decided anyway, he's gonna do what his wife did.
SPEAKER_00: He was not the head of his house.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't take authority over the devil like he could have.
SPEAKER_00: The devil was under his authority, he could have rebuked him at any point, but he didn't.
SPEAKER_00: And because of that, that's when fear came into the world.
SPEAKER_00: There's no fear until Adam fell.
SPEAKER_00: What happened?
SPEAKER_00: They went and hid in the garden.
SPEAKER_00: Where have you been?
SPEAKER_00: Where Adam, where are you?
SPEAKER_00: Where are you?
SPEAKER_00: You know, he was afraid all of a sudden.
SPEAKER_00: And so the negativity came into the world because of the fall.
SPEAKER_00: And instead of Adam being the God of this world or the God of this age, he sold out to the devil, and Satan became the God, little G, God of this age.
SPEAKER_00: But really, the God of this age, I like to read in the linguistic key to the Greek New Testament because there's more to it than just the devil.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's uh as I've mentioned before, the Greek language is an amazing language.
SPEAKER_00: It has much more complex than English, and so uh when we use an English word for something, it can mean a lot of different things.
SPEAKER_00: And so the God of this age means this.
SPEAKER_00: All that floating mass of thoughts, opinions, maxims, speculations, hopes, impulses, aims, aspirations that are at any time current in the world.
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, man-made climate change.
SPEAKER_00: That's just a complete falsehood.
SPEAKER_00: There's no science behind it.
SPEAKER_00: The transgender, we had uh Katanji Jackson, who is a Supreme Court justice yesterday, uh hearing the lawsuit on the trans uh gender athletes being, in other words, boys being able to compete with girls and go into girls' locker rooms.
SPEAKER_00: How hard is that to understand that that's wrong?
SPEAKER_00: How hard is that to understand that that's against nature?
SPEAKER_00: And she couldn't, she couldn't, she couldn't do, she couldn't uh uh define the a woman.
SPEAKER_00: She didn't know what the definition of a woman is.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's how stupid these people are.
SPEAKER_00: They are eat up, what, with the God of this age.
SPEAKER_00: And it it's it's beyond, you know, uh normal people to be able to grasp how they could come that way, but they have what we call drank the Kool-Aid.
SPEAKER_00: They just they've just they've given in to a supernatural entity called the devil that's behind the this whole floating mass of opinions.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, these these crazy women out there trying to fight ice in Minneapolis, that's another one right there.
SPEAKER_00: Makes no sense.
SPEAKER_00: Are you really that concerned about an illegal alien who's a child?
SPEAKER_00: You know, abuses a child and who is a criminal and who is.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I can understand there might be a few illegal aliens that are law-abiding and maybe doing an honest day's work for an honest day's pay, that may be, and but they came across the border, that means they're criminals.
SPEAKER_00: If they don't have the paperwork, they shouldn't be allowed to stay.
SPEAKER_00: I know, Pastor, you just got, I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_00: We have to have a standard.
SPEAKER_00: And it's been it's been thrown out the door, and now beside that, we've we they weren't vetted, they weren't interviewed, they were just released.
SPEAKER_00: And why were they released so they could vote Democrat?
SPEAKER_00: And they did.
SPEAKER_00: And we know they cheated in 2020, then we know they tried to cheat in 2016.
SPEAKER_00: Are you all with me now?
SPEAKER_00: So I'm talking about the God of this age.
SPEAKER_00: This is what we're seeing on a daily basis now.
SPEAKER_00: And uh and so we have to be sure that these things don't leak into our consciousness, into our brain.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we're we're a three-part being, we're a spirit, we live in a body, and we have a mind or a soul, which is our mind, will, and intellect.
SPEAKER_00: And our our God made our brain.
SPEAKER_00: It's an amazing thing.
SPEAKER_00: Our brains are amazing.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, but they're susceptible to lies, they're susceptible to being deceived.
SPEAKER_00: There's a psyops going on in this country right now.
SPEAKER_00: And about, as far as I can tell, there's a large percentage of people that have believed have drank the Kool-Aid and believed this lie.
SPEAKER_00: They they they just it's unhinged.
SPEAKER_00: And uh we're living in the last days, folks.
SPEAKER_00: So getting back to the winning the battle of the mind, our our job is to possess our inheritance by dispossessing these entities, these thoughts, many times they're thoughts.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, thoughts and words are connected.
SPEAKER_00: That's another reason we ought to be more disciplined in our thought life, because if we're not, then our confession is going to be necessarily negatively affected.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Jesus said in Matthew 12, 34, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you're thinking about on a constant basis is going to come out your mouth.
SPEAKER_00: Well, if you're thinking wrong, then you're going to have wrong words.
SPEAKER_00: It's not hard to understand.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and then Proverbs 23, 7 says, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's just who you are, how whatever you constantly think about.
SPEAKER_00: That's why it takes a disciplined, a disciple of Christ as a disciplined one.
SPEAKER_00: That's why I'm teaching this.
SPEAKER_00: It's to discipline you, to give you the kind of faith you need based on the word to execute your uh warfare against these types of thinking.
SPEAKER_00: You have to attack these things one thought at a time.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't do anything, then they can lodge in your mind.
SPEAKER_00: So I notice in Mark chapter 4, you know, uh Jesus was preaching uh the parable, the sower sows the word, and he talked about four kinds of dirt.
SPEAKER_00: Three, three, three of the kinds of dirt had a crop failure.
SPEAKER_00: And then he interpreted the parable.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, and we know the first one was the word was sown in the heart, and it wasn't, it wasn't, it didn't go down deep, it was just on the surface.
SPEAKER_00: Some people just hit the surface of the word, and Satan comes immediately to steal the word out of the heart, and there's no crop.
SPEAKER_00: You don't get a foot, you don't get a crop, you don't get a fruit.
SPEAKER_00: The second one is it's sown in the heart and it springs up, but the earth is rocky and stony, there's not much depth to it, and so when the heat of circumstances comes along, the word is scorched or burned, and it and it's unfruitful, it dies.
SPEAKER_00: So you had the stolen word, the scorched word.
SPEAKER_00: Then the third one was the word of God is sown among thorns and brambles, and it says, you know, that the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, the lust and desires for other things, enter in and it becometh unfruitful.
SPEAKER_00: So that tells me that it took root, the the word did.
SPEAKER_00: It grew for a time, it was beginning to come up in a fashion, but before it could get a crop, these three things happened, and it came in, and the word was uh strangle.
SPEAKER_00: So you had the stolen, the scorched, and the strangled word at release, and you wound up with a with a crop failure.
SPEAKER_00: And so that tells me then the cares of this world can enter in through your mind.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, your mind is assailed with everything, with your five senses.
SPEAKER_00: Your five senses are connected to your mind, and and your mind is being fed everything you feel emotionally, everything you encounter emotionally and soulishly can become a thought, it can become a negative against what you're believing for.
SPEAKER_00: The evidence is against what you're confessing.
SPEAKER_00: And if you don't control your thought life and you start meditating on the wrong thing, the next thing you know, there goes your your uh systematic discourse.
SPEAKER_00: You know, Brother Mark brought that systematic discourse out in Mark 11.23.
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's one th there's three uh forms of the word say in Mark 11.23.
SPEAKER_00: Lego, epo, lego.
SPEAKER_00: And lego means to it means to speak or to say, but it also means to command.
SPEAKER_00: It means to be, you know, it means to, you know, not be mealy-mouthed.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, when we speak to our mountain, we don't whisper to it.
SPEAKER_00: We we command the mountain.
SPEAKER_00: But then we shall have whatsoever we say, that word say, is epo, which means a systematic set discourse.
SPEAKER_00: It's what we continually say.
SPEAKER_00: The woman with the issue of blood, she continually said, I shall be made whole.
SPEAKER_00: She didn't say it once.
SPEAKER_00: All the way to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: After she heard of Jesus, she kept saying over and over, I shall be whole.
SPEAKER_00: I shall be whole.
SPEAKER_00: She said it over and over.
SPEAKER_00: So what we say uh consistently, systematically is the key to our possessing our inheritance.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you want to possess your inheritance?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, or you just want to just go ahead and let it go and K Sarah, Sarah, whatever will be, will be Doris Day in the 1950s.
SPEAKER_00: How much is that doggy in the window?
SPEAKER_00: The one with a waggly tail.
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, praise God.
SPEAKER_00: It's a different time.
SPEAKER_00: Um, so disciplined thoughts keep our words consistent, and it makes it easier for us to have a systematic discourse.
SPEAKER_00: Um as opposed to having no filter.
SPEAKER_00: What do you mean by no filter?
SPEAKER_00: Well, see, some people instead of being swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath, they're just motor mouth.
SPEAKER_00: They don't know when to shut up.
SPEAKER_00: They just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.
SPEAKER_00: And the abundance of words.
SPEAKER_00: Many times or things that you I think about Job's friends.
SPEAKER_00: Man, they were they were so impressed with what they had to say.
SPEAKER_00: They couldn't stop talking.
SPEAKER_00: And God was not impressed.
SPEAKER_00: He was not impressed with any of them.
SPEAKER_00: And uh and though they just kept preaching to Job and can, you know, and blaming Job and all that, you know, and and I mean God was not happy with any of Job's friends.
SPEAKER_00: Uh no filter.
SPEAKER_00: Um that's an immaturity, you know.
SPEAKER_00: The more we talk, uh if it's not consistent with our faith.
SPEAKER_00: See, that's what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, we need to, for instance, we need to build people up.
SPEAKER_00: We need to encourage people.
SPEAKER_00: The world is negative.
SPEAKER_00: We don't need any more negativity.
SPEAKER_00: We don't need anybody to tell us how the cow ate the cabbage.
SPEAKER_00: We don't need to be blessed, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Fire like a fire hose.
SPEAKER_00: I remember everybody say uh no filter.
SPEAKER_00: You know, children don't have a filter.
SPEAKER_00: You know, children will tell you just right now what they think.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, right or wrong, they'll tell you what they think.
SPEAKER_00: So my my older sisters were going on a double date.
SPEAKER_00: I was about six, five, five, maybe five, I guess.
SPEAKER_00: I was, and uh uh twins.
SPEAKER_00: They were twin boys coming to date my my sisters.
SPEAKER_00: They were gonna go out on a double date.
SPEAKER_00: So uh Wallace was gonna date Betty, and I'd met Wallace before.
SPEAKER_00: He became my brother-in-law later, and you know, he just went to heaven last year.
SPEAKER_00: And so uh he comes in and he's got his brother Richard, his twin brother.
SPEAKER_00: They're fraternal twins, they're not identical twins, so they didn't look that much alike.
SPEAKER_00: But uh they came in the door, you know, and so Richard, I was Richard was gonna take out my oldest sister, Mary Ann.
SPEAKER_00: They were gonna go on a date with my with Betty.
SPEAKER_00: So they were introducing Richard.
SPEAKER_00: They introduced him to my dad and to my mother, and then I'm sitting in between them on the couch, and oh, this is my little brother John.
SPEAKER_00: I said, and he said, hello, John, and I said, hello, Spotty, and I shook his hand.
SPEAKER_00: And uh he looked at me and said, Spotty?
SPEAKER_00: Why did you call me Spotty?
SPEAKER_00: I said, All those spots on your face.
SPEAKER_00: He had acne.
SPEAKER_00: See, no filter, no filter.
SPEAKER_00: That was that was embarrassing.
SPEAKER_00: That's even embarrassing right now when I tell the story.
SPEAKER_00: But you know, God redeemed it later in life.
SPEAKER_00: You know, he got saved, and I got to uh get him filled with the Holy Ghost.
SPEAKER_00: And he died a couple of years ago, and he served God most of his life.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he got saved later, and he didn't hold it against me.
SPEAKER_00: I got that all squared away.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody say, no filter.
SPEAKER_00: All right, so 2 Corinthians 10 4 to 5 here that we read speaks of a progression and it talks in reverse order.
SPEAKER_00: It talks about thoughts, imaginations, and strongholds.
SPEAKER_00: Mention strongholds first, and then imaginations, thoughts.
SPEAKER_00: But really, the the progression, everything starts with a thought.
SPEAKER_00: And a thought that is unspoken dies unfulfilled.
SPEAKER_00: That's what you, I mean, when a thought is not from God, when a thought comes into your mind, don't own that thought if it's not the word, if it's not good, lovely, of good report.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Philippians 4 tells you what type of thinking to be, what type of thoughts to think.
SPEAKER_00: Whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report.
SPEAKER_00: If there be any virtue, if there be any praise reports, think on these things.
SPEAKER_00: Don't be thinking about a bunch of junk.
SPEAKER_00: But let's just suppose a bad thought comes across your mind, maybe some person that you've got that maybe you had to release forgiveness toward, maybe they treated you wrong, and this thought of negativity comes across your mind.
SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, you don't have to accept that.
SPEAKER_00: Uh-uh.
SPEAKER_00: You just you say, no, I'm not thinking that thought.
SPEAKER_00: That's not my thought.
SPEAKER_00: I've forgiven them.
SPEAKER_00: See, you've got to you've got to rise up right now and capture that thought and bring it into obedience to to the obedience of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You grab it and you say no, and then it dies.
SPEAKER_00: It's gone.
SPEAKER_00: It has no power, no power whatsoever.
SPEAKER_00: But uh, and it takes discipline to do that because, you know, a lot of times uh it's easy to own the thoughts that you have and think that they originated with you when really, to be honest, a lot of thoughts are just thrown at you by demon powers.
SPEAKER_00: They have access to your brain, they have access to your mind, not to your spirit, but they have access to you.
SPEAKER_00: And they can, they know your, they know your weaknesses.
SPEAKER_00: They've they've tagged along with you.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I mean, there, you know, Satan has a whole army uh of beings that tag along with Christians and try to trip them up and know their issues, know their uh proclivities, and maybe their tendencies, and maybe even their weaknesses, and then they try to throw a thought and get you to accept it.
SPEAKER_00: I was dealing with somebody one time that they were having thoughts of suicide.
SPEAKER_00: I said, that's not you.
SPEAKER_00: Quit getting all excited about a thought of suicide.
SPEAKER_00: That's not you thinking that thought.
SPEAKER_00: That's a thought that the devil is throwing at your mind, and now you're all unnerved because you think you're suicidal.
SPEAKER_00: You're not suicidal.
SPEAKER_00: Tell him to go commit suicide.
SPEAKER_00: Tell him to go take a long walk off a short pier.
SPEAKER_00: I used to go in my backyard, had a big backyard, had two or three pine stumps that were, I don't know, they didn't even bother using a chainsaw.
SPEAKER_00: It looked like they just knocked over the tree and it left a jagged, it left a jagged stump there in the backyard, had three or four of them.
SPEAKER_00: And I'd go, I'd be marching up and down in the backyard, prophesying, praying, my having my confession, you know, and then I'd start rebuking the devil.
SPEAKER_00: Devil, come over here.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to sit down.
SPEAKER_00: And I'd have him sit on that stunt, I'd just visualize him sitting down on that jagged pine tree.
SPEAKER_00: And I'd preach to him a while, tell him where he's headed, you know, tell him where he came from.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you were in the garden of God.
SPEAKER_00: You blew it, you idiot.
SPEAKER_00: See, I just remember he wants to remind me of my past, I remind him of his past.
SPEAKER_00: He won't talk about my future, I tell him where he's headed.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So uh thought unspoken dies unfulfilled.
SPEAKER_00: If it's allowed to linger, though, it becomes the next thing, which is what, an imagination.
SPEAKER_00: It becomes an image now.
SPEAKER_00: Now you've got an image, now you've got a picture.
SPEAKER_00: Now that picture, see, can be something that a demon can protect, can attach to and try to hold in your mind.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'm possessed.
SPEAKER_00: No, you're not possessed, but you're on the way to being oppressed.
SPEAKER_00: When you don't discipline your thought life and you let these thoughts become an imagination or an image, then the enemy will try to attach itself to it and try to hold it there so you'll see it every time your eyes are open, every time you go to sleep, you're seeing his image.
SPEAKER_00: And then if you don't do anything, remember with the weapons of our warfare, they're not carnal, but they're mighty through God.
SPEAKER_00: See, we've got we've got weapons that we can dispatch these thoughts.
SPEAKER_00: But if somehow, somehow a thought became an image, we still don't, we're not at a loss.
SPEAKER_00: We can get rid of the image.
SPEAKER_00: We burn that thing out of there.
SPEAKER_00: But if we don't do that, then that imagination will become a stronghold or it'll become a full-length movie.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it'll become a whole reenactment.
SPEAKER_00: And so I think about Brother Hagin, you know, when he was on the bed of sickness, young teenage boy, and the doctor said he couldn't live much longer.
SPEAKER_00: And the preacher was telling his grandmother and his mother, you know, tell him he's got to accept death.
SPEAKER_00: He keeps, he's keep, listen, miracles passed away.
SPEAKER_00: There are no more miracles.
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't heal today.
SPEAKER_00: The healing is passed.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, he's 16.
SPEAKER_00: And something in him just wouldn't agree with that.
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, after you hear that, he he tells a story uh of one night, you know, it would just, he was just suffering, and and he just he just saw himself dead.
SPEAKER_00: And he saw that that uh they hauled him out of the house and took him to the funeral home, and he saw himself in the casket, and they saw saw him at the funeral home with everybody crying, and his mother and his grandmother crying over his body, and they saw the he saw the casket close, and he saw it get loaded up in the hearse, and saw it go into the graveyard, and saw the grave, and he lowered down in the grave, and the dirt fall.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he had a complete movie.
SPEAKER_00: Man, he he let it go on too long, but he didn't know, he didn't know then what we're talking about here tonight, see.
SPEAKER_00: Somehow he was able to get over that, and God delivered him from that fear, and he definitely made a uh a line of uh a stand of faith to live and not to die, and also not just to live crippled, but to live healed.
SPEAKER_00: And boy, what what an amazing thing that his testimony is.
SPEAKER_00: Praise God.
SPEAKER_00: So we want to get rid of thoughts, but if not, imaginations, and if not, when once they become a stronghold, well, you're gonna have you probably need agreement then.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why we have an altar when people are tormented, when people have a tormenting uh image in their mind or or movie or whatever, or whatever it is, whatever this repetitive thing is.
SPEAKER_00: Don't live with it, get rid of it, and we will agree with you.
SPEAKER_00: Are you with me now?
SPEAKER_00: All right, so uh the Bible says there in 2 Corinthians 4, the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God.
SPEAKER_00: The word warfare means apostolic lifestyle.
SPEAKER_00: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: It just means taking territory.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the apostolic is like a pioneer spirit, it's the it's the spirit of America, and that's why America is a headship gift, it's an apostolic gift to the nations of the world.
SPEAKER_00: Even though we're only 250 years old, we're one of the youngest nations, and yet we're the greatest nation because of Jesus, because of that.
SPEAKER_00: This the our founders dedicated this country to the spreading of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: No other country has that.
SPEAKER_00: No other country has that at all.
SPEAKER_00: And so uh so the apostolic lifestyle is all about taking ground.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and of course, you know, I don't like to have to take the same ground twice.
SPEAKER_00: Once I take ground, I don't want to give it back.
SPEAKER_00: I'm kind of like George Patton.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Man, I don't like taking the ground twice.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna take it the first time and we're gonna keep it.
SPEAKER_00: We're not gonna retreat.
SPEAKER_00: We're not gonna go back.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we're gonna keep what we got and keep going forward.
SPEAKER_00: That's what that was his, you know, and I believe that that's the way God wants us to be.
SPEAKER_00: But at any rate, that's what the children of Israel had to do.
SPEAKER_00: They had to go and attack, and they had to take that territory and dispossess the trespassers and the and the poachers and the squatters.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll have to do the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: We have to do the same thing with our thought life.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, so we take ground possessing by dispossessing.
SPEAKER_00: And these weapons, and that word weapon, yes, it does mean weapon, but it also means an instrument.
SPEAKER_00: I was thinking, I was meditating on that.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it can mean a scalpel.
SPEAKER_00: You know, a scalpel is different than a knife.
SPEAKER_00: A knife is more of a weapon, but a scalpel is an instrument.
SPEAKER_00: It's a tool for a doctor to cut and do surgery.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes, you know, you just got to cut a thought out of your head.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the word of God is a sharp, two-edged sword.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So the weapons of our warfare, I'm going to get into those.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, the first one I've already mentioned, the word of God, Ephesians chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the word of God, which is the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God or the Rhema of God, the sword of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And that word sword is not a big long, you know, samurai sword or something like that, or a big old long blade.
SPEAKER_00: It's a dagger.
SPEAKER_00: It's made for hand-to-hand combat.
SPEAKER_00: And so it means that you personally have to grab hold of the word and use it against contrary thoughts.
SPEAKER_00: No, the Bible says this.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says for me to concentrate on what things are lovely, that's not a lovely thought.
SPEAKER_00: I reject that thought.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to think about that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the devil will try to get you to think bad about people, to believe bad about people, to meditate.
SPEAKER_00: You know, maybe there's some things that are true about somebody that you hear, but you don't have to meditate on them when they're bad.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you can give somebody a benefit of the doubt.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, I've seen people struggle in church, and my heart goes out to them.
SPEAKER_00: I know that the battles that they've been under.
SPEAKER_00: I sometimes I see children that are misbehaving.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I know why they're misbehaving, because their parents are not doing the right thing.
SPEAKER_00: They're not raising them right.
SPEAKER_00: I happen to know.
SPEAKER_00: I've happened to, I've got evidence, that's my job is to know the state of my flocks.
SPEAKER_00: Not everybody is skilled.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we teach on child rearing.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we had a whole series of messages on home and family and all of that.
SPEAKER_00: It's very important.
SPEAKER_00: Uh nobody just uh comes out of the womb skillful at being a parent.
SPEAKER_00: And especially if your parents were lousy, then you don't even have a good example then.
SPEAKER_00: So how would you learn it?
SPEAKER_00: Well, you need to get into the Bible and you need, you know, you need to do what the Bible says, you know, not provoke your children to wrath, and you know, and a lot of times parents are demanding of their children, but then they don't treat their children very kindly.
SPEAKER_00: I knew a woman one time, uh, you know, I mean, she was just so religious, and we had to be around her a lot, and I just, I got to where I just couldn't hardly stand to be around her because she just was the queen of the hop.
SPEAKER_00: Everything had to revolve around her, and her kids just get out of my, get out of my way, quit messing with me, quit bothering me.
SPEAKER_00: She didn't want to, she didn't want to have, you know, and she had this one son that was just a real, you know, he was struggling in his behavior, and she'd, I'll set no wicked thing before my face, and she'd read Psalm 101 to him.
SPEAKER_00: I said, Golly, that's just too harsh.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that how does that motivate him to behave?
SPEAKER_00: I want to thump her, you know, but I couldn't do that.
SPEAKER_00: She's not my wife.
SPEAKER_00: My wife wouldn't do that anyway.
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, you're just sitting there and you've got to put your hand over your mouth, you know.
SPEAKER_00: No, so the word of God is a sword of the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And the rhema of God, God will give you the rhema of God to annihilate thoughts that are out of place in your mind.
SPEAKER_00: The second great one is, of course, the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Hallelujah.
SPEAKER_00: Every thought has to bow to the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Philippians chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: Every thought, every thought, everything, every being, every every thought.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter whether it's a being or a thought or a word, anything like that has to bow its knee to the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And uh the name of Jesus is not a magic word, there's power in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The name of Jesus, all the word of God is wrapped up in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: All of your covenants wrapped up in the name of your authority is all in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so when you come against a thought, you can rest assured that all of heaven is back behind you, and that thing has to bow.
SPEAKER_00: That thing has to bow and has to leave.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody say the word of God and the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And finally the Holy Ghost.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, thank God for the Holy Ghost.
SPEAKER_00: The greater one, greater is he that's in us than he that's in the world, greater is he that's in us than he that is broadcasting this God of this age type of thinking.
SPEAKER_00: It's everywhere, it's in our society, it's even in churches, it's even on Christian television.
SPEAKER_00: You've got to you've got to have an ear, very sensitive.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I wouldn't trade the word of faith, the kind of ministry we had here all Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't trade that for anything.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I, you know, I don't want Pablum.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want a bunch of watered down garbage.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that that word we got Sunday was so powerful.
SPEAKER_00: And this word is powerful.
SPEAKER_00: It's powerful.
SPEAKER_00: The word of God and the Holy Ghost together will cause the greater one to rise up and help you out of any kind of thinking.
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna cause you.
SPEAKER_00: And so the winning of the battle, winning the battle of the mind will bring you into your inheritance.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you want to be in your inheritance?
SPEAKER_00: How many of you want to possess it?
SPEAKER_00: I believe this year is going to be key to that.
SPEAKER_00: Come on, let's lift our hands.
SPEAKER_00: Father, we thank you for the word of God tonight.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you that that you've given us mighty weapons and instruments by which we can dispatch all contrary thinking.
SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna align ourselves up with the word of God in the way you think, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We give you praise for it in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Hallelujah.