KEEP YOUR DESTINY IN SHAPE
To keep your destiny in shape and not miss God’s promise for your life, it is important that your thinking and spoken word are right before God.
What are you thinking?
The engagement of Jesus with a paralytic man teaches the need to pay attention to how we think.
A paralytic man was brought to Jesus for healing. The Bible documents that when Jesus saw the faith of those who brought the paralytic man, Jesus declared that his sins were forgiven. Just as Jesus made His declaration, some of the scribes said within them, “This man blasphemes!” (Matthew 9:3) It was not an outspoken statement but a statement in their inside; it was their thought. Jesus heard them despite the fact that it was in the in the heart. The Bible records Jesus’ response to their thinking. “But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, ‘why do you think evil in your hearts?’” (Matthew 9:4) What are you thinking? As a creation that cannot hide from the Creator, are you shaping your destiny by thinking what is right and not evil? As a believer who trusts in God, in the face of challenges, are you thinking positive instead of negative? God sees and hears our thought clearly. In your thinking, let Him know that nothing is impossible and He shall be provoked to move on your behalf for a positive result. Our thoughts are not hidden from God and that’s why we should abstain from thinking anything evil but rather think good at all time. The Bible warned in Zechariah 8:17 “Let none of you think evil in your heart against your neighbor…”
Before God, thinking negative is the same as thinking evil and God hates evil. Whatever we think is the evidence of how we keep our heart. This is the reason why the Bible warned us in Proverbs 4:23 “Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life. The Bible points out for us, know it that as a man thinks in his heart so he is (Proverbs 23:7) Think right and it becomes right for you.
KEEP YOUR HEART AND AVOID NEGATIVE THINKING
Among the ways to keep the heart is documented in Joshua 1:8, God spoke to Joshua after the death of Moses, “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” The word of God that is power will not depart from your mouth only when it becomes what you think (meditate) on day and night. Meditate on His word day and night so that the word you meditate will flow out of your mouth. Occupy your thoughts with the word of God and your ways shall be prosperous with good success.
What are you saying?
What you say is your confession and it will find you out.
It is very important that you know and pay attention to what comes out of your mouth. When thinking right becomes of one, speaking right will become one’s portion. The Israelites could not think right enough to remember how God brought them out of the bondage of over four hundred years. They forget all the miracles before Pharaoh in Egypt. Pharaoh and his forces could not stop them; the Red Sea failed to trap them. However, the words of their mouth which they spoke to their life terminated them from getting to their Promised Land. They said, “’If only we had died in the land of Egypt! Or if only we had died in this wilderness! Why has the Lord brought us to this land to fall by the sword, that our wives and children should become victims? Would it not be better for us to return to Egypt?’ So they said to one another, ‘Let us select a leader and return to Egypt.’” (Numbers 14:2-3) Imagine those who had seen great miracles but yet could not fashion their thinking and their spoken word to be a positive one? Are you shaping your destiny right with right thinking and right communication? How you think and what you say determines how God will respond to you.
God responded to the Israelites negative confession (word). “Say to them, ‘As I live,’ says the Lord, ‘just as you have spoken in My hearing, so I will do to you: The carcasses of you who have complained against Me shall fall in this wilderness, all of you who were numbered, according to your entire number, from twenty years old and above. Except for Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun, you shall by no means enter the land which I swore I would make you dwell in.” (Numbers 14:28-30)
God is a good God. Without faith we cannot please God. If without faith we displease Him, with faith we shall surely please Him. It is lack of faith for a believer to be thinking negative or to be speaking (confessing) negative in the face of impossible challenges. God promised that with Him, all things are possible. At all times and in all situations, we should know not to confess negative but rather positive. Indeed, we should constantly keep our heart with all diligence for out of our heart springs forth every issue we engage in living life.
FAITH CAPSULE:
How you think and what you say determines how God will respond to you.