Beth Moore — Claiming Your Right To A Sound Mind
Let me tell you a game the enemy is playing with us and he is playing with us all over the body of Christ with this. You have the right in Christ to be a whole person. One of the things that James says all of the time. He says, I spend my life desiring to see the church get healthy."
Every single one of us has the right in Christ to be a whole, healthy individual. To have a healthy heart and a healthy mind, it gets to be your right in Christ.
And here's what happens. When we begin to realize for a long time, we won't even admit we have any stuff at all. But then once we come to grips with the fact that we really do have some pretty severe stuff, here is what the enemy starts playing on us with. He begins to convince us that if we really ever did open that can of worms, we wouldn't be able to deal with it.
So if he can ever convince us, if I ever looked into my past and dealt with the things that happened to me in childhood, I will go crazy -- I will go crazy. And listen, it is a big one.
It is a big one because it is a serious threat because we think really, honestly that could happen. And I'm not so sure it couldn't unless you claimed your right -- claimed your right in Christ. Listen, what does the enemy have to gain by convincing you, don't ever deal with your past because your mind will never make it all the way through it.
That is a stinking lie! You talk about a lie from the pit of hell -- to do anything to threaten us that we would not be able to get through it. Listen, he knows that on the other side of you dealing with your stuff in the health and healing of Christ Jesus, your deliverer would set your feet into a place of effectiveness and ministry and anointing the enemy has great stake in you not going.
So has everything to lose in you getting healthy in Christ -- everything to lose! So whatever he has to play on you to get you from dealing with your stuff he's going to do it. I'm going to tell you something, this happened to me -- this happened to me.
When I was in my early 30s, I had a crisis come in my life and I've shared with you before on Wednesdays but the knowledge that they're going to be different people listening today, I want you to know a testimony is something you tell a number of times because it is your story.
When I was growing up, I really did have a heart for God. I just had an extremely self-destructive, very unhealthy heart and mind. I just kept cycling from one pit to the next. And this pit would look a little different than that pit but listen, it was all pit dwelling. Constant defeat. Cycling in and out of it.
I came to a place when I began to really wake up to a desire to walk with God. I became convinced, honestly that the way you do this, even though I knew what all was in my past, you just pick up and you go on, that's what you do. That's what good Christians do. Put it behind you and go on. No thought to maybe you ought to open up your heart and let God heal you.
No, it is just like don't think about it. So that happened. Good Christians pick themselves up and they walk on. Anybody ever thought with that mentality before? Don't bother letting him heal you. Just get up and walk on. Other people have been through worse things. So we convince ourselves of this kind of thing.
Well, see, it takes -- I want you to just let me use this metaphor because I mean it as a metaphor and nothing more. When you've got a very self-destructive side of you inside of you, it takes a whole lot of energy to hold that monster down. Anybody know what I'm talking about? What if life pitches you something that takes a lot of energy and you can't hold it down because now your hands are over here trying to hold this down and now your hands are over here trying to hold this down.
I came to a time in my family life where there were so many demands around me, I had a very problematic situation in my home. For one thing, a little boy that we were raising that was having tremendous behavioral problems and suddenly, I couldn't keep my own stuff down because I needed to help with everybody else's stuff.
Well, I took my hands off and when I tell you that that nine-foot Goliath stood up in me and he was ugly, boy, am I not kidding. When I had to come to grips, I looked at my self-destructive self right in the mirror and I thought, girlfriend, if you do not let God heal you, you are going to self-destruct. You are going to self-destruct. You who know better than this, are going to self-destruct.
And here's what the enemy -- when I looked back I thought, oh, my word. When the day comes and I'm going to have to tell somebody about my abuse and I'm going to have to spit this out to somebody and I've never told the details in public but I have gone to a counselor and dead on told everything that happened to me; my husband knows much of what happened to me.
But I can tell you that in that process I became convinced that if I really did think it through, I was going to go crazy -- I was going to go crazy. When the truth was I was about to be set free!
I was about to be healed! But the enemy couldn't let me think that. And for a while, I thought to myself, woman, you'll never be able to raise your children. You're going to be crazy by the time this is over with.
Only that was a lie -- that was a lie! Now here's what I want to tell you, it may be that like me, you need to get professional counseling, somebody that really knows what they're doing in Christ and can help you along the way.