Bill Johnson - The Battle Over Your Mind
The real battleground for our life is between our ears; that’s where the real conflict is. What happens is the enemy is so nervous about your authentic creative expression that he tries to keep you in anxiety, fear, and shame to cut back your ability to creatively express who you are in Christ. This is the primary target. To reign in life, you have to view your past the way He views it. Some people continue to confess sins they’ve already been forgiven for, and if you could picture it this way: God alone has the ability to forget by choice, and once He has forgiven you, He has forgotten. You keep bringing up subjects that He can’t relate to and doesn’t know what you’re talking about because He doesn’t have that in His records; you’ve never done that. I mean, that’s what forgiveness is. When you come to Him and say, «God, I did it again,» He responds, «Again? I don’t have any past record.»
Now, that’s not to abuse grace; anyone who views grace as a license to sin doesn’t really understand grace because grace enables a righteous lifestyle. It’s the enabling presence of God. But here’s the deal: this grace of God enables us to see our past the way He does. I read a quote maybe two weeks ago that I love, but I forgot who it came from; I think it may have been William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army. Anyway, the quote is, «Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.» Man, I love that! Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future. It’s a level playing field. When you’re forgiven, you’re empowered to live righteously and given a new nature.
So here’s the deal: if I am a slave to my past in my thinking, I will actually give away the energy and the life that God has given me to futile things. We know that our old nature is dead, but some people have been practicing raising the dead so much they keep viewing our past the way He does. It’s not just beneficial; it’s absolutely essential to live the way He has assigned us to live. We have to think in terms of who we are because of grace. The ideal life would be for anyone—anyone. I realize some have been raised in church, and your lifestyles are different than those who have had horrible backgrounds. But it’s a level playing field; Jesus simply forgave us all. The idea would be that anyone from your past could walk into the room, and there would be no shame—no shame whatsoever—because of the awareness of His absolute forgiveness and grace. Zero shame, zero cloud of shame and guilt, and all the junk that comes on people.
The real battleground for our life is between our ears; that’s where the real conflict is. The enemy—the devil—is so nervous about your authentic creative expression that he tries to keep you in anxiety, fear, and shame to cut back your ability to creatively express who you are in Christ. This is the primary target, because the authentic nature of Christ demonstrated through the life of a disciple, through a life of a believer, changes the consciousness of humanity regarding what might be possible in a person’s lifetime simply because of how they do life.
In Zechariah chapter one, there’s a bizarre story where the prophet Zechariah describes how the devil releases four horns into the Earth. Horns, first of all, represent powers and authorities, and four is the number of the four corners of the Earth: north, south, east, and west. It’s representative of a planet—what happens on the planet. So here the devil releases these four powers or authorities into the Earth, which serves to shame or hold in guilt and discouragement the people of God. They are held in a place where they feel cast down; they live in that anxious place of frustration. So here are four authorities, four horns released into the Earth to bring that shadow of discouragement, depression, shame—all that junk—onto the people of God.
Then it says that God’s answer to this dilemma was that He raised up four artisans. Artisans are the creatives, which includes everybody in the room; it doesn’t mean you have to paint or sing. It just means the Lord has a creative expression for every role that we have in life; He wants the uniqueness of who God designed us to be to be seen in and through that creative expression of His nature in you for your unique assignment and place in life.
So God’s answer for these four horns, these powers raised in the Earth to depress the people of God, was to release the anointing on four creatives. It’s just like when God sent a choir into battle first; He fights wars differently. He says, «Put the singers in there first,» which is great if you’re a guy with a sword, but if you’re one of the singers, it’s a little different. The Lord sends the choirs. In this case, He raised up a creative movement from the four corners of the Earth, and they so overwhelmed the powers of darkness that it was unsuccessful in casting that shadow of shame and guilt on the people of God.
The answer was what? The creative expression. What do anxiety, fear, shame, and guilt do? They rob us of creative expression. All of that is connected to our thought life. The scripture says that He is not looking for our calamities; He’s looking for our welfare. I think it would probably shock us if we actually saw what God meditates on. He actually dwells and thinks and plans long before we were ever created, which is fascinating. Before He created man who would sin, Jesus, the Lamb of God, was prepared to die. He had an answer before there was a problem. Let’s drink to that! He had a solution before there was a crisis; before there was a problem, a solution was provided.
To think consistently with what God says is really the mark of maturity for a believer. It’s called the mind of Christ. It’s the reason that I carry the promises of God, the prophetic words—everything about my life, my family, and Bethel. I carry these things with me all the time, and I review them regularly because I can’t afford to think thoughts that He’s not thinking. I get into trouble every time I do. Every time I start entertaining thoughts, values, and perceptions that are not His, they lead to problems, and then they lead to death. They lead to conflict—all the junk.
So the mind of Christ is that mind set on the welfare of the people of God. I don’t mean living in a palace somewhere; I’m talking about well-being. It’s the fact that we truly live in the prosperity of soul until we reign in life where the issues of life that used to beat us down don’t anymore. We master them, and the Lord uses your personal victory to testify of His grace and draw people to this perfect Father. It’s the whole prayer of blessing so the people would know what He’s like.
The issue of prosperity of soul is—I’m not going to talk about this morning except just in reference; I just think it’s one of the biggest subjects of scripture. The phrase is only used one time that I know of, but the lifestyle is illustrated from Genesis to Revelation. This is the prosperity of souls—the abundance here affects everything out here. Jesus slept in a storm and spoke peace to that same storm, and the storm stopped. His internal reality became an external reality. When you have victory here, you are positioned to release victory out there. That’s the prosperity of soul: the world around us starts to be shaped by what’s going on inside of us. That’s why that internal victory is so critical. The battle for the mind—why? Because it positions us to think with Him and to release what He’s saying into the Earth. It’s huge.