4) Here’s the next thing. This is the harder part; and that is – rebuilding your life. If a person’s going to walk clean, they have to do some things differently. I guess there are lots of things you could do. I don’t want to give you a list of all these things: don’t do this, don’t do this - it just won’t work.
I think the beginning is: you must want to be clean, and see that it’s a good thing to be clean. You actually have to want to do this, by having a vision of a life serving God. I need to have a vision before me, of serving God, and having His life flowing through me. So I need to build my life. Pray in tongues everyday - spiritual life gets energised. Meditate in the word of God – begin to meditate in God’s love. Begin to allow God’s love to come round my life. These are very important things to do: meditate in God’s love; confessing His word over your life; daily bringing your life into alignment.
I have found it helpful to speak into my heart, and to speak into my mind. So what are you going to say? Speak into my heart – to command my heart to turn from all fantasies of sexual things. I want to arise in my spirit, and insist my heart align with God; because out of the heart flows the issues of life. If your heart has had fantasies of sexual things, your heart needs to turn from them. So as I speak to my heart, I might be picturing something very destructive, and I’m turning from it, and turning towards the Lord, who’s my friend.
Another thing I’ve found helpful, is to speak into your mind. The reason is, I believe your body will respond to your words. So what are you going to say? Well, Jesus cursed the tree; remember He cursed the tree? What did He say to the tree? No more fruit. So what I’ve found helpful, is to speak into my mind. I curse all the memory trees associated with sexual sin. No more fruit. Wither and die.
Here’s an interesting thing that they’ve discovered. There’s a great book by Caroline Leaf, and they’ve done research that indicate that thoughts actually occupy space in your brain - Neuron Trees. Every time you think about that thought, the tree starts to come alive. If they are destructive thoughts, it’s a thorny tree; if it’s positive thoughts, quite a healthy looking tree - they discovered this by research on the brain.
Here’s the interesting side of it - that the moment you think about those thoughts, they come alive, and subject to change. What if you were to actually picture that tree, just see the tree, and “I curse those thoughts In Jesus’ name”. No more fruit. Literally reject them. See the blood of Jesus; reject them. This is all before anything happens. It’s just a part of building a life with God; setting a life course, before you ever come into the place of temptation, you’ve daily set your course. I have found that helpful.
The next thing you need to do is to capture thoughts when they come. Capture temptations when they come. Capture the thoughts. There’s two ways of capturing the thoughts. In other words, we’ll just give an example - a male example. So, you’re walking down the street, and this woman comes towards you; and she’s dressed quite provocatively. Now, males are designed, immediately, the image and picture will come into the mind, it will start the man down the thinking pattern against her, to begin to look on her as an object. You have to catch the thought. We’ve got to capture it straight away. Capture it. “I refuse to treat a woman like an object. I reject that thought now.” Just capturing it, just like that. The Bible tells us in 2 Corinthians 10:5 - capture your thoughts. It’s like it’s a living thing; and instead of letting it come in and fill your mind - capture it and stop it.
The second is, redirect your attention. Focus on something else. The moment you move your thinking somewhere, you start then, to start a different track going in your mind. Once the mind starts down the thoughts of sexual sin, the body chemistry starts to move. You’ve got a dynamic happening inside you that’s creating energy. So redirect your attention for the next 15 minutes, and all of that brain chemistry will subside. It’s like everything just goes away. You understand? It’s no use saying to yourself - this is the one thing that won’t work - “I shouldn’t think that.” I shouldn’t think: “ooh, that was a bad thought, I shouldn’t think that thought.” That won’t work, because it’s the law. It won’t work. Saying I shouldn’t do it.
I’ll give you an example. Suppose, I put a box up the front here, and it had a button on the top of it. A bit red button, and a sign – ‘Do not press’. Then, I leave it in the front, and I leave you in the room with the box. You know what you’re going to want to do! What happens if I push that? In the end, it’ll become an obsessive thought. No one’s looking? Push the button. In other words, the law – ‘Don’t press’, stimulated sin. The law never saves us, it’s got no power. Telling someone “you shouldn’t do that”, increases the desire to do it.