Then the other one is ungodly beliefs or attitudes, ungodly things, beliefs we formed when we were growing up that we never realised were there, like a belief of abandonment: I'm all on my own. No one really looks out for me. Now you try to walk with God with that belief in your heart. You can't because at crunch points that imagination will come up and you'll always, it'll wrestle against you knowing that God never leaves you, never forsakes you. So we do have to deal with the issues of our own heart, so today I want to just address one thing and I want to look at it. There are two areas we're going to go to but one today, and the first is that we need to engage in warfare. 2 Corinthians 10 says the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God, to the pulling down. That's demolishing by exercising force. If you have a mind that runs away on you you have to get management of those thoughts by force. You will have to assert yourself. A passive mind is the devil's playground.
You've got to actually assert force when vain imaginations begin to rise up, because if you don't beat them they will talk to you and take you somewhere you'll have to say sorry to the Lord afterwards. Come on, you don't want to go there. You don't want to be saying sorry all the time, we want to get victory, get dominion. So the first thing is we must engage in warfare. We must engage in warfare to confront the thoughts, to confront the things that get in our mind and to bring the word of God on and make them submit to the word of God. Now that's actually a daily discipline for every believer. I tell you now, many of the problems you have are because you've never got to do this for yourself, and we rely on a Sunday meeting to do it for us. It's not going to happen. On a Sunday meeting you'll experience the presence of God. You'll be lifted up in your spirit. You may get inspiring word that begins to speak to you, but when you walk out you have to deal - it's your mind, your thoughts, your imaginations, your responsibility. Your life will reflect what you give yourself to thinking about. Getting the idea?
So number one, there's a warfare. You must engage in warfare. That means bring into captivity the thoughts. You've got to get a hold of them. To bring them into captivity means you shut them down and stop them running your life. Getting the idea? Okay, here's the second thing we need to do. We need to also renew the mind. Romans 12:2 says don't be conformed to the world. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. In other words don't let the way the world walks press you into it's shape. Don't copy what others are living their life like. You're called to live it differently. You're never going to be quite like everyone else. You are different and you're called to be different so be different. Dare to be different. Dare to be yourself! Dare to be who God made you to be. Just dare to live your life boldly, without living under the fear of what everyone's thinking. If I'm worried about what people are thinking all the time, something I cannot have control over, vain imaginations will drive me into fear, I can't please the Lord.
The Bible says very clearly, Galatians 1:10, if I seek to serve men or please men I can't be the servant of the Lord, so to serve the Lord I've got to get over pleasing people and begin to own what God says about me and my life, and you and your life. Getting the idea? Okay. I want to just tackle just the one thing then, and that is how to wage a war against vain imaginations. How do you wage the war? The only good war is the one you win. Next week we'll look at then how you actually deal with the renewing of the mind, so these two things, the waging a war against the thoughts which come against you and rise up in your mind, and then renewing your mind systematically; these are the ways you get to cleanse your imaginations. So one, you have to engage in an act of war; two, you've got to look at the way you think and what you're like, and begin to renew that consciously and systematically with the word of God. We'll look at that side next week.