Dealing with Put-Downs (5 of 12)

Mike Connell

Number two, you need to forgive, and bless the people that have spoken those words over your life. Consciously, we need to forgive them. They may have hurt us - we need to consciously forgive and release them. If you don't, you remain locked into their sin, you can't get out of that stinking thinking of put down. It just keeps you there. Then we need to repent, need to break the agreement with it. I need to change my agreement with put downs. I'm not a failure. I'm not nobody. See, that hurts people to believe that. See, we're somebody that God made, in His image and likeness and I'm well on the way to completion. See, so I've got to break the agreement with shame and negative belief, got to break it. In Jesus' name, I reject that old thinking. I reject those lies! I don't know how I've ever put up with them. I'm rejecting those things IN JESUS' NAME! I cancel that thing now. I will not echo it. See, so I need to do that. Sometimes we need to grieve over, and bring to the Lord the grief we've had of being put down. Being put down hurts, hurts bad and sometimes there's just a part where we've got to take the grief, come into the presence of God and remember what happened, remember how we felt and connect with how we really feel about those put downs, let it go to the Lord. Just weep, just let it go.

And so those kinds of things we can do. You can do that in one evening. You can do it in one session, one encounter with the Lord, you can do that see? Believing God's best, connecting with Him, choosing to identify what you're in agreement with, and cancel that agreement with that demon, cancel that agreement with that thought. Forgive and release the person and let the grief go to the Lord. You can do all of that in one moment, one encounter with God can actually deal with that. But then there's another part, and it's this part that you've got to really embrace. It's the rebuilding of how you think. It's very, very simple. You know Jesus made it very clear, the words I speak are spirit and life. You've got to let God start to talk to you, you've got to get God's words. Now they can come direct through encounter, but for most of us they'll come through reading the word of God and meditating it, so some things you can do with these. Let me just give them to you quickly.

The first thing you can do is begin to just take some scriptures and begin to meditate on them, and confess them, make them personal, see? I'm made in the image of God. I'm loved by God. I'm fully embraced - begin to meditate, picture it, see it. I'm of great value to God. Begin to personalise it, and begin to confess it daily see? Fast off the negative stuff, just cut it all out for a season while you re-establish good thinking inside, see? Catch the negative thoughts when they start to come. Sometimes you get knocked, you get down, you get on an old negative pattern. Stop it quick. Just stop it! Pull yourself up. Stop going there. Redirect your attention somewhere else. It's actually quite an aggressive thing to catch your life. Then the other things you can do is, constantly express gratitude and praise to the Lord, and I'll tell you why, because the Bible tells us very clearly that when we praise God, when we begin to speak out of His goodness, then we silence the accuser. In other words, demonic spirits invading your life and accusing you, you can directly rebuke them, or you can literally silence them by choosing to acknowledge the goodness of God.

The second thing that praise and thanksgiving does is this, it let's us magnify the Lord with thanksgiving, so God becomes bigger in your life, as you become very grateful for what you have, instead of focussing on what you don't have. What you don't have, is only for a season, then that season changes. See another thing you can do is, when we praise the Lord is, we create an environment and atmosphere where His presence is around us and we're hearing His words, so I have to create atmosphere around my life, and I do it by consciously choosing what I'll set my mind on, and diligently working on my thought and belief system. Now most people aren't willing to do that. They kind of want a quick fix, but that's where the key really lies. It's in the process of shifting how I think, until I'm in agreement with what God says, and catching yourself at it. You could become accountable to someone. Any time you hear me running myself down, or running anyone else down, stop me immediately.