Okay then, now in Matthew, Chapter 12 and Verses 34 and 35 it says this; Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Out of the abundance of the heart - so you have to do more than just change what you're saying. We do have to address the issues of the heart, and I'll show you just in a moment how that takes place. It's not very difficult. Nothing in God is very difficult, never is, but if I just try to control my words and change my words, and don't change what's going inside me, I'll actually find I'm slipping back into old ways. Some of you who would have had real trouble with swearing, and then you find every now and then, suddenly you lose and you're back down that track again, even though you tried to stop see? Because we've got to change the heart, so if we change what's inside us, then what's outside of us will shift easily, but the two work together as we'll see in just a moment.
Okay, so the words overflow what's in your heart, so when the Bible's talking about your heart, and what's in your heart, and what flows out of your heart, what will flow out of your heart will be things that you believe. You may be conscious of them, or not conscious of them, but things you believe, things you've accepted as true, for example, if you've accepted I'm of no value, it's going to affect everything. You'll have trouble receiving a compliment. You'll have trouble receiving praise for anything you do. You'll have trouble receiving a gift. You'll love to give them, but very difficult to receive because inside, if you were really true, you actually don't believe you're of great value and not deserving of something. These values, these beliefs form while we're younger of course.
The second thing is, that are inside us, in our heart, are agreements. Agreement is something you've come into one mind or harmony with. Now of course, the Bible tells us in the spirit world, there are demonic spirits, wicked and evil spirit beings, that invade people's minds and body, when they're ever given an opportunity, and when they invade, they fill you with feelings, and they fill you with thoughts. If you come into agreement with their thoughts, and don't actually make a stand against them, then that demon's empowered to work in your life. It will continue to work, until the day you come into disagreement with it, so I found for years for example, I struggle with thought patterns, and I was just in agreement with it. It never occurred to me that actually demonic spirits were riding in on the back of some hurts in my younger days, and were just talking to me.
They were just familiar thoughts; I could never do this, I'll never be good enough, nothing I ever do is good enough - thoughts which were demonically empowered, so I found it really difficult to change initially, until I realised I had to deal with it. One, I had to come into a disagreement with that thought, and the spirit behind it. Then I had to begin to start to plant new thoughts. I remember when I went to Dannevirke and got a school property there, they showed me the garden, and the garden was overgrown with weeds, oxalis actually. There's no chance you could grow anything unless you pulled out the weeds and plant something good, and many times when we look into our heart, we begin to see what we're saying, we're echoing what people said to us when we were younger. Some people have had dads say oh, you're an idiot, you'll never do anything, and that thing is resonating away in their head. It's in the heart, I believe I'll never be any good at anything, and so we come to the Lord; yes, we've accepted Jesus saved us, we've accepted He died on the cross for our sins, we've come into our initial connection with Him. Now He wants to renovate the inside, so you can actually accomplish His purpose for your life.
That's why it's important to grow in the Lord, to continue to grow, never stop growing, never settle down, never say I've got enough. You have far more potential in you, that'll be unlocked as you change what you're agreeing with, change what you believe. Another thing that gets into our heart and into our mind are mindsets. A mindset is like a mental rut. It's a way of thinking. Now some people have got mindsets about Asians. Some people have got mindsets about Maori. Some people have got mindsets about white people, some people have got mindsets about Africans. Now mindsets are a fixed way of thinking, and I must admit when I faced going to Asia the very first time, God opened a door for me to go to minister to Chinese. Now I had a bit of a problem, because I had a bit of a mental set birthed out of my experiences with Chinese. The only Chinese I ever met were Chinese who were in the market gardens around here. They were very cold, very unfriendly, I didn't understand them, and they were different people.