Shaping Your Own World (11 of 12)

Mike Connell

Okay, here's some other things that you can do. The second one is we can identify and resolve the personal issues we have. If you realise that the Holy Spirit - I remember speaking to some of our young people over the last year, and I had spoken to them probably on and off for about a year or two years over issues that blocked them going forward and growing, I said if you will deal with this issue, your capacity and the life of God around you will increase. Just would you deal with it? Deal with it. In the end, I spoke to one and said, just deal with it now, and gave him a 10 day period, and they did it, and their life changed, see so we need to resolve relationship issues, unforgiveness, hurt, those kinds of things, just resolve and forgive.

Jesus said very clearly, when you stand praying, if you've got anything against anyone, just forgive them, release them, let it go. Let it go. Let it go. Let it go. Grieve over it, and let it go, so you can move on. Then the third thing is, practice speaking out and breaking agreements with negative words. Learn how to break agreements with negative words. Now if you've never learnt to speak things out over your life, then this will be a bit of a challenge for you, because just even hearing your own voice will be a shock. For some people, just hearing their own voice speaking is a bit of a shock, but we can speak. Remember, I can speak words that change my inner world, so one of the things I began to do was this. The first thing I did was I actually dealt with some of the unresolved relationship conflicts in my life by forgiving, grieving over it and letting it go. That meant I could move on instead of being tormented by it.

The second thing I did was I began to identify where I was in agreement with certain mindsets; self-pity, poor me, no one cares. I had to actually stand against it, and break its power - in the name of Jesus Christ I break the power of self-pity. I cancel those words. I reject those words and the spirit behind them. You've actually got to stand up. You come into disagreement with it, not settle with it, and let it be over you. You've got to stand up and disagree with it, see? Another one was rejection. I felt like I was not acceptable, so I had to actually stand up and speak words; in Jesus' name, I break that mindset of rejection, I break the power of that spirit behind it. I refuse its hold over my life in Jesus' name - actually had to make a stand against it, and there were a number of areas I had to make a stand against. If you don't make a stand against some things which are negative in your life, they're going to continue to dominate your life. You must get some grunt and fight in you and stand up, disagree with them.

Some people just want perpetual counselling. What they really need is to stand up, and take personal responsibility for your life, and begin to contend with the things which are contrary to what God says is for your life. If He says He has accepted you, why do you live with the lie of rejection? I'm not accepted, I don't belong, I've no value - why live with the lie when God says I love you, and have accepted you, because of your trust in Jesus Christ? Well I've found, yes, I knew it in my head, but my heart didn't know it, so I still lived like I was a rejected person. I had to change my heart, by speaking the word of God, and contending, and standing against the things which were negative. You've got to resist them. Don't let them settle on you. Some people live their life bowed down, because they're accepting this kind of negative thought, rejection, defeat, self-pity, bitterness, all this kind of stuff. You've got to take a stand against it, come into disagreement with it. Disagree with it. Disagree with it. You don't know how long you've agreed - I decided it would probably take me a little while, and so I set aside about three to six months to come into disagreement with those things which I saw dominated my life, and of course it's not a matter of just coming into disagreement. You've actually got to sow something - here's the next thing.