Okay then, let me give you another scripture related to that, in 1 Samuel, Chapter 30 and Verse 6. David was in a very, very difficult time and it says David strengthened himself in the Lord, strengthen - there's a tremendous book out by Bill Johnson, Strengthening Yourself in the Lord. I couldn't over recommend that book. That is a wonderful book on how to strengthen yourself, in your inner life, in the Lord, the keys to strengthening yourself. So very clearly what David did when he was facing a catastrophe, the lowest point in his life, when it looked like he'd lost everything. He was in the valley of all valleys. He'd lost his wife, he'd lost his children, lost his money, lost his house, he had a financial collapse, he had a major collapse. Then he'd lost the confidence of his men, and they were now talking about killing him, and he was in a foreign land, and he was hunted by the king. It was a mess, and yet in the middle of it, the Bible says he strengthened himself. He did things that did something in his inner man, and then he got a word that changed his world. See?
Pursue, overtake and you'll recover all - and he not only got back what he lost, he got back a heap more. Now you understand what he could have done was, he could have thought like this: I've got to get out of here! They're going to kill me! It's all over - where can I go? He said nowhere, I've got nowhere to go except to God. He knew how to go to God and strengthen himself in a place of pressure. A lot of people, when they're under pressure, the first place they run is to a bottle, some to smoke, some run down to some other place. Some run to a counsellor. Run to the Lord! And you don't just run to the Lord in a pressure time; run to the Lord daily. Run into His presence, and learn how to shape your inner world. Now because there's quite a bit involved in shaping your inner world, I'll save that for a separate session just on some of the keys, how to shift your inward world - but so the first place to shift is your inner world. You shift your inner world, everything around you will start to change as well.
Interesting, I was listening just as Bryden was talking there. The first thing he did was to get a word from God. He had a word from a man, but he got a word from God. I like that and it was a beautiful word wasn't it aye? The hand of the diligent shall be rich or something like that. That was good aye? But it wasn't just a scripture. It was a personal rhema from God, and it carried with it power to bring a change in his external circumstances, but he had to believe it, confess it, then align his life. So you notice it's all internal. There had to be an internal shifting before there was external. It's always the same; shift internal, shift inside, shift your perspective, shift your values, shift your ways of thinking, begin to bring your inner world into order according to God's word - everything changes. So I'll share with you some things on that, the whole issue of how when you speak, you literally alter the neural pathways in your brain, and you set everything going differently you see, but it's in the Bible - just confess, confess the word of God.
Here's the second thing you need to change is, you need to shape the outer world, and there are three areas of the outer world to shape. I'm just going to briefly give them, I'm not going to go into how to shape them, because I want to actually focus on each one, because if I rush it through I don't think anyone will change what they're doing in their outer world, so I want to actually just take time to develop each one of these. So we're looking at the how to shift our inner world, then how to shift our outer world. Is that okay? Is that good? Okay, because we're going into a New Year. It's going to be great! And the Lord said sanctify yourselves, because tomorrow I want to work miracles among you, I'm going to work great things among you, and that's the word we had about a month ago. So sanctify yourself means to set yourself apart, and become more focussed upon what God wants for your life, and begin to align your life according to God's words. It's all the change on the inner man, He said because I want to do things outside you, so we want the things outside - Lord, give me a miracle. Give me a change, give me a breakthrough, give me this, give me that. Now listen, change on the inside, then you'll start to see the things change on the outside. Internal shifts first.