Helping People Find Peace and Healing For Our Souls, Spirits, and Psyche
This is the beginning of many blogs on the topic of becoming transformed to a person at peace in the world, to a person who know their God, and who know how to manage their minds. I am going to bring to you insights from biblical studies, as well-as, insights and knowledge from nonbiblical resources. These resources have skills that will help with handling our most important God-given privilege as human beings; our wonderful minds and thought processes.
Years ago, I heard my mentor, Kay Arthur, founder of Precept Ministries International, teach on spiritual warfare. She made the point that the greatest battle occurs in the mind. That is where the enemy will most likely try to attack us. While I did not totally realize it then as I do now years later, I believe that what she was saying is this. "We have a responsibility before God to keep our minds steady and stable, and on Him." (2 Timothy 1:7 “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound mind). With that, and many other scriptures throughout the Bible, we are given the marching orders to march out into our lives "managing the mind."
Spiritually we do this by having put on the full armor of God, (Ephesians 6:10f). Scripture states, "Therefore, put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand, stand firm then with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God."
I always think of the breastplate hooked to the belt as a way of adjusting our slouched shoulders into squared and straight backs.
Finally, as our rear guard, as Joshua teaches when they marched around Jericho, continually praying in the Spirit, and here just as Paul states in his Ephesians letter. We are told to put on some of the armor and with other pieces we are to take them up, be ready for battle, the mind is the entry point.
While emotional pain and dysphoria, or this sense of dissatisfaction in the moment, can drive many to emotional distractions such as numbing out, skin picking, anxious thinking, emotional eating, and other addictive practices, the actual experiencing of emotional pain can be thought of as a natural part of life, along with mild bouts of anxiety.
When we are not fully persuaded that this discomfort in this moment is something we can live with, then we will not be willing to suffer the momentary unease it brings into our lives. This leads us to experiential avoidance. Experiential avoidance is something that the authors of Acceptance and Commitment therapy speak of as the crux of one's suffering.
The authors of Transformational Prayer Ministry, also refer to this lack of willingness to adjust to life and accept truth as a lack of heart or core belief. They help us understand that no matter what the intellect may believe, what matters most is what our core believes. As scripture points out, "Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks." In other words what we believe in our hearts is how we respond to personal events in our lives.
Emotional pain is more about what we believe at our core than it is about what has happened in our lives. Yet, because of the relational language we all speak, we often find ourselves relating one thing to another in a way that only elongates the emotional pain. Therefore, I am here to talk about how we as individuals can stop the suffering, by getting off the mind train, and back on to living more normally. Kindly, Charlotte
Resources:
Transformational Prayer Ministry - transformationprayer.org
Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life - The New Acceptance & Commitment Therapy, Steven C. Hayes, PH.D.
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