The Sources of Unpredictable Emotions Stacey Smith (CGER))

My Notes:

1. God will over come my fears with a submissive heart.

2. Speak truth to the fear and emotion. “Soul, why art thou cast down? Hope thou in God! What do you have to be so sad about? You’ve only been washed in the blood! You’ve only been saved, sanctified, set apart, called into holiness, blameless, unblameable, fruitful.

3. I can't get rid of my emotions. They are a part of how God designed me as a woman. But I can go through it with grace. Accept them.

4. Feeling Lonely: “Stacey, when you’re lonely, that’s My way of saying, ‘I miss you.’ Draw to Me, and I’ll draw to you. I miss you."

5. 1) accept them. 2) Dedicate everything in your life, whenever, to God. 3) restore broken relationships 4) have disciples, not friends and 5) proper sleep and nutrition and 6) build Scripture around cycles and hard times of life.

http://www.reviveourhearts.com/radio/revive-our-hearts/sources-unpredictable-emotions/

Stacey Smith: What’s the answer to that? The answer is: Your acceptance is based on Him. It’s not based on how well you can do something. It’s not based on who you know. It’s not based on anything but Christ in you.

Stacey: Causes of wrong emotions:

Number one is fear. Fear of rejection is the first one. We need to understand that fears are not from God. Here’s the main purpose of what all fears want you to do: They keep you from going forward. Your fears will keep you from going forward.

I’m not going to elaborate on all these fears, but I will give them to you: Fear of rejection. That’s being put aside. How many of you deal with fear of rejection? Rejection means to cease. It causes to cease. That’s all the enemy wants. The enemy wants to cause to cease. To cease having you going forward, it says, “You don’t belong.”

Then guess what happens? Then the flesh interprets to you that that’s God’s approach to you. How many of you have believed the lie that God rejects you? Then your flesh starts talking to you that that’s God’s approach, and that’s not God’s approach.

Then you start believing the lie, and the next thing you know, you start feeling sorry for yourself. Then you have insecurities, and you have doubts, and it goes from one point to the other. Fear of rejection is powerful, ladies.

What’s the answer to that? The answer is Ephesians 1:4. That’s a good place to start. Your acceptance is in the beloved, according as He has chosen you in Him, before the foundations of the world, that you may be accepted in Him—accepted in the beloved. Your acceptance is based on Him. It’s not based on how well you can do something. It’s not based on who you know. It’s not based on anything but Christ in you. That is your acceptance.

In other words, when this tomb that sits in that chair—I’m sorry, that’s a tomb there. The only one that’s alive is Christ in you. When Christ steps out of you, and the flesh is shed off, because flesh and blood will not inherit the kingdom of God. So who will step out? Your acceptance is not in anything you see, although this flesh will keep you humble and in need of the Lord Jesus Christ.

For by sight I see nothing good. How many of you all, when you look at yourself, you see your inabilities, you see your insufficiencies, you see your inadequacies, you see all that junk, you see all your mess-ups. But when you by faith look inward, you see that you’re complete in Him, made perfect in Him?

So you see, that outward is only an evidence, a proof of who lives inward. So with your acceptance, you can face your fears. Now, look—you can face all these fears from a resistant and stubborn heart, and guess what? You’re going to be overcome by the fears.

Or you can face these fears with a submissive heart, and guess what? The fears will be overcome.

So it’s not a matter that you’re resisting as far as failure and looking at it like, “I just can’t get it right.” Do you have a submissive heart, saying, “God, I need You. I agree with You, God.” Do you agree with God or do you resist Him? God will overcome those fears with a submissive heart.

The next one: Fear of inadequacies. How many of you deal with fear of failure? Or your fear of being imperfect, or fear of your inabilities? Aren’t you glad that there’s only one perfect being, and His name is Jesus Christ? You know what? It’s not a matter of what sin you’ve committed and what sin I’ve committed and what sin they’ve committed and you’ve committed. What matters is there’s only one perfect One, and it’s Jesus Christ.

Speak to that fear of inadequacy—let’s use truth:

Romans 8:37: “Nay, in all these things, we can be more than conquerors through Him that loved us.”

Colossians 1:27 is another one. “To whom God would make known what is the riches of glory of this mystery among the Gentiles which is Christ in me, the hope of glory.”

Now, if that’s they mystery, and if Christ is in me, and he says, “The hope of glory,” that’s the hope of accomplishment.

Your emotions—sometimes this is what you’ve got to do with your emotions, ladies: You get in that, and you’ve got to say, “Soul, why art thou cast down? Hope thou in God! What do you have to be so sad about? You’ve only been washed in the blood! You’ve only been saved, sanctified, set apart, called into holiness, blameless, unblameable, fruitful. Soul, why are you cast down? Hope thou in God.”

Everybody, my dog used to look at me crazy at home when I would do that. I’d start to—I’d just get up, and, “I feel lonely. Oh, I’m so lonely.”—and that’s another fear. It’s not this next one, but we’ll just go into it anyway. I’d start feeling lonely. I’d start feeling sorry for myself. And I’d look at my dog, Sunday, and I’d say, “Soul, why art thou cast down? Hope thou in God.” And my dog would sit there and go-----(sounds of laughter). But I want to tell you one thing: I was encouraging myself in the Lord, and you can only encourage yourself in the Lord.

I tell you what, in those times like that, you can’t have. . .there’s really nobody, no friend, or anyone, and some of those at times that can even, say, give you the words—I’m grateful for my friends that do that, but sometimes it just doesn’t work. Would you all agree? You’ve got to go deeper, and it’s got to be the Word of God.

Fear of the unknown. Your unpredictable emotions are trying to convince you that you have an unknown God. Your unpredictable emotions are trying to convince you. Now, they’re not saying that to you like that, but they are trying to convince you that you’re serving an unknown God.

God is the Creator. He is the True and Living God. He is the Way, the Truth, and He is the Life. Those emotions will say, “Oh, He’s left me. I feel all alone. I can’t do this.”

How many of you know what I’m talking about? The next thing you know, you’re convinced of that. You start reasoning from that. You start thinking from that. You start feeling from that. And worst of all, you start making decisions.

Your unpredictable emotions will drive you and cause you to be attached where you do not need to be attached. Every relationship I came out of . . . I went from one relationship to the next. I mean, I didn’t even have a day or two in-between.

No wonder why the Lord allowed me to get a sixty-year sentence. I needed to learn that. I always had to have a friend.

Ladies, if you’re married, it is great to have friends, but you need your husband to be a friend of yours, too. If you can tell your friends something that you can’t tell your husband, you need to relook at that. A woman is really bad about wanting her husband to tell his whole heart. "What’s in your heart?” You want to know all his heart, but you won’t open up your heart to him at all. But you’ll open it up to a girlfriend.

Yes, they’re not bent like us. I’ve got a boss that I’ve worked with for a few years—he was my chaplain in prison, and now he’s my boss. There were times that he had to say to me (I’d be out there in my emotions), “Suck it up. Suck those emotions up.”

Well, guess what I’d do? They’d throw me into a war! “I can’t believe he said that to me. How dare he say that to me! I’m so important. Nobody should say that to me.”

He’d say, “You know what? I’m not getting in there with you. If you want to talk, you’re going to get out of that.”

How many of you have a husband that, when you get in your emotions, he just kind of gets quiet. Anybody? We don’t have a camera in here, ladies. (laughter) Truthfulness is good for the soul. Everybody, lighten up. It’s okay to raise your hand. I’m not sending any kind of video home to your husband, okay?

So fear of the unknown. Then, we’ve got fear of sickness and pain, and bottom line in that, ladies, is that we do fear sometimes of our loved ones getting sick and our loved ones going through pain.

I remember when my mom got the ovarian cancer. God did a wonderful work in my life. When you all saw my mom in that video, it takes everything for me to not cry at that time. My mom’s been dead a year ago April, but my mom got to see my changed life. But on the day of that video, when they were videoing her, she was so sick. Oh, she was so sick. We’d say, “You don’t have to do this.”

She got sick; she wiped her face off, and did the video, and then got sick, and was in bed after that. I can just tell you that God took us through some really neat dependency times upon Him. I began to see how that sickness was driving her to Him. Oh, it was driving her. It was pushing her to the One. I found myself saying, “Oh, I can’t wait until that time when God draws me. I’m just so ready. I want to be there.”

I saw that with my mother. I saw God’s grace. When I’d see her go through those pains and things like that, it would just be like God would give grace.

Suffering is part of His calling. We’re all going to die of sin in our lives, that disease of this body.

So—fear of sickness. I found that over those three years that God began to take those fears away. It was, like, this is part of His process. You see, your emotions you have all seasons in your life. You go from a little girl to a teenager, and I’m kind of in the pre-menopause stage right now. I’m not really sure where I am. One day you’re one way, then another day you’re another way.

But I want to go through it gracefully. I want to go through it graciously. I want to go through it with a reflection of Jesus Christ. I want to go through it because it is part of our design as a woman. You cannot get rid of it. You cannot get rid of your emotions. It is part of you. It is part of the way that God designed you. Go through it with grace.

Go through those sicknesses, if you have them, or if anyone remembers having them. Go through it with God’s grace.

The next one is fear of loneliness. You’ve got to go through loneliness with grace. All I’m going to say on that is when I left prison, because of my past, in my relationships and that, I found that I had to ask God. I said, “God, You’ve got to help me get a grip on this loneliness.”

I never was able to function out there. I’d get lonely, and I’d attach myself. I think I was reading an Elisabeth Elliott book, and it was just like He spoke to my heart. It was so simple, and I go back to this any time I get lonely. It’s like He said, “Stacey, when you’re lonely, that’s My way of saying, ‘I miss you.’ Draw to Me, and I’ll draw to you. I miss you."'

But isn’t that just like He is, Abba Father? He’s like Daddy. And then He’s like a holy God. I mean, He’s just awesome, isn’t He?!

These are just some of the fears. Then, fear of broken relationships is another. So we’ve got fears, and we’ve got broken relationships. All I want to say on that is that, number one, it will be your lack of fellowship with God. In other words: Your causes of wrong emotions will come from your fears, and then will come from that, broken relationships.

You’ve got to go back and clear up any wrong relationships.

Well, let’s just deal with God. You’ll feel that distance. That fellowship has been broken. You need to go back and make that right.

Maybe the Word of God has not been an intricate part of your life. You need to say, “God, forgive me for neglecting You. Forgive me for not wanting rich fellowship times with You. Forgive me of that.” You know, He just puts that right back together.

Then damaged relationships with your father would be the next one. A damaged relationship with your father will cause a rebellious spirit. Why? Because it’s usually through the father that God is trying to teach you the principle of authority, submission to authority.

You’ll find, and I find that I get rebellious. I was rebellious. Also, Proverbs 17:6 says, “The glory of the children are the fathers.” It’s the same way within the church. The glory of the children is the fathers.

If you need to go back and make that right with those parents, and you’ve got a father that died, and you never made it right, go to the Lord in prayer and do it anyway. Then if you had siblings that knew you were disrespectful to your dad, and you were rebellious to your dad, go back to whoever was there that saw your rebellion. Go back and fix that.

And then your estranged relationship with your mother, that causes a resistant spirit. Why is that? Well, number one: Mom is a position of instructor. Mom is a teacher. Mom is responsible for molding and shaping who you are and what you are. That child becomes resistant why? Because of our own desires.

You’ve got to go back. How many of you were resistant to your mom? She was the one that, “You need to do this. You don’t need to do that.”

Dad sometimes just came in and just kind of hung out. How many of you get upset with your husbands that he kind of gets to play with the kids, but you’re always the one saying, “No, you can’t do this. No . . .” He does discipline, but you’re the teacher; you’re the molder; you’re the shaper. But if you’re not careful, that’s where a child will have a resistant spirit toward a mother. So if you have a strained relationship, go back and make that right with Mom.

Then always remember this. If you have a strained relationship with your mom, and it develops a resistant spirit, ladies, you will carry that in to your marriage. You will carry that in to your other relationship because that resistant spirit is an opportunist. It just waits on situations, and guess what? Here it is! “I’m here!” And what do we do? We just follow that opportunist right along.

So go back. That will diffuse some of that.

Basic steps to conquering emotions:

1) Accept your unpredictable emotions. You’ve got to accept them. In other words, don’t try to barricade yourself in the room when it’s that time of the month, and you think, “Maybe if you get away from everybody, it will . . .” No. You just accept them. Say, “God, I accept my unpredictable emotions. This is one of those days, Lord, and I’m just going to accept them. You designed me that way. I was unprepared for them. They were kind of unannounced, but I’m going to accept them.”

2) dedicate. “Lord, I want to dedicate my mind to You. I want to dedicate my will to You. And I want to dedicate my emotions to You.” Sometimes I may just pause at the prison when I’m working there and say, “Lord, I just want to dedicate these thoughts to You.”

Number three: Restore those broken relationships that we talked about.

Look for disciples vs. friends. If you’ve got a special friend in your life, you need to be building each other in the Lord. It’s not time to come together and Susie Q talking about Sally Sue and all that. We don’t have time for that. We need to be building each other. We need to be maturing each other. There’s lost folks out there that need the Lord. There might even be lost folks in here. How well are you building, building others for the Lord?

Let me tell you. I run into a lot of lost in the prison, and they say this: “Why do I want what Christians have when they’re just like me?” We’ve got to grow. That’s what. You’re not looking for friends; you’re looking for disciples. You’re looking to grow each other.

If you’ve got any of those fears, go to the Word of God. When that fear starts striking up, speak the truth to it from the Word.

Then 5) maintain proper sleep and nutrition. I’d just like to say this: If you eat a lot of sugar—what goes up always has to what? Come down. When I was at the Chapel—I worked at the Chapel—and they would bring in all these Honey Buns. We had these volunteers that brought them. I had my own boxes. I’m talking about boxes. Okay? I’d tell them, “You all don’t get in my boxes.” There were tons of Honey Buns.

Everybody had their boxes. There were three of us that worked at the Chapel. I started having suicidal thoughts. I got in my prayer time one morning, and I said, “Lord, what is going on? I haven’t had suicidal thoughts in years.” All He brought to my mind was Honey Buns. (laughter)

I got off those Honey Buns for three days, and let me tell you, I have not had another suicidal thought. So sugar is powerful. Maintain your proper sleep and nutrition. Do it how you can, but just look at it.

Then last is 6) anticipate cycles of life. In other words, you have your monthly cycle; you have your annual—maybe you’ve got an anniversary, birthdays, all that—but you may have some cycles that are not so, like, a crisis in your life, maybe a death of a loved one—you’ve got to build Scripture around for that time.

I hope some of this just makes some sense to you, but, in short, it’s the Word of God, ladies. I want to share one last thing. You have two lines of thinking: God’s thoughts, and Satan’s thoughts.

God’s thoughts will always line up with God’s Scriptures. Satan’s thoughts are going to come in accusational, slanderous, looking down, confusion. That’s where you need to identify. You start identifying your thoughts, your emotions will balance right out. I promise you.

If He can take somebody like me and do what He’s done in my thought life and my emotions, He can sure do it for you.

Unpredictable Emotions with Stacey Smith (CGER)

My Notes:

1. My thoughts/thinking must come from the Word of God.

2. When something happens, Scripture can come to mind and my thinking can change into God's thinking on an experiential basis. Then, I can lean on Jesus' enabling power to help me obey God and not sin.

3. Stop and find what's true. God wants me to answer with truth and wisdom. Ask: "what's true in this situation, is my thinking true?" No matter what I'm feeling. After asking that, PRAY. Ask God to stop the "high thing that brings itself up against the His knowledge" and answer it Himself.

4. Consistency is Key. The more consistent I am, the more I'll walk in stability.

5. 2 Cor 10: 4-5 - Study.

6. Philippians 2:5 - study. God wants me to have "tHis mind." (Just like Pastor John preached about.) As I think like Him, He will live it out! God give me Your mind.

7. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. If we can gain the thinking, the conduct will follow afterward (Proverbs 31:30)

8. HAVE GOT to be in the Word. God can bring something to your mind if it's not there. However you have to get it hidden in your heart, get it in there!

http://www.reviveourhearts.com/radio/revive-our-hearts/escaping-undertow/

Stacey Smith: As you build that thinking through the Word of God, your emotions will rise and the mind of Christ will answer them. How many of you would love, when your emotions rise up, that the mind of Christ would immediately answer them?

Stacey: I love to study out of Webster’s Dictionary, an 1828 edition. It’s an awesome, awesome dictionary—if you don’t have one, you need one. I was studying this week out of the 1912 dictionary, and one of the definitions of emotions was “an undertow.” I said, “Lord, give me an illustration of my emotions with an undertow.”

He reminded me that when I lived in Corpus Christi, Texas, when my family lived down there, my parents would pull up in that yellow station wagon on the beach. We’d get out and I’d follow my brother, running out to the beach, and we’d get in the ocean.

I’ll never forget the first time that I looked back up on the shore, and my parents were gone! I panicked. Well, they hadn’t gone anywhere. I had just moved by the undertow that slowly took me away. That’s what your emotions will do. When you respond wrongly, they slowly take you away from your point of reference, which is the Word of God.

So we say, “What are our emotions?” They’re anything that agitates or moves your mind. What moves you? When your husband does not come home for dinner and dinner is waiting and he hasn’t called—does that move you? That expectation is there. You expect that he should’ve called, and granted he should have, but what if he doesn’t? What are you going to do?

As you put God’s Word in, when your life situations rise up, then you have God’s Word, His pure Word, that will answer your situations, no matter if they’re from your emotions, from your thoughts, or from your decisions.

The Word of God is what changed my life. You cannot come out of a $500/day drug habit and a life of immorality and just go to some program that does not have something that cuts, that does not have something that discerns the intents of this ugly heart.

Let me tell you one thing. You don’t have to go to the McPherson unit in Newport, Arkansas and spend twelve years to have a criminal mind. If you do not add the Word of God to your life, you are criminally minded.

Your emotions, in definition, they continuously go from one point to the other. All of a sudden you feel irritable. You start getting irritable, you lash out, then you’re sorry that you’ve lashed out. So you’ve gone from irritability to angry outburst to, now you’re sorry you did it (“Ah, I shouldn’t have done that”), then you have self-pity. You start feeling sorry for yourself.

Then you start having fear of rejection because of how you responded, you shouldn’t have done it, you should have responded differently. Then the doubts run in, and don’t forget all the insecurities. Do you see how they go from one point to another? We’ve got to catch them from up here. I promise you all I’m getting to that.

Then they’re like a force. They’re a force that actually just drives you, just like a storm. How many of you, when they start rising up, you’re wanting to catch them, but you can’t. Some of us are more like that than others.

Let’s look at the equations:

Emotions + will > your mind.

That’s your feelings, plus you make all your decisions from your will. This is when your feelings plus your decision making overcome your better thinking. Let me give you an example.

Somebody offends you. They hurt you, and your feelings get hurt. Now, your will begins to say, “I’m not going to forgive her,” so then you get vengeful in that. You think, “I know I’m not supposed to be vengeful, but I’m not forgiving.” And that overcomes your better thinking. How many of you has that happened to?

Your feelings get hurt, and you turn around and then you make a decision to retaliate, “Okay, let me do it like this . . ." How many of you do the silent treatment? “I’m not angry. I just haven’t talked to you for three days.” “I’ll show you.”

It’s amazing how Scripture says, “Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets: She crieth in the chief place of the concourse,” and wisdom is crying out you and wisdom is crying out me (Prov. 1:20-21).

Wisdom always cries out first, and understanding comes later. In other words, the wisdom of God can come through your parents, it can come through teachers, it can come through Sunday school teachers, it can come through coaches, it can come through all kinds of different vessels. Wisdom cries out and understanding . . .

Wisdom was crying out when my parents were saying, “You don’t need to be with those friends, you don’t need that boyfriend, you don’t need this . . . “ Wisdom was crying out, but let me tell you what, understanding came when I was sitting in that jail cell with a sixty-year sentence. Understanding came.

All of a sudden my parents got very smart in my eyes, but the only thing is, that was wisdom looking back. Wisdom desires for us to look forward. In other words, God wants you to answer your emotions in wisdom. No matter how you feel, He wants you to answer with truth.

No matter what’s going on in your life, He wants you to answer with factual things, what is true. When your emotions are going crazy, the first thing you need to say is, “What is true in this?” That is number one. You need to say, “What is true in this? What I’m feeling, is this true?”

If you will just answer that question, that will be a great beginning. So when you look at that equation, and it says your emotions plus your will overcomes your mind, that’s also in the same areas where I was telling you a woman will throw away the truth for her emotions.

What is the history of your choices, based on your emotions? Good or bad? They can be either way, and you probably have a little bit both ways. Some of the history is probably that you’ve made some good choices as a result of those emotions.

Probably you made the good choices when your emotions were on the “up.” But looking back on all your emotional moments, what was that history? If you had to write that history out today, what would you write? We’re looking for consistency. The more consistent you are in applying this, the more you’ll walk in stability.

The next one is actually your

emotions + your mind > your will.

This is when your feelings—here we go with your feelings again—plus what you think. Do you understand when your mind and your heart are warring? Your heart can know that something’s true at times, but your mind starts warring, and thinking through it and resisting that.

At the age of sixteen when I started dishonoring my parents like I did . . . you cannot think outside that judgment. “Honor thy father and mother that things may go well.” You may be sitting here, and you may not be a teenager, like I was, but have you gone back and made those relationships right?

Once we do not honor those parents, going back, God places a judgment on us. He says, “Things will not go well.” You and I cannot think outside of that judgment. I could not think outside of having a wrong relationship. I could not think out of walking the way I was. Why? I could not change the judgment of God. He said “Honor thy father and mother that things may go well” (see Deut 5:16).

When I did not honor them, guess what? Bam—there was the judgment. Thanks to God, in going back and asking that forgiveness of my parents, I can tell you, I began to think outside the box of judgment. Do you understand what I’m saying?

So all of a sudden it was my feelings of wanting that baby, to my reasoning out, and what did it do? It overcame my will. It overcame me even from choosing right. I don’t believe I could choose right, because I was in the boundaries of God’s judgment, because I had dishonored back here.

God will forgive you of your sin; He will forgive me of my sin, but He does not remove the consequences. He forgave me when I crossed the State of Arkansas and got with those drugs and I got a sixty-year sentence. He forgave me immediately, but He has not changed/removed the consequence.

He’s working it for my good. I did twelve years in prison. He forgave me twelve years before. He forgave me, but I did twelve years. I have a $63,756.00 fine that I pay $50 a month toward. I’ll be paying that until Jesus comes back, and I have to get permission to leave my county. I’m on parole until 2014.

Do you understand? He hasn’t removed that consequence, but He’s working the consequence for my good. So at the age of sixteen, the feeling of wanting to be pregnant, then the reasoning it out, then it overcomes me to make, to keep me from making a right decision. It changed my whole course and direction of life on that day.

That one abortion led into boyfriend number two, that led into pregnancy number two, that led into abortion number two. And don’t let me forget number three and number four and number five. I reasoned out all of them.

I first of all fell in love, not even knowing what love was. When someone says, “I love you,” . . . we love to be told, “I love you.” I always was looking for love in all the wrong places, and I know I just wanted someone to love me. My parents did love me, my dad loved me, but I looked at his correction as rejection. I just wanted to be loved, so when I had this guy—what do those words mean to you?

I can tell you, God’s forgiveness. Let me tell you, God not only forgives, He remembers your iniquities no more, according to Hebrews 8:12. He not only forgives, but He removes it. And what He does forgive, He always removes. So I can tell you from each abortion that I had, my emotional make-up just kept getting worse.

I had a silent cry within me. It was a silent anger. It was a silent and just everything was going on in the inside. So it just seemed like over and over and over, my decisions just kept getting worse and worse and worse. I got out there and out there.

You see, your emotions plus your mind overcomes your will. And don’t let me forget this. Maybe you’ve been involved with a married man before. Maybe it seemed so right, you were so compatible. It was so great when you were together, and you knew it was wrong, but then that part of you . . . It was like, how can something that feels so right be so wrong?

You start feeling that, in the same way that I reasoned with my abortions is the same way that you can reason feeling that something’s so right, that’s so wrong. What you feel you start thinking about, and then you find it overriding that determination, your will.

The third one is

mind + your will > your emotions.

This is my favorite. Go to 2 Corinthians 10:4-5. This is where we want to be, ladies. How many of you can already see that you’ve been thinking from those two equations in your life? Can any of you see that you have thought from those two places in your life?

Second Corinthians 10:4 and 5 says, “For our weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds; casting down the imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.”

Philippians 2:5 says, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” Here it is, ladies. “Let this mind . . .” In other words, Jesus Christ comes to live in your heart, His Holy Spirit comes to live with you, and guess what? He wants you to think from His holy mindset. This is God’s mindset. This is God’s mental disposition. This is God’s thinking.

As we think with Him, He will live it out. “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” If you can gain the thinking, the conduct comes right along. Would you agree? If you can get the thinking right, the conduct comes right along.

I realized that we can change our minds. When we look at, “our weapons are not carnal, but mighty toward God to the pulling down of strongholds; casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God . . ."

It's bringing every thought, ladies, every thought captive. If you know Jesus Christ lives in you, “Lord, this is not my thinking, because if You can stop the thinking, the emotions won’t get all out there.” Do you all understand?

So as you build that thinking through the Word of God, your emotions will rise, and the mind of Christ will answer them. How many of you would love, when your emotions rise up, that the mind of Christ immediately answers them?

On Sunday I didn’t even realize what was going on. The Lord brought up two Scriptures. I love just to be doing whatever and I love for God to bring Scripture up. God can’t bring something to your remembrance if it’s not there. He brought up this verse in Psalm 27 that says, “The Lord is my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”

I thought, ”What’s that all about?” I didn’t feel like I was dealing with any fears or anything like that. I was going to work, to the prison, and singing, “The Lord is my light and my salvation . . ." I make songs up. However I’ve got to get the Word in me, I get the Word in me.

I remember just kind of singing that, and do you know, two days later I realized that I was going to deal with some fear, and God had already brought the answer to me, two days before. He can’t bring it to your mind if it’s not there.