Today I was thinking about the people of Israel who wandered around the desert for 40 years…40 years for what should have been a 11 day journey. What was it that kept them wandering around in the desert? Was it the enemies? Was it the desert? Was it God? What was stopping them from entering in?
Years ago I heard a teaching by Joyce Meyer called Wilderness Mentality – it was an awesome teaching and showed me how I needed to change my mindset in many areas. You see it was the mindset of the people of Israel that kept them wandering around in the desert, it was all in their head, so to speak.
They expected to fail, they expected to be defeated and they were. All they needed to enter into their Promised Land was a new mindset, to think the way God thinks, that’s what we all need. Often if we will simply change our mindset about a situation we can come through it much quicker than if we keep the same old ‘I knew this would happen to me, I never get ahead mentality.’ That mentality keeps us wandering around in a wilderness of our own making.
We can have right mindsets that will benefit us or wrong mindsets that will hurt us and hinder our progress. Colossians 3:2 tells us to set our minds and keep them set. We need our minds set in the right direction, in the way God thinks. Wrong mindsets not only affect our circumstances, but they also affect our inner life.
Once you change your mindset about something, things around you will change, but if you keep a negative mindset, things will stay the same.
This year I paid off credit cards that I have. Now, I have paid them off before, then after a few months something will always happen that caused me to use them again. Then it takes another few months to pay them off and it feels like they hang over my head during that time. It was a vicious cycle, just like wandering in the wilderness. However, I paid them off and declared ‘no matter what comes, I am not putting anything on those cards.’ What do you think happened?
This week my washer starting making a loud noise, now I realize it is on its last leg, it is 15 years old. Breanne tells me all the time I need to replace it. But it still works so I am good with that. So, it started making a loud noise, shaking all over the place. I thought ‘just hang in there a little longer washer.’ The very next day my dryer quit….totally quit, it will not heat at all. My first thought of course was ‘I am going to have to get a set and pay them off.’ My second thought was ‘oh no! you are not!’ I am not going around that mountain again.
I had to have a mindset change. I am not going that route. Once I made that decision God reminded me that I had purchased someone a washer dryer set last year when they were in desperate need of them, I have seed in the ground. Then I printed off the washer/ dryer set I want and put it before my eyes.
You see, I had to change my mindset and I had to stick to it once I did. Was it easy? No. I had to dry towels by laying them around my house. They were not soft when I put them away. I don’t like it but I am determined to do it Gods way or no way. I will trust him through this and I will not go the way of the world because it causes me to go around and around a wilderness of my own making. It’s time for me to enter into the Promised Land in this area and I am going in….how about you?
The saddest thing to me is for someone to have so much available to them but to never lay hold of it, like the people of Israel, who died in the desert instead of entering into their promises – I don’t want that to be me and I don’t want it to be you either. Let’s change our mindset from a wilderness mentality to a Covenant Promise mentality and refuse to go back there – amen? AMEN!
