Breaking The Power Of Negative Thoughts

Your brain is a mass of Neural Pathways – actual, biological paths, created by you through repetitive thought, action and behaviours. These develop and become extremely powerful.

It is because of these pathways that we can walk around our house in the dark and not hit furniture, as we’re so used to the layout in our minds. You may sometimes drive to work and realise you can’t remember 3 miles of it, as you did it subconsciously. (Dangerous, I might add!) You wash in the shower in a certain way each morning, shave a certain way.

Your brain creates pathways, so that what starts as conscious behaviour, soon becomes sub-conscious and completely automatic.

Now, it means little when we talk of showering or shaving – but we also create pathways in response to belief, life, attitudes and ministry. We create pathways of worry, anxiety, fear, or of faith, boldness and trust, by repeated responses, thoughts and actions.

Sometimes an area in our lives becomes particularly powerfully trained in a negative subconscious way – (The Bible calls this a ‘Strong hold’ in 2 Corinthians 10:4) and we find it hard to rewire.

Perhaps we build a stronghold of worry over finance for years, and we unintentionally teach ourselves to panic when the bills mount up. The first few times it is conscious worry and stress. But as the years roll on, in the end, when that bill hits the doormat, your subconscious mind heads off down the path of worry, before you’ve had a moment to pray and trust God!

 It’s as though your thoughts say, “We know what to do when this happens, let’s go” and off your mind goes, sprinting down the path of panic. And so now you define yourself as a worrier about finance.

Well, actually, you just used the powerful law of thoughts to MAKE yourself a worrier!

You see, the mind is a great servant, but a poor master. You must renew it and have it serve your heart well.

Perhaps it’s not money, perhaps it’s sickness; just one pain and your mind runs down the path of panic, worrying that it’s cancer. “This is it!” Your mind tells you, “The big one … I knew it would happen eventually!”

Perhaps it’s lust, anger, insecurity, fear, a self-image issue, shame – you’ve spent years laying a path and now you are well trained to sub-consciously take that path when a trigger is hit – and now it has become “part of you” – there’s nothing you can to. Or is there….?

An extract from STRONGER: Building a Powerful Interior world Available Here