Affirming God’s Word for Your Life
As believers in Christ, it’s important that we live by faith, not by sight. However, even more important is that we place our faith in truth, not lies, in every area of our lives. Christ tells us that He is the way, the truth, and the life and that no man comes to the Father but by Him. How then do we come to the Father? We come to Him through truth (Christ).
Truth is important. Genesis tells the story. In the Garden of Eden everything was good, and God walked in person with Adam and Eve in the cool of day. Imagine how amazing that will be in heaven to physically walk and talk with God each day. We actually would still be doing that here in this life, but something caused a huge rift in that relationship with God. Eve was told a lie and believed it! She could have stopped herself by going back to God’s truth, but she didn’t. Then she sinned by acting on the lie. The same lie was presented to Adam who also believed it and acted on it. From that day forward paradise was no longer available to this couple or any of us – at least not here on this earth. When you believe and act on a lie, it can negatively change the course of your life, your family’s lives, a nation or even a race of people forever.
Mind and Spirit
We are spiritual beings in physical bodies. In Genesis, God formed Adam, and Adam was not alive until God “breathed the breath of life” into him. The term “breath of life” is translated as “Spirit of God”. God’s spirit is at the core of who we are, and we would not even have breath in our lungs without it (this is not the same as the Holy Spirit). We were formed to be attuned to the spiritual world and God’s truth. The conflict is that we live in the physical world, and it constantly reveals things to us that are opposite of God’s truth. These two worlds collide in one place – our minds.
Satan knows this better than we do. God gave us free will to have the ability to think and choose whatever we desire for ourselves. As Christians, we know what is true and right, but our five senses give us quite different messages from the external world. All of this goes through our brains with lightning fast speeds. We have to decide the purpose we want to live for and set our priorities ourselves – God does not do that for us. However, He will lead us on the right path when we ask Him to do it. As Proverbs 23:7 states: “For as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” We must guard our hearts because they are the wellsprings of life. The channels to our hearts are through our minds. As the battle wages in our brains, the false things we let through impact our hearts, feelings and ultimately the choices we make.
Truth vs. Lies
Satan’s purpose for existence is to destroy us. He tries to do that by planting as many lies and deceptions into the gardens of our souls as he possibly can. When he introduces a lie and we believe it, we give him access to that area of our lives. Here’s how it works. When you are tempted, you have a choice to either reject the lie and follow the truth or accept the lie and disregard the truth. When you believe the lie and allow ungodly things to be planted in your mind, it causes a false reality to be considered deeply within your heart which then acts upon your emotions and body. This leads to worry, guilt, fear, limited living and sin. Accepting lies holds Christians back from living a life of truth, peace and victory in Christ. For those who have not accepted Jesus as their savior, lies lead to eternal separation from God. Lies are poison to the soul!
Probably the clearest example in the Bible illustrating this battle between truth and lies is the temptation of Christ in the desert. Satan tempted Jesus in many ways, (most of which are not even listed in Luke 4) during this time. As for the three temptations discussed, it is clear to see that Christ defended himself by using God’s Word. Interestingly, Satan tempted Christ by using God’s Word also, but he slightly twisted it to make it a lie instead of truth. It is not just enough to know the word of God. We need to internalize it and apply it correctly to our daily lives.
As the old saying goes, “What you feed will grow, but what you starve will die”. This definitely applies to our thinking and spirits as well, and Satan knows it. He knows how to throw us off by presenting wrong thoughts to our minds and by getting us to accept them as true. These wrong thoughts can then control our actions in real life. You can clearly see this in others who don’t believe the truth about themselves, their futures, others around them or even God, and end up thinking about and doing the wrong things.
Here is a simple explanation of how the brain works. The conscious mind (logic) is the gateway to the deeper heart (emotions and will). Your analytical thinking determines what you let into your deeper thinking and accept as true. It is through your logical thinking that you can stop lies from entering in. When you don’t stop a lie by saying “no” in your thinking, the idea then enters a deeper emotional level and begins to drive your actions in the wrong direction. The subconscious does not know right from wrong, and once you allow thoughts into it, it automatically accepts them as truth. For instance, children who are told that they are ugly growing up will many times not only believe it, but will act upon it the rest of their lives and in fact then make themselves “ugly” by the way they live.
I remember a conversation I had with Kip Kolson, a mentor of mine, many years ago. We were debating a situation we each remembered differently and were trying to convince each other that our personal view was right. Then he made a powerful statement. He said “belief is not truth, truth is truth”. Think about that. Even though you may hold something as deeply true that doesn’t mean it is. There is another quote that says “don’t believe everything you think.”
As a Christian, you must search for what is right and true, meditate on it over and over and then, after you truly embrace it, live according to it. Joshua 1:8 expresses this truth by saying we are to meditate on God’s law day and night, and be careful to do everything in it so we will be prosperous and successful. God is saying we need to find His truth, concentrate on His truth, believe His truth, follow His truth and then receive the results.
Affirmations
So how do we get God’s truth deep within us? The answer is we must meditate on it and affirm it for our lives. The definition of “affirm” (from www.dictionary.com) is as follows: “1. To state or assert positively; maintain as true: 2. to confirm or ratify: 3. to assert solemnly: 4. to express agreement with or commitment to; uphold; support:”
Why affirmations? It is simple. Since we are always talking to ourselves, an affirmation is a way to speak God’s truth to ourselves and allow Him to talk to us deeply. In the book Self Talk by David Stoop, he states that we physically talk at a rate of about 150-200 words per minute. However, we are talking internally to ourselves at a rate of about 1,300 words per minute, and this talking is all based on the beliefs we have internalized over and over throughout our lives.
Some of these beliefs are not just wrong but are also destructive! Joel 3:10 says: “Let the weak say I am strong”. If you were actually weak, why would He tell you to claim something opposite? The reason is because the real truth is we are strong in Him and He will make us stronger as we claim it and believe it as true. Your subconscious only knows the limits you place on it, even when God is saying to open up to the truth.
To get truthful beliefs in the areas needing to be changed in your life doesn’t just occur analytically but in the deeper heart and soul of your mind. The truth needs to be engrained into the very fibers of your being. It usually takes a minimum of 6 months of repetitively feeding the truth into areas of wrong thinking for change to happen. You probably have good solid foundational thinking in certain areas resulting in a Godly lifestyle. However, most of us have other areas to work on, grow in and change. This change starts with hearing Gods word, accepting it as true, then claiming it for your life.
Affirmations Calendar
In this book you will find a critically important affirmation calendar. There is an affirmation for every day of the year. Each daily affirmation includes a New King James scripture as well as the same scripture from a new modern translation (NIV or World Version). Each day also contains an affirmation based on God’s promise that you can use in your life to affirm the truth.
Each day read the scripture and corresponding affirmation. It is best if you read these out loud in front of a mirror. Consider the affirmations that strike your soul strongest, seem opposite to your current beliefs, or are most needed for your growth. Mark these scriptures and affirmations so that you can find them easily in your book. You can also use index cards or a smart phone to record these. Keep affirming these affirmations you have listed on the Affirmation Sheet each day for a minimum of 21 days. Remember, it takes about six months for most people to really absorb them deeply. Only use 15 to 20 of these affirmations to repeat at any point in time to avoid having too many for your mind to absorb all at once.
Repeat all the affirmations you put on the sheet at least once per day, and ideally several times per day, until they are true in the deepest parts of your being. You will know when they have become true for you because your mind will automatically default to believing these truths when something to the contrary challenges them.
One last note. Feel free to adjust the affirmations if wording them in a different way is more helpful for you. Adding other scriptures to the list as you study and read the Bible is also encouraged.
