Don’t let your mind wander.

Most of our battles happen in our mind and they are either won or lost in the mind. Can you believe it? You don’t even have to open your mouth or take a step forward to establish your loss or victory. You just need to let your mind run riot for you to enter the darkest places on earth or rein your mind in and direct your thoughts to higher ground. If anger has lodged itself in your heart, its only a matter of time before your mind starts spewing rage and malicious slander at people. If sadness has got a vice like grip on your soul, you can be sure that before long your every thought will be apocalyptic bringing gloom and doom to all around you. If self pity has gotten to you, you will start emptying bitterness and angst on people who never harmed you in any way.

The wilderness will expose the condition of our heart and mind like nothing else will. The negative situations all around you can trigger you to wander down paths in your mind that are nowhere close to healthy. You start to doubt God, his word, his promises, who he says you are and what He is doing during this time. The only solution is for a complete over haul of your mind.

What does an overhaul mean? Well, you need to get down to brass tacks and attack the root causes of your negative thinking and start pulling those out. You will need to be targeted and aggressive about changing the way you think. You must first replace old harmful and detrimental thoughts with true and virtuous thoughts. To find these, you need to get into God’s word and start to identify what He calls you, how he loves you and what He does in and through you. Once you know this, you can actively start replacing the old with the new. You must also reframe your thinking from a perspective of the overwhelmed to that of an overcomer! Reframing requires that you shift your viewpoint to one that brings God, His kingdom and his purposes into sharp focus. You will then realize that the wilderness is not just about you but about way more than meets the eye.