S2S Sisters: “Battleground of the Mind” by Linda Amendt

Our prayer is that you will be filled with the knowledge of His will, strengthened with all might according to His glorious power. Welcome to Strength to Strength, sisters. We're so glad to have all of you join us today. Thank you for being here.

We're really looking forward to having Linda Amitt share with us today on the topic of the battleground of the mind. And she's going to share a little bit about her journey in relation to her learning how powerful our thoughts are and where they can lead us.

I know that this has been a personal journey for her, and I'm really looking forward to hearing a little bit more about that in depth today. And I wish that we could all just join Linda in her living room and sit down and have a discussion about it. And I know that she would love to have it just be a little bit more informal and, yeah, a little bit more like sitting around coffee and discussing it.

I'll just tell you a little bit about her. She's a really dear friend of mine, and I've enjoyed getting to know her in the last, oh, five years or so. She's been married to Darren for nearly 18 years, and they think it gets better every year. They live in the sunny city of Calgary, Alberta. They have a passion to be Christ's hands and feet, to reach out to the lost and struggling, and to walk with them in close community. They have eight children, ages 17 to 3, and Linda homeschools them. She finds life to be constant in these intense joys and challenges to totally trust and surrender to God. She finds many lessons in humility, but also the love and grace of our Father.

She grew up focusing on the outward appearances and, through some very painful circumstances, learned that what she thought was actually who she was and who she needed to be, and also how she needed to know God very much. She never ceases to praise Him for how gently He has led her and her family once they started seeking Him.

So thank you so much, Linda, for all the work that you put into this and through sickness and not feeling well physically. And so I just want to bless you in putting the work and energy into it in spite of that. So let's just pray for you before you get started.

Father in heaven, thank you that we can be here today. Thank you for this platform that you have enabled us to share from all around the world. And I just pray that you would bless Linda today with the subject that you've laid on her heart. Pray that you would fill her with your peace and joy, and may she be able to present the message that you've given her in a way that is clear and yet has truth and grace woven into it. I just pray that you would fill her with your spirit, and may she speak words that are after your heart. I know that that's her desire, and so I pray that you would just be very near her through this talk.

Thank you for your many blessings. We want to honor you as our Abba Father. In Jesus' name, Amen. Go ahead, Linda. Thank you for that, Lynelle. So good afternoon, sisters. There's something exciting about being here with you all, even though there's something a little terrifying about it. But yeah, I guess my main concern is that I speak truth and not deceive anyone. Yeah, that's what I want to be. I want God to have the glory for this.

So I'd like to start with sharing a few verses with you from Psalm 66. These have become very precious to me, and I feel like they say so much about my journey. Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will declare what He has done for my soul. I cried to Him with my mouth, and He was extolled with my tongue. If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear. But certainly God has heard me. He has attended to the voice of my prayer. Blessed be God who has not turned away my prayer nor His mercy from me. One of the things I thank my Heavenly Father for the most is His mercy.

Just never ceases to amaze me. So I want to start with sharing just a bit of my journey in beginning to understand how important what is going on in the heart and mind is. And for the record, I do not pretend to have arrived to complete understanding at all or to have figured it all out. It seems I'm still learning these things over and over again.

So for many years, I was a person who by all appearances was happy. I always made sure that things looked good on the outside, and I got really good at covering up troubles and keeping them from people. But over the years, I struggled with immorality, anger, myriad anxieties, a lot of pride, and a thousand questions. I really had no idea who I was, that who I was on the inside was actually who I really was.

Growing up, I had not learned to express myself well around my family. I tended to kind of just keep everything inside, and I never felt safe enough to share who I really was with anyone. But dating cracked the lid on my carefully covered pot, and sin was a result.

These things were all carried into my marriage. And by the way, I've been married to Darren for over 18 years, since the 19th of August. Anyway, and when the pressures in life were turned up, what was inside began to spill out even more. I couldn't hide these things.

You know, and I used to think it was their fault that I was this person, this angry, frustrated person. My children and my husband. Anger and insubmission towards my husband, feelings of rejection by him, frustration with my children dogged my days.

All the while, I was endeavoring to walk with God, who I viewed as very unhappy with me. At communion time, which we would have that about every six months in the church I grew up in, I would confess a certain amount and always feel better only to repeat the whole cycle over and over and over.

I had no assurance of salvation, and I was very afraid to die. I dreamt of dying many times and not being ready. The busyness of life would always push the fears down under. There came a time when all I knew of what I knew to be church was stripped from me, and I was left broken and bleeding with nothing to hold on to.

There were times where I was so at the end of my rope because of broken relationships and so much insecurity that I felt like I would come to a place where my mind felt like it could turn a corner into full-blown panic and snap. I felt like I would collapse into a mental breakdown. I knew what those were. I had seen my dear mother go through those. My practical husband, my black and white husband, would say, "No, Linda, you're not going there. You're not allowed to."

It would pull me back into crying out to God. Sorry, sometimes it still makes me cry. There was nowhere else to go, nothing to cling to. I remember a day when after one of my siblings tried to convince me that I should go back into the church system we had left.

I didn't want to cry about this, but apart from what my husband felt, that I felt so much darkness and absolute terror because I was so confused. I had no idea what to do. So I just basically panicked. It seemed too awful for words that I would ask God what to do and that He wouldn't answer me or show me what to do.

I remember being on my knees, reaching up and just weeping, my arms literally aching with longing for God. Somewhere we heard the challenge, the question, "If there were no moral restrictions or structures around you, who would you be?" And this really shook me. The structure that had held me up was gone, and now I saw starkly who I really was, who I had always been, though I had never wanted to be that person. I saw myself for who I was.

There was no exact turning point in my life. It was a gradual process of realizing my brokenness and learning truth through a variety of tremendous blessings in my life, such as biblical sermons. I took historic faith courses, which, by the way, are an amazing resource on what the early church believed and much desperate crying out to know who God is and how faithful He was to reveal Himself to me, to us. I came to learn about the kingdom of God and that I'm not here just to keep myself saved and coast prettily to heaven.

I had a battle to fight and something much bigger than myself to be a part of. This gave me so much excitement and purpose. Someone would always be there when I felt like the knot of the end of my rope was gone, and there was no hope, no way forward.

They would be offering encouragement, validating the desire of our hearts to seek God, and God's word would spur us on. The Holy Spirit, through reading the Bible with newly opened eyes and other writings by men sold out for God, convicted me deeply that I had been living my life just floundering along in failure, brokenness, sin, and I needed real repentance that brings about change. 1 Corinthians 7:10 says, "For godly sorrow produces repentance that brings about change."

Sorry, "For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted, but the sorrow of the world produces death." And oh, praise the Lord. I went on to verse 11. It says, "For observe this very thing that you sorrowed in a godly manner, what diligence it produces in you, what clearing of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what vehement desire, what zeal, what vindication."

I couldn't repent enough, hardly. It just seemed like there was so much that I needed to make right. I was extremely blessed to be baptized again in a flood of water, repentance, belief, and overwhelming joy to have found my Lord and to know beyond a doubt that I was now His child.

But I was also learning that the patterns of thought I had developed over the years, Satan was not going to let me change those very easily. I did not really know. I hadn't really known that just because I thought something did not make that thought a reality did not mean that that was true.

There was a time when I made a sign that had a line from a song put on the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. I hung it beside the coffee maker in our home so I'd be able to see it every morning and throughout the day.

I needed that badly. I learned then that this comes from Isaiah 61:3. I was putting on, I had put on the mind of Christ. And some of this came with His grace and learning so many new things. But sometimes it seemed to be more like Christ. I had to simply and intentionally change the thoughts I was thinking. I had to pray when something felt heavy and impossible instead of panic.

I had to praise or control. That was another thing that I tried to do is control the circumstances, control my husband, control everything. I had to pray sometimes out loud when I felt down. I had to push past the dark and deliberately, defiantly, and desperately give something to God and leave it there.

From someone else sharing their testimony, I had this idea that I was going to outtrust God as if that was possible. But it could seem to me that many, many times we live in such a way that that is a possibility that He could be outtrusted, that something could be too big to trust into His hands.

I knew that I had lived my life that way. I was trying to control everything. Outtrust is my own word there. At least my computer didn't like it anyway. So being aware of what we think has become a passion for me. And God has taught me so much about it, but I'm still learning.

A couple of months ago, first trimester pregnancy, sickness, and depression hit me like a wave and swept me off my feet. Everything I believed and the joy I had found came under heavy attack. I cried out to God many times that I could not speak on the mind in September because I was overcome by my feelings and seemed powerless to think positively.

I came to realize, you know what? This is actually a really good time to practice what I've learned. Here's my test. I can push past my depression and praise God even in the darkness when how I feel is just controlling my thoughts.

It has been slow in coming, but praise God, I have found joy again.

So let's talk a bit here about what the heart and mind are. The Bible uses the word heart between 700 to 1,000 times. What is the heart spoken of in the Bible? It is not referring to our physical heart that pumps our blood, but is where our thoughts come from. In the Bible, it is considered the seat of life or strength, and it means mind, soul, or spirit.

It is the place where you have your will, your attitude, and your intentions. It's the source of your thought, actions, and words. These ideas are from others, and I'm not saying this is a totally rounded-out definition. It's just some things that I've found. Wikipedia says the mind encompasses many functions and processes, including perception, memory, thought, imagination, motivation, emotion, attention, learning, and consciousness.

From Finney Kerr Villa, I got that the biblical meaning of the word heart is closer to the English word for brain than the English word for heart. And this meaning is from a Greek lexicon. The heart is the center and source of the whole inner life with its thinking, feeling, and emotions.

Brother Finney's own definition for the word heart is the heart is your thought life along with its resulting decisions and emotions.

Another place I found says the mind refers to our ability to think, feel, and engage in physical activity. The brain, on the other hand, refers to the physical organ in our head that supports these functions.

So our wrong actions are what we call sin. But where does the act of sin come from? Does it just rear up out of nowhere? It has to start in our heart, our mind, and the thoughts we think moment by moment.

I remember one time it was one of my husband's friends was caught in a great sin. And I just remember we talked about it at detail, and I was like, "That's terrifying. How did he get to that place? A married man."

And we were both brought much to rest by knowing that those kinds of things don't happen overnight. Jesus said in Matthew 15:11, "Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man." And also in verse 18, he says that those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man.

I have been puzzled many times when we heard of someone falling into sin. This is in more recent years since I began to understand my own journey that that is where the tragedy starts for people. It's like, "Oh, no.

How did this happen?" And I always have to wonder what about the years, possibly years, could it be months of the thought process that came before this? Why is that not a tragedy? Why didn't he or she know their thoughts mattered?

I believe this feels very important to me because of my own experiences, because I realize who we are inside is eventually going to come out.

Now, I have a few points I'd like to go over before we take a look at Ephesians 6. We all know what Ephesians 6 is. I'm sure the word talks about the armor of God. So I feel like looking back, some of these processes define some of these points define the process that I went through to become fully aware and gain victory over Satan in the battleground of my mind. Of course, the process wasn't this orderly, but I'm trying to sort it out in order of importance of what we need to know. So first of all, who are you? Who are you serving? Who are you fighting for? Remember, we're in a battle.

Is it yourself? Is it your own betterment? You know, there are two kingdoms, only two kingdoms, and we make the choice which one we are part of by how we live our day-to-day lives. This is not complicated. Jesus is king of the kingdom of light, and Satan is ruler of the kingdom of darkness. There are countless things we could say about all of this and about who God is.

But we will keep this short. If the kingdom of heaven is not something you are familiar with or you don't understand, I would very much encourage you to seek it out, study it. The book by David Berceau, The Kingdom That Turned the World Upside Down, has been a tremendous help to me and many others in understanding God's kingdom.

So knowing who God is is foundational to your spiritual life. First, let's know who we are. Now we're going to talk about who is God. If you are not satisfied, I mean totally satisfied with your relationship with God, sisters, it is in your hands.

Press into a deeper relationship with Him. Seek Him with all your heart. Ask Him to show Himself to you. We deepen relationships by spending time with someone, talking to them, listening to them, thinking about them, dwelling on them, looking at them. God tells Moses who He is in Exodus 34:6-7, "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation."

Does that sound like a God who's waiting to pounce on you, checking for problems, any little thing so He can cast you into hell? I don't think it does. I was tremendously blessed to have the privilege to spend a week, an entire week, reading through the entire Bible.

It taught me so much about God and His story from the beginning of time. And that was my desire, was to know more about God and His story. But I came away feeling very small and realizing how little I actually know, if that makes any sense. Seemed like the more I knew of Him and His ways, the more there was to find out, the less I knew.

The smaller I became. He is so merciful, and He is so good. He is a Father, not a mathematician. If you're questioning whether you have ever even been born again and become a part of the kingdom of God, read the New Testament, and that will tell you how it is done.

We must believe, repent, be baptized by the water and the Spirit. If you feel like you've been born again, are you keeping your eyes on God? Are you following in Jesus' footsteps? Is what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount very important to you?

There are so many beautiful verses in the Bible that say that if we seek God, He will be found. He will hear. We will be His people. Find them. Believe them. Now let's think about who or what we are fighting. We want to make sure we're not fighting truth.

Just think of the tragedy of the Pharisees. The Pharisees started out with good intentions that they would add all these things to the law of Moses and in so doing be good and sure in keeping those laws. The result of this for many of them was that they killed the Son of God, the world's greatest tragedy.

So I'm going to assume that Jesus is our king and we will be fighting Satan. Satan was cast out of heaven when he wanted to be like God and his angels went with him. He in the form of a serpent.

And this is a fascinating fact to me. I never actually thought of this before, but pay attention to the fact that he came to Eve in a form she would not be alarmed at. If he would have come as a big monster or a witch-looking creature with a pitchfork, don't you think Eve would have turned and ran? I think this is a good insight as to how Satan can come to us.

He tempted Eve and she gave in and convinced Adam to do the same. This plunged the world into a curse of death from which Jesus came and delivered us through dying on the cross and rising again. He broke the chains of death. Satan is very powerful only because God allows him to be.

So in Job chapter 1, we see that God gives him space to work. We can be sure, very sure, that Satan is always at work trying to win as many souls as possible before he himself is cast into the lake of fire. In Genesis 3, we see that he is crafty. In 1 John 3:8, we read he has sinned from the beginning. 2 Corinthians 11:3 says he is cunning.

John 8:44 says he is a murderer and the father of lies. In Matthew 16:23, Jesus says Satan has in mind human concerns and not the concerns of God. This verse hits home for me. It's very alarming. What are human concerns? They sound good and right.

In 1 Peter 5:8-9, we read that he's prowling around seeking whom he may devour. And is it possible that he could come as an angel from heaven as it speaks of in Galatians 1:8 or as an angel of light in 2 Corinthians 11:14? The context here is Paul talking about false teachers transforming themselves into apostles of Christ.

We must be very wise and filled with the Holy Spirit to identify Satan. And he must be identified. Imagine how successful deception is if it's cloaked in truth. Imagine how successful he will be if we live in denial of his real existence and his ways. Also, imagine men going into battle with their eyes blinded and not knowing who or what to fight.

You can imagine how successful that war would be. C.S. Lewis's book, Screwtape Letters, is one man's description of how Satan works. And I feel like it's eye-opening. I believe the Holy Spirit renews our minds, but I also believe that we must work with the Spirit in this. We are not helpless. Many times in the Bible, we're told, "Lay aside this or that, put off this or that."

Thinking, doing, and saying the same things over and over makes what I call paths, and I think there's scientific explanations for all of this, but I never got into the scientific aspects. But it makes paths or ruts in our brains that we do not easily come out of or change.

It is simply easiest to keep on doing and thinking as we have been. But it's just positive thinking enough. Positive thinking sounds great, but we want to focus on truthful thinking, God's truth, Jesus' truth. So we fight with spiritual weapons against not stone strongholds, but arguments and imaginations. A stronghold is a habitual pattern of thoughts built into one's thought life.

It's a way of thinking and feeling that's developed a life of its own. Emotions can be strongholds, emotions out of control. I can definitely relate to that one. Anger, rejection, shame, envy, fear.

So now let's turn to Ephesians 6 to see what or who we fight and how to fight. So I invite you to read these verses with me if you are able. We're going to start in verse 10, and I'm reading in the New King James. "Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day. And having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having your feet shod with the gospel of peace. Above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for the saints." And we'll stop there.

So there's a lot we can learn from this passage, and I encourage you to study into it even further than we are looking at it today. So how do we fight things that many times we can't even see? I believe it starts in our minds. I feel like that is the first battleground. It is where we practice our faith that turns into action.

So let's take a look at what the word wiles means. A definition I found is devious or cunning stratagems employed in manipulating or persuading someone to do what one wants. And what does principalities mean? One source I came across said that in the Greek it means first in political ranks or power. So that would be the highest ranking angels in Satan's organized system. So let's picture together spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places.

I picture them circling darkly, watching keenly for weak places in your mind, in my mind, in God's army, in the church, in the body of Christ. These things are a reality, sisters. Let's ask God to open our eyes and hearts to these realities and so much more to the reality of God's angels and hosts in the heaven.

But what is the armor? It's practical. First of all, we must know truth. I felt like finding truth was so foundational to having a healthier view of God. What is sin? What does God call sin? We can ask people these questions, but in my experience, many can let us down.

We must start with the scriptures. What are the plain and simple words of Christ? We need to interpret the rest of the New Testament through Jesus' words. We need to read the whole Bible and not just pull out verses that match what we think.

A good help is to study the early church. I mean, the early, early church. What did the church right after the apostles do and believe? Understand that we may have to lay down many preconceived ideas. And remember, we cannot view the Bible through our 21st-century eyes.

Study the context of the passages. What is righteousness? Don't take my word for all of this. Study it out yourself. I believe many times we overcomplicate these things with big words and theological debates. Genesis 15:6 says that Noah believed God, and God counted it to him for righteousness. Have a simple theology. I feel like that's been one of the biggest helps for me. I knew a lot of words all my life, big words that I didn't understand what they meant. Justification comes to mind. And I never understood what any of those things meant, really. I certainly hadn't experienced them. But I feel like we can have a simple theology.

Our feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace could mean that we are ready with the living knowledge of the gospel to fight the devil with. But what is the gospel? What do we need to be ready with? Many have said it is the good news that Jesus died on the cross for our sins.

Although that is so true and a very important element of it, the resurrection should be included because it is the means by which Christ overcame death. And only because of the resurrection can we walk in newness of life.

So I love the word picture of faith being a shield. Faith can be such a, it's such a simple word, but it can be hard to understand and to grasp, and it can be hard to explain. So a simple explanation is not seeing, yet believing.

But what does that look like, practically speaking? I have come to love Jesus' words. As your faith, let it be to you in Matthew 9:29. I feel like those words are almost like a curtain that just swings and I can see through, and it just seems like there's unimaginable possibilities on the other side.

So it's in our hands. It's up to our faith. How far we'll go, how much we'll know, how much will happen in our lives, in the lives of those around us. So there's lots of other verses like this about where Jesus healed someone because of their faith.

If we have gone through the proper steps of salvation, we have, as it says in Colossians 3, been thrown into Christ's kingdom already. We already have the power in us. Will we claim it by faith and walk in it? This takes a lot of faith. But it's how normal men and women become heroes of the faith, how they die for Christ.

A quote I love by Hudson Taylor is, "All God's giants have been weak men and women who have gotten hold of God's faithfulness." Did you know that you could be like Enoch who walked with God? I remember the day that struck me. Enoch was not a supernatural person. He was just a man who walked with God. And God took him.

Some of my favorite stories from history are the ones people practiced great and unreasonable faith. People like George Müller. He said, "The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith. And the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety."

Faith must be a personal thing you have. It is not a feeling. Many times it ends up being an action, whether a thought that we chose to think or something we actually end up doing. So, so many times I have waited on my feelings and have forgotten that faith comes first. I remember when I was a young girl, my dad explaining to me, there are these three cars, and I honestly, I can't remember what the third one is.

Facts, probably. And faith, feeling, and facts in what order they should come in. And you know, I never understood that. Literally. In Shannon Poppins' book, Control Girl, she talks about Hagar putting her son under the tree and walking away. We all know that story.

This word, put, is the same as the word cast in Psalm 55:10 and 1 Peter 7, sorry, 1 Peter 5:7.

I'm not sure what Psalm 55:10 is. I didn't write that down, but 1 Peter 5:10, I think is casting all your care upon him for care for you. So put, what Hagar did with her son is the same as that word.

Faith can be a deliberate action we take and walk away believing that God will take care of it for you. It's the idea of thrusting it into God's care, relinquishing control because you believe he will take care of you as he has promised.

Are we living in this way moment by moment? As the priests in Moses' day, we have to have enough faith to put our feet in the water sometimes before God will work. My friend Doreen shared to practice defiant faith. I love that adjective. I have read this over and over to let it sink into my soul.

This thrills me. We must at times be fierce in our trust of God. So we touched some on the helmet of salvation already, but I like this description of it. When we put on the helmet of salvation or being born again is what I was talking about that we touched on. We put on Christ himself.

Christ protects not just our heads, but our entire beings from spiritual death. To wear the helmet of salvation means to live every day focused on eternity and the promised future we have. And I think we can live in it now. It changes the way we live. This was from a Billy Graham blog. It also says, and I quote, "For believers, the battlefield often takes place in the mind. Satan will fire assaults of doubts and try to make you believe lies. When we put on the helmet of salvation, it gives us the confidence and safety during attacks from the enemy. We need to protect our mind." This is a beautiful explanation. Some of these things have been so hard for me to grasp, but I have been determined to learn them at all costs.

To know him, study Philippians 3:7-15. What amazing words.

This may be a bit of a bunny trail here, but it makes me think of one of my favorite things to ponder, which is living in the power and presence of God. I want to share a couple of paragraphs from a little book I have found to be life-changing for me. This book is called Touching the Invisible by Norman Grubb. I would recommend everyone read it. It's just a little book. And I try to read these paragraphs every day. So I'm going to read them to you.

If we cast aside the suggestions of Satan, the delusions of our own feelings of separation, the sense of weakness and ignorance, if we boldly possess our possessions in Christ, draw the sword of the Spirit upon the deceiver, declare by God's word that we are one with Christ and with one another, one mystic organism, one divine life flowing in and through all, then we are strong by faith, for his strength is in us. We are wise, for his wisdom is ours. We have love, joy, or any other needed grace of the Spirit, for we are permeated with him.

All we need to do is to go forward in this faith as having and possessing, and we shall find that what is true in the realm of the Spirit becomes manifest in the realm of the senses, whether it be power, love, joy, knowledge, or any other needed resource.

Christ the head thus becomes manifest in and through his members. On this basis, we can understand the reason for Christ's dramatic, drastic statements concerning earthly and personal attachments. If we do not hate loved ones, possessions, life itself, we cannot be his disciples.

I think those are beautiful words, powerful words.

So Ephesians 6 is not the only Bible passage that refers to the word of God as being a sword. Knowing the Bible and having it memorized can hardly be overemphasized. If you're feeling like your Bible reading is dry and forced, I would encourage you to read much, read often, and ask God to increase your desire for his word.

This can help tremendously. It's like a chain reaction that leads you to the place where you thirst for him, crave him, pant for him, as David says he panted as a deer pants for water. We learn so much about who God is and how he works from his word.

As for prayer, this one is huge. You do not need to be in a certain posture or frame of mind when you pray. We can come to God at any time, in any way. Learning this has been one of the most transforming things of my life. I like to start my day before I get out of bed by calling out to God. Sometimes it's just, "Help me." After I read my Bible, and this doesn't happen in this way every day, but it's my goal, and it's been a tremendous blessing to me. But after I read my Bible, I pray more organized, praying through lists or whatever is weighing particularly heavy on me that day.

Then throughout the day, I feel like speaking to God first thing in the morning opens the door to him, and it stays open all day. I talk to God anytime about anything. I love to pray out loud in the car when I'm alone or on a walk.

I don't say this to lift up myself, but to give you some ideas. This has been a tremendous blessing to me. I like to write things down or I forget them.

And it's so fun to see God's answering prayers.

Especially this is helpful if you've told someone you will pray for them. Sometimes when I feel overwhelmed, particularly overwhelmed about everything in life, I do a brain dump, which is something I learned from Misty Winkler at the website Simply Convivial.

I take a paper, I write down everything weighing on my mind, every little silly thing that I can't quit thinking about, and it feels like it's just taking up too much energy. Then I sit down and I pray through each point. This has brought me tremendous relief so many times.

Sometimes it just goes away. And sometimes I'm given a little slot of time to deal with this thing that's stressing me. And sometimes Holy Spirit works through others, my own mind, to give me good ideas about what to take care of something.

When we think about the verse, "Be anxious for nothing," to take that literally, it is very challenging, but wonderful. Pray through the Psalms. Try the 148th Psalm through the 150th to start. Just you don't have to pray with your eyes closed. Read the Psalms. Pray them to God. There's also CDs where people have put the Psalms or on Apple Music, put the Psalms to music. And I know one of our friends talked about a very rough time in his life, and he just listened to the Psalms being sung over and over and over again.

And what a blessing that was for him. Try setting a timer. Sometimes we need this. I need timers to remind you, pray three times a day like Daniel did, even if it's just a couple of minutes. This has been something I've been wanting to implement and working at it, but I haven't gotten to the third time of prayer. It just never suits.

So many times it feels like I don't have time to do this, but it's pretty easy for me to fritter my few minutes away on my phone or reading something, some paper. I think about busy King David with his huge kingdom, many wives, I forget how many, and children, says in Psalm 119:164 that he praises God seven times a day. God wants to hear from us.

The last point I want to touch on from Ephesians 6 is being watchful. This is fairly self-explanatory, and I'd love to hear your ideas of what all of this could look like. One thing I think of is to not allow your days to be so full that you don't have time for the things that matter.

Another Misty Winkler tip, she says, "Write down three things every day that you will do. Only three." That's not eating and such things, but it could be homeschooling, could be cleaning out the fridge. Give yourself only three things to do every day. And that has been a help for me because I tend to cram my days full. It looks good on paper, doesn't it?

So we guard our own hearts and minds, and we pay attention to the influences our children are under and what they're doing, how they're developing, what they're doing with their spare time. It seems like being watchful would also involve being wise to worldliness in our homes, ways the devil can creep in unawares, a large part being prayer as well as Bible reading. And I feel like even speaking and walking closely with fellow saints helps us to be watchful. They teach us much.

So I'd like to go now to share some practical tips we can use to fight the enemy of our souls. Things you can start right away. Like Joshua of Old, and I love this picture. We can surround the city with praise, obedience, worship, and faith. Cut off the supplies, the negative thoughts, the bad thought patterns, and the lies.

Praise him. There are many commands in the Bible to do this. Find them and obey them. It's a simple choice we can make that will reap great rewards. Burst into song when you are feeling particularly heavy-hearted. This has been a big one for me. Just sing it loud. I remember one day I was struggling terribly with something. Some great anxiety was weighing on me, and I felt like it was just making me an awful mom. And I turned on this CD we had, this song on my phone actually it was, oh, I can't think what it was called.

Sing with joy now, our God is for us. That's how some of it went. I turned it as loud as it could go, and I sang at the top of my lungs. And it just felt like it just pushed past that anxiety. But I do love to sing too.

And maybe that won't be what works for you.

So it's a battle cry to praise our great and wonderful God. Satan doesn't want to hear that. Bless the name of God. Say adoring things of him. Speak well of him to your children and others. The enemy of our souls wants us to wait until all the dots are lined up to praise.

But even when we are crawling or crying or full of pain, we can wait with, and I love this, fierce expectation. It speaks of desperation, of dire need, but knowing with confidence God will come. He wants to hear from us in our brokenness.

Make lists of your blessing. Write them down. Be thankful. Thank him out loud. Did you know that what you focus on grows? This is powerful. What do we want to have grow in our lives? Focus on it. Feed it.

A side note, be very careful what you allow yourself to think first thing in the morning. All of us may not struggle with being melancholy, but I know for myself this is an area I have to fight. Write down some goals you want to reach. Pray over them. Believe you can attain them.

Another question, do you believe you can change? Do you believe your thought life can completely change? Ezekiel 36:26 is a promise from God in relation to this. If you don't believe it, you probably won't change. I remember how startling and convicting that thought was for me. I was doubting God. I felt like I was simply much too big of a problem for him.

I feel like that was a turning point in my life when I thought that through. But do I believe? Do I believe that I could become the person that I long to be? We must try the spirits. Read 1 John 4:1-21. Check your thoughts.

Throw them out if they aren't truth. Know the truth. When we humble ourselves and give ourselves determinedly and entirely to him, he will change you into his image and more. Remember, when we experience the resurrection in our life, it is the same power that Jesus rose from the dead with.

I love that thought.

Emotions can be strong. It seems like back to that thought. There's something humble. We're like, "Oh no, I can't have that. I won't have that power." I mean, I'm just a human. I think that's faithless. I think that's doubting God.

Emotions can be strongholds that must be torn down and replaced with God's truth. Emotions gotten out of control. Seems like I must have written this down before. Anger, rejection, shame, envy, fear. We can dwell on those things. Shame might sound like a good thing, but it isn't. It's not of God. We don't want to stay there. So sorry, some inspiration that I got from the book, The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Me says, "Focus on the new life instead of worrying about the old sin and death."

Do you need to worry about sleeping? He says, "But maybe some of us do worry about sleeping and have our time, I don't know." Do you need to worry about your heart beating? Does a bird need to worry about how to fly? So strong and true is the new law of life from Christ. Like a tree seed growing in a crack of a rock moves the rock.

I just love that word picture. Nothing could stop it. This is the power we have, and let's walk in this power.