Whose Mind Will You Have?

March 20

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in YOUR sight, O Lord, my Strength and my Redeemer. David in Psalm 19:14

Jeremiah 31:3 assures us that our Father God “has loved us with an everlasting love.” He does not promise to love us if we fulfill His expectation of us, if we never fail, if we never sin. He does not promise to love us only in prosperity and in youth and in health but “even unto old age and gray hairs,” Isaiah 46:4, He has promised to lavish His love and protection upon us.

Since you are precious in His sight, let today be the first day of the change YOU make in WHO YOU ARE IN YOUR OWN EYES—and in so doing, you will set the course of your future on a bright and hopeful path of light and truth and joy and love. The Lord who loves you will assure your hopeful expectations, for He has ways beyond yours to establish the good things you will for yourself when you allow your mind to latch onto the HOPE YOU HAVE IN CHRIST!

You do the part you can do—change your mind and change your heart and change your outlook—"LET THE WORDS OF YOUR MOUTH AND THE MEDITATION OF YOUR HEART BE ACCEPTABLE IN THE SIGHT OF THE LORD WHO LOVES YOU," Psalm 19:14—THINK AND SAY HIS WORDS OF TRUTH AND FREEDOM—and allow Jesus to do His part to change the things you cannot change.

Even a prison is not the same thing to God that it is to man. Just as nothing of life's trials are to the Lord what they are to us. One of God’s finest servants was languishing in a Saudi prison for merely possessing a Bible! He was beaten and tortured and scheduled for execution but this was not the same impossible tragedy to God as it was to him. To him it was an inevitable, unfortunate, victory of the enemy who would destroy him to prevent the future ministry he would have. To God it was a small thing to reverse the dictates of evil men, to have the King of Saudi Arabia pressured by public opinion abroad to set this godly man free at the 'midnight hour.' Yes, at the midnight hour he was released from his death sentence!

Peter, in chains, awaiting execution had friends who were praying for him. When the angel came and guided Peter through the locked prison to the home of his friends, they thought they saw a ghost because his release was an impossibility in their minds—even as they were praying for him to be released! But it was not an impossibility in God's mind! (See Acts 12:1-18).

Whose mind will you have while you are in your prison? Will you presume you're helplessly trapped? If you do, you are obviously in good company—in the company of men of profound faith but whose faith did not allow them to see beyond man's limitations to God's unfathomable power! Or will you allow yourself to hold fast to the assurance that the One who has come to “set the captive free,” (Luke 4:18) the One who has already freed you from “death, hell and the grave,” (Hosea 13:14) the One who has already set you free from the worst thing that ever had you bound—your own sin—will also set you free from the circumstances that currently hold you in their grip!