"Dear friend, I pray* that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well." (3 John 2, *Swedish translation: "I hope").

This is not only a letter from John to Gaius but Almighty God speaking through John, saying: "This is my will for you, this is my plan for your life." It is inspired by the Holy Spirit and written to believers in all ages.

When John says, "I hope," he is referring to the heavenly hope, to that which is God's will and which certainly will come to pass.

God wants all to go well with you and for you to be in good health. Your soul and body are joined together and your soul and spirit are too. If you want all to go well with you, certain things must happen with your body, soul, spirit and, above all, your mind. Your mind is the place where God reveals Himself to you but also the place to which the devil comes.

THE BATTLE FOR YOUR LIFE TAKES PLACE IN YOUR MIND

God is positive and when you and I are saved, we are lifted from a negative kingdom into a positive kingdom, where all God's promises in and through Jesus are "Yes" and "Amen." But false doctrine and human traditions and ways of thinking want to bind us, confuse us, make us timid and keep us in negativism. Our own attitudes, pressures from the world and negative experiences shape us more than we think. All of this leads us far away from the potential God has placed within us.

We have an enemy who tries to limit us and make us begrudging and contemptuous of ourselves so that we miss out on God's blessings. The spirit of this world is begrudging and negative. Of course there is positive behavior on the surface but underneath there is a nagging negativism and we do not even have to go out into the world to find it. Something within us is instinctively negative. We do not need to do anything to let it in. It comes naturally and functions automatically. We often think about all the failures we have been through, instead of thinking about all the victories we have experienced or the fact that we are still alive in spite of the defeats that may be behind us.

How do we think and what do we think about? Our mind is the meeting place for two different forces. Those forces are definitely not equally strong. Almighty God has all power in heaven and on earth and the devil is defeated, disarmed and powerless.

Man has been given authority from God but if we let go of our authority, the enemy has the freedom to march right in. The enemy attacks the mind. Success and victory have their beginning in the mind but so does defeat.

THE MIND IS PRECIOUS

When sin entered Adam and Eve and separated them from God, it began in their minds. Eve saw, thought, reflected and listened with her senses before she and the man, who had the final authority, fell.

It had begun in their minds and it is the same for you and me. A good thought comes and brings you closer to God. Then an evil thought comes and pulls you away from God. You must realize that your mind is not a neutral air space where anything can be permitted to fly, for both in creation and in the new creation. God has given you authority over your thoughts, authority over your soul.

Everything one does not hold on to falls. The things in your life that you do not hold on to fall. The Bible says to watch over your mind, to guard and shield it. It says to put on the helmet of salvation to protect something very precious to you—your mind. The battle for our minds is greater than you and I might think.

All that you are today is the result of what you thought yesterday. If you do not like what you are today and do not want to be the same person tomorrow, you must change your way of thinking. It can be tough but, thank goodness, we have the Holy Spirit who wants to help us. The Bible calls it the renewing of the mind (see Romans 12:2). This cannot be done in an instant, through the laying on of hands or through a particular spiritual experience. Of course, these things may help, but sometimes we tend only to want the spectacular, to have quick results without having to do anything ourselves.

In the world, people put on headphones and turn up the volume to escape having to think. Christians can do the same, saying, "If only I could attend a wonderful meeting so that I could forget everything else, things would be okay." But attending meetings, no matter how wonderful, is not enough.

Jesus took so much time with His disciples to change their way of thinking. If you want revival, it is not the way the world thinks which must be changed but the way you think. The world cannot change; the people of the world are spiritually dead. They will be saved and they will be awakened but nobody walks up to a dead person and commands them to change. You and I are the ones who need to change.

You might think, "But I already changed once. I read a book and took on a new way of thinking. I've changed." I've got good news for you—you're going to have to change again.

The renewing of the mind is an ongoing process in our lives. If you have failed, you must make up your mind to get up again. Step by step, you will see your mind become freer and your thoughts and reactions change. There is great potential in that freedom.

If, through the Holy Spirit, I can depict that potential for you, something will happen in your life. You will leave that which is selfish and carnal and start living more in the spirit, and you will see how unlimited your possibilities are.

CHANGE WILL LEAD YOU TO YOUR DESTINATION

One could ask why we have a mind in the first place. Sometimes one could almost come to the conclusion that we have one for the purpose of being frustrated, confused and attacked, but no, we have our minds for something far greater than that.

The title of this book is The Creative Mind precisely because of the fact that there is a great strength and ability in your mind, especially when it is united with your inner being, your spirit and heart.

The problem is that our minds, even though we are born again, can become so preoccupied with, bound and influenced by the negative. But remember that a single positive God-given thought can chase off an entire army of negative thoughts! When your mind is delivered, you will be delivered, and there will be no limit to what you can do.

You and I are extremely limited when it comes to our experiences, which is why we cannot shape our lives according to them. Do not let your negative experiences shape your life! A thousand thoughts can come—"Look at what happened to him and see how that went." Life in itself is not fair. Negative, traumatic things happen and can cast their shadow over you. But that shadow of negative experiences can either remain over you for the rest of your life or be the starting point for a miracle.

God can take the power out of difficult memories. God can change a difficult circumstance and work through that circumstance. God can do something with you as a result of it. The circumstance was not from Him but He can turn it into a miracle because He is God.

The question is, how did you relate and react to that circumstance? Has it colored, hindered and controlled you? The Bible says in Romans 12:2 that we should not conform to the pattern of this world. This world says, "Don't hope for too much, because you'll only be disappointed. Be satisfied with the small things."

The devil wants to take what is great and make it small. Then he wants to take what is small, what is not even worthy of attention, and make it so great that your life becomes centered on it. Either he takes something negative which torments you or you become so nostalgically attached to something that you become blind to the other things around you. Your soul becomes limited, impeded, controlled and you become unhappy. What gets your attention gets you.

OVERCOMING OR JUST SURVIVING?

Once, when I was preaching in Bangladesh with Dr. Lester Sumrall, we took a day off and went to the zoo. There we came upon a leopard in a cage. It just stood there, quivering and shaking, a terrible sight. It was mentally sick because people had taken this proud, wonderful animal, stuck it in a tiny cage and given it hardly any food. The leopard was sick because it was not in its right element.

I think we Christians become strange if we are not in our right element. We start thinking strangely and acting strangely. We stand there, still a leopard, still a Christian, but something has gone wrong. Outside the element we were created to be in, we become depressed and limited. Our brain begins to adjust to this and come up with strange ideas of what it means to be a Christian, instead of getting into what our calling is, which God has prepared for us and which is much greater than any of us can think or imagine.

As a young Christian, one can be very enthusiastic about God's plans for the future. But God does not want you to be enthusiastic only to become more and more disillusioned as the years go by. You believed in God but there was an attack against you and now you say, "I don't have the strength to believe. Let me live on the grace, just for a short while. Then, when I'm stronger, I can start living in faith again."

Do you hear how wrong that sounds? The righteous shall, in all circumstances, live by faith. Faith is not something you pump up. It is something that carries you through the most difficult of circumstances. Faith is not something you shout about in a meeting. It is you being silent when all hell breaks loose around you and simply holding on to God until you get through. And when you do get through it, you realize that it was He who held on to you.

It is when you land in a crisis that you should have faith. That is when you need it. Otherwise, disappointment and confusion come, making you anything but joyful in the Holy Spirit, and you stop overcoming. But God has something wonderful for you and He can rekindle the flame in you and make you happy, enthusiastic and free.


Rev. Dr. Ulf Ekman is the Director of the Board for Word of Life Ministries. Together with his wife Birgitta, he travels extensively around the world establishing centers for leadership training.

Reprinted with permission from The Creative Mind by Ulf Ekman, Ulf Ekman Ministries. All rights reserved.