“How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?” King David wrote this in Psalm 13:2, but it describes perfectly how we all feel at times. The battle to retrain our brains is intense. We wish God would just solve it already. In doing so, however, He wouldn’t be doing us any favors.
He created us to rule with and for Him (Gen. 1:28) and is now preparing us to reign with Christ when He returns (2 Tim. 2:12). If He always stepped in and waved His perfection wand over our lives, He’d actually be crippling us. Where and when do you want to learn about how to make the choice to follow Him – the practice field or the big game? Off stage in your sound proof room or on stage before a sell out crowd?
Humanly speaking, I wish He would simply restart my brain. As a child of God who knows better, I know David’s answer is right on the money. “But I trust in Your unfailing love, my heart rejoices in (meaning the struggle is still raging) Your salvation. I will sing to the LORD, for He has been good to me.”
His God came through for Him in the past. He will come through for him in future as David praised and sang in the midst of the battle. We can too. Remember, when you’re weak He can be strong for you.
Set Free No“W”ww

You only control your choices, not others. This is an important truth to drill into your thinking.
We don’t know when Jesus’ knew that Judas was the one who was going to betray Him. Did He know when He first chose Judas to be one of the Twelve or much later? He definitely knew by the time John 13 rolls around. We also know He knew what Scripture had to say on the subject: He would be betrayed by someone in His group.
Knowing this, He could either waste His time worrying about who the traitor would be or spend His time listening to and following His Father everyday everywhere. He chose the later. And so can we. Jesus could only control His choices, not Judas’. And so can we.
The pathway to see our lives changed is to focus on our choices, which is the choice to live by the FREEdom process in the Spirit’s power everyday everywhere. Worrying about what others will or will not do only leads us to repeating the sinful behaviors that destroy our freedom.
Choose to use your biblical tools today. Remember, you only control your choices, not others’.
Set Free Now“W”w

“You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.” What an awesome insight. God designed the world, reality, to work a certain way. The reality He created is one where we have freedom of choice. His reality also states that those choices will have either positive or negative consequences attached to them. There is freedom in choice, but not in consequence.
You can say you don’t have a problem or that everyone else around you does. You can suck it up and hope for the best. You can even say that what you’re doing is okay, even though the Word clearly says it’s not, because, “Jesus wants me to be happy, right?”
You can close your eyes to what’s going inside you and fly blind. Or you can acknowledge that something is not right and work through it using your biblical tools and walk in freedom.
Jesus never said to deny your problems or challenges exist. He simply said to stop handling them your way and begin to work through them His way.
Use your freedom of choice to work through what’s going on behind the behavior/situation that’s robbing you of your peace and joy using your biblical tools. Use your freedom of choice to experience the good stuff Jesus offers to those who do.
S“E”t Free Nowww

Do you trust Jesus? Be careful how you answer. You’ll discover the real answer in how you handle waiting for results. Remember the truth: it takes time to retrain your brain. Well, how then do you handle waiting on change?
Most of us have been taught that we should expect to see some kind of immediate results when we put in any kind of effort. This kind of thinking spills over into our walks with Jesus and opens the doors for our drugs of choice to walk right in to rescue us when we don’t see those results. We want our lives changed … yesterday! We want our drugs gone. We want to experience the good stuff.
This isn’t the life change process that God set out in Scripture. We are not to trust in what we see at the moment, but in Jesus and His Word. Psalm 20:7-8 states, “Some trust in chariots and some in horses (what they see), but we trust in the name of the LORD our God. They (those who trust in what they see) are brought to their knees and fall (aka suffer the consequences of their drugs of choice), but we rise up and stand firm.”
Will you keep practicing your biblical tools everyday everywhere regardless of what you see? If you can answer yes, you trust Him. If the answer is no, then it’s time to ask the Spirit to increase your faith in exercising the truths He’s given you even when it doesn’t seem like it’s working.
Set “Free” Nowww