Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1998

From: Dwight Jester

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Subject: Bringing Every Thought Into Obedience to Christ

This is the article I wrote and gave out in Church Sunday before last. Please meditate on it and let me know what you feel the Holy Spirit is telling you about the material. Also, if you find any misspellings, bad grammar, etc., let me know. In Him, Dwight

BRINGING EVERY THOUGHT INTO OBEDIENCE TO CHRIST

(2 Cor 10:5 KJV) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

As I woke up this morning, The Holy Spirit began to speak to me about bringing every thought into captivity into obedience to Jesus Christ.

I had been dreaming about a group of people who could not reach God because their thoughts were all wrong. They had tried everything to figure out why they could not reach God and have him do for them what they were trying to get done. It was not clear what they were trying to accomplish. However, it was extremely clear that they were not reaching God.

Each of them had prayed fervently to the Lord to reveal what the problem was. They had discussed it among themselves. They had sought outside advice. None of it had worked.

The Lord began to bring to me the above verse about bringing into captivity every thought to Jesus Christ. I thought. What does that have to do with what I am dreaming? The Holy Spirit said, "Everything!" He said, "If you do not bring every thought, including all your bad thoughts that you don't want to bring, then I can not straighten them out and bring them into obedience to Jesus Christ. Your effort to control your own thoughts or to try to figure which ones are good and which ones are bad is god-playing and will not allow your thoughts to come into obedience to Jesus."

My first reaction was to recoil at the idea of bringing all your bad thoughts to Jesus, After all we should clean our thoughts up first, then bring them to Jesus. Wrong! We should bring all our thoughts to the Holy Spirit, let him clean them up, then he can bring them into obedience to Christ. Obviously, a lot of our thoughts are not going to make it to Jesus, they will be removed before they get to Him.

Many of the thoughts that do not make it will be thoughts that we think are good and acceptable thoughts. Some of the thoughts that we think are bad will be acceptable and good to the Holy Spirit. It is not our place to decide. It is our place to give all our thoughts to the Holy Spirit and let him deal with them.

The Holy spirit anointed me to release all my thoughts to him so he could clean them up. I began to yield whatever thought I was thinking to Him. I could sense he was taking them and doing whatever he needed to do with them right then. The Holy Spirit then told me to write this material down.

The idea of bringing every thought into captivity has the idea of bringing a gift to someone and giving it to them with the idea that you are not going to come back and take the gift back. You have given the gift and you leave it with the idea it is no longer yours and you have no intention of taking it back.

When you have made the choice to do this, then Jesus and the Holy Spirit begin to give back to you the thoughts of the Father. You have made an exchange of all your evil, bad, faulty and erroneous thoughts that you have operated out of all these years, and God gives you back the thoughts and the mind that is in Jesus Christ.

Why can't we just do this? Why does it have to be such a problem? The rest of the verse answers it for us.

Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God.

The idea behind the thoughts is that we bring them as a gift to the Holy Spirit. The idea behind the rest of the verse is that we cast down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. This is active on our part. It is something we do, and not something we yield. In the name and power of Jesus Christ, we cast down every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and cast down everything in our imagination that is not of God. How do we know what exalts itself against the knowledge of God and what are the imaginations we need to cast down before we can bring every thought into obedience to Jesus?

(1 John 2:22-23 KJV) Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son. Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: (but) he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also.

(1 John 4:3 KJV) And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.

From these verses, we see that the person who exalts himself against the knowledge of God is the Antichrist. Over the years, The Holy Spirit has shown me that the Antichrist has three distinct personalities-I am god, I am savior, and I am judge. Under the influence of the Antichrist, we, Christians and non Christians alike, spend most of our time either being our own god, (or a god over others), our own savior (or savior for others), or our own judge and condemner (or judge and condemner of others). Therefore we are greatly influenced and controlled by the Antichrist to do these things against ourselves and others.

There is only one solution to this problem, casting down the spirit of Antichrist. We are to cast down every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. Do we do this in or own power? No, we do it in the name and power of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Prayer:

Jesus, I surrender myself completely to you as my Lord, Master, and King, and in your name and by your authority I cast out the spirit of Antichrist from my human spirit. I choose for you to come into my spirit as Lord and Master and drive out the spirit of Antichrist and all his helpers. Jesus, remain in my spirit and never let the Antichrist come back again. I ask the Father to do this, in Your Name. I thank you and praise you for doing this for me right now.

Casting down imaginations.

The next thing we are to do is cast down imaginations. All imaginations are not evil and bad. Anything revealed to us by the Holy Spirit that comes from the Father is not bad. It is good, and comes down from the Father of Lights. True imaginations, or images come down from the Father and they are revelations of truth about the Father, Jesus, The Holy Spirit, the angels of God, His kingdom in heaven and His kingdom on earth. He gives us true images about who Satan is, who his angels are, who his demons are, what his kingdom is and is not, and who his people are that he controls on earth. He gives us images about ourselves, who we really are, how righteous, or evil we are, and what we need to do to grow up into all things in Jesus. He gives us true images about other people who they are, how they fit into Satan's kingdom, or how they fit into God's kingdom. This is the good side of imaginations.

The bad side of imaginations is what Satan through Antichrist does to our imagination. He gives us false imaginations of the Father, Jesus, The Holy Spirit, the angels of God, the Kingdom of God in heaven and on earth. He gives us false imaginations of who he is, how much power he has, who his angels are, his demons, and the false nature of the people whom he controls on the earth. He gives you false imaginations about yourself, who you are what you need to be doing, what your goals should be. He gives you false imaginations about other people, who they are and how they fit into Satan's kingdom.

From this we see that we have two sets of imaginations. Obviously, God is talking about casting down false imaginations, getting rid of them so that we can live in the true imaginations that come from the Kingdom of God.

Prayer:

Jesus, I surrender myself completely to you as my Lord, Master, and King, and in your name and by your authority I cast down every false image from my imagination. I choose for you to come into my imagination as Lord and Master and cast out ever false image I have about God, about You, the Holy spirit, the angels of God and the kingdom of God in heaven and on the earth. Cast out every false image I have about Satan, his angels, his demons, his kingdom in the heavenlies and on the earth, and the people he controls on the earth. Cast down every false image I have about myself in every area of my life. Cast down every false image I have about people. I ask the Holy Spirit to come and fill me your true images you want me to have about Your kingdom, Satan's kingdom, myself, and other people. I choose to live out of the true imagination of God and not the false imagination of Satan. I pray this in the name of Jesus, my Lord and Master.

Once you have prayed to cast out the spirit of Antichrist who exalts himself against the knowledge of God, and to cast down all false imaginations that the Antichrist has filled your imagination with, then you are in a position to pray to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. Understand, you will never bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ until you have dealt with casting out the Antichrist and casting down every false imagination you have. Your thoughts are controlled by the Antichrist and the false images he has given to you. Therefore, you will never be able to give your thoughts to the Holy Spirit until you deal with these things first. Once you have, you can pray this prayer.

Prayer:

Holy Spirit, I bring every thought to you, the bad and what I think is good. I surrender them all to you. Take them and separate the true thoughts from the false thoughts. Bring all my thoughts into obedience to Jesus Christ until I know that the mind that is in me is the same mind that is in Jesus Christ. I will think like the Father, feel like the Father, and choose like the Father at all times. I can not do this in my own power, but only in the power of the Holy Spirit and in the power of Jesus my Lord, Master and King.

Begin to praise and thank the Father, Son and Holy Spirit for what they have done for you. Let the anointing flow.