I believe an essential part to receiving victory in our lives over negative circumstantial evidence, all the cold, hard facts has to do with our mindset from day to day. And the bible confirms this truth:
Prov 23:7 For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: KJV
“As a man thinketh” means the daily thought processes, daily focus, and the daily images in a person’s mind of the circumstances in their life, the circumstantial evidence that seems so real. These circumstances, circumstantial evidence we call facts thought on and focused on long enough get into a person’s speech which means that person prophecies what the facts and the circumstantial evidence look like and this only creates more failure, destruction and can lead to death.
God tells us we can have what we say but generally God’s people are saying what they have which are the negative circumstances, the negative facts. In other words they are prophesying by their words more of the problems because that is what they are talking about on a continual basis instead of what they really want. I mean, if you are around most Christians for just a short period of time they will be telling you about their bad health and talking at length about the circumstantial evidence that is defeating them. And most blame their situation on someone else or something else and lots of times the government and they never realize they are their worst enemy cursing themselves with the words that come out of their mouth as a result of their focus, what has built up in their minds and imagination. Focusing on the negative facts, every little detail and then verbalizing those thoughts produces that very outcome. There is a saying that you are what you eat. It could also be said that you are what you focus on and speak.
The Word of God tells us we will prosper in all areas of our lives as our soul prospers.
3 John 2 Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers. NKJV
“Soul prospers” means that our soul (mind, will, emotions, intellect, and imagination) has to prosper first if we are to see true prosperity in our finances, marriage, family, health, business, job, ministry, etc. How does that happen? It comes as a result of meditating God’s Word and any spoken Word of God to us by the Spirit of God. Meditation of the written Word or spoken Word brings change to our mindset and will lead us into thinking beyond what we could naturally expect. Why is that? Because the Word of God is supernatural and not natural and so it brings us to the place where we expect supernatural and not just what you naturally can expect in any given situation. That’s the powerful capability of meditating the Word of God; it creates a right image of everything in life.
Our faith is destroyed by thoughts and reasoning of the facts that are opposite of the Word of God. That’s when our prayers and scripture confessions don’t seem to be working and we get to the place where we think God has failed to do what He promised and the Word doesn’t work. The truth be known, our soul, our emotions, our imagination, our reasoning have been our worst enemy because we learned earlier our spiritual enemy uses what is common to man to defeat us and so he works through our thought processes, our reasoning, using physical senses, physical evidence to prove his point. So our soul prospering in the truth of God’s Word is essential to prayers answered and seeing the fruit of our Word confessions.
Maybe you have prayed for a person and they died or you prayed for another person who didn’t get any better or another time a physical problem returned, what happened? It could possibly be what I am telling you. Maybe the person you prayed for just couldn’t shake the doctor’s diagnosis (a fact) from their mind that they would
“have to live with this the rest of your life.”
And there are lots afraid of the “c” word or cancer. Once they hear cancer then it is a death sentence! The words of a doctor are powerful in the minds of lots of people.
Maybe this person you prayed for had a family history of health problems and that got a hold of their thoughts and imagination. These thoughts and images of this played out in their mind and destroyed the faith of the individual. We may not pick up on what a person really is thinking all the time after we prayed for them; but their mindset plays a major part in either empowering faith or destroying faith and producing a good or bad outcome. If you have encountered seeming failed prayers for someone; this study will prove to be of utmost importance to you so that you continued to pray for others and get results.
You may have heard people say, “That person is so heavenly minded they are no earthly good.” Haven’t you heard that? But the truth is a Christian can be so earthly minded they are spiritually bankrupt in their thinking and this can cause a lot of prayer failures, scripture confession failures, and so on. I mean, if every Christian would take account of how much time they are thinking natural thoughts they would come to realize just how carnal they really are in their mind. Continually having natural thoughts destroys the power of supernatural perception of things and supernatural results.
The bible talks about a carnal mindset and a spiritual mindset. What is the difference between a carnal mindset and a spiritual mindset and does a Christian have to make a choice between the two?
I believe my detailed writing of the difference between carnal and spiritual thinking will help you to see this area could be the very reason you haven’t seen any difference in your outcome. So let’s start with the answer to what is the difference between a carnal mindset and a spiritual mindset.