What you think ultimately dictates what you believe, what you believe determines your actions, and your actions define your character. Many of you have heard this quote,

"Sow a thought reap an action. Sow an action reap a habit. Sow a habit reap a character. Sow a character reap a destiny."

What you think is extremely important and can keep you either in or out of God's will for your life.

One thing we can't afford to do is allow our thoughts to go unchallenged. We need to have an anti-virus system that will catch anything that's entering our minds to crash our belief in God's goodness.

Romans 12:2 Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is. (NLT)

A believer who does not have a renewed mind will think and act just like the world. The Father understands that if He wants to see us radically and permanently changed then He has to take time to work on our thought life so He can change the way we think.

What you think will shape who you are. Listen to what the Lord says:

Hebrews 8:10 This is the agreement I will make with the people of Israel at that time, says the Lord. I will put my teachings in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. (NCV)

Did you notice that God works from the inside out. He changes us from the inside out. He knows that if he wants to see permanent transformation he must deal not only with our hearts but also our minds.

Proverbs 23:7 For as he thinks in his heart, so is he. "Eat and drink!" he says to you, But his heart is not with you. (NKJV)

What you have come to think in your heart has shaped the real you. The world calls this positive thinking. But to us who believe it's a renewed mind. We're allowing God to get our thinking straightened out, or, you might say, we're starting to think like Him.

Strongholds

2 Cor 10:3-5 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (NIV)

You can't punch Satan with your fist or hit him with a baseball bat or put a gun to his head. Those types of weapons don't work. He and those under his command are spiritual beings, so we must come against them with spiritual weapons that God has given us to fight with.

What's a stronghold? When the British and French came to America they built fortresses. A fortress was a place of protection; supplies were stored and plans were made behind the safety of its walls. Operations were launched from those places, and if something went wrong they would fall back to the fort.

In this passage, the Spirit of God is telling us that he has given us weapons to destroy demonic fortresses. These are the places the enemy is hiding. Our job is to destroy any thought, imagination, idea or philosophy that comes against the true knowledge of God. We are told to take these thoughts captive.

A stronghold is a thought pattern which the enemy has established in our mind. Those thought patterns dictate what we believe and how we act. It's the place from which he launches his operations against us.

Strongholds are houses made out of thoughts - Francis Frangipane

So how do we demolish one of these fortresses, capture every thought, and make it give up and obey Christ? Every single one of these arguments and ideas is based on the lies of the enemy. You can't destroy a lie until you have the truth. When the truth invades that stronghold then it begins to fold like a house of cards.

In Thailand they have a system where they catch young elephants and train them through crushing, which uses pain, hunger, sleep deprivation, etc. After a while, they can tie the elephant to a little stake in the ground and it will never try to escape because it thinks it can't.

In other words, they condition it to believe a lie. But if it ever knew the truth it could simply walk away. Believing the truth brings freedom. You see, God knows this; that's why He spends so much time writing his truth in our hearts and minds. When we allow him to replace demonic mindsets with His thoughts, His way of thinking, then true and lasting transformation is ours.

We are to capture these thoughts and make them give up and obey Christ. The way we do this is very simple: just bring these thoughts to the throne and ask, "Jesus, what do you say about this thought?" He can snap every lie like a twig. Take that thought right to Him and watch it surrender.