Brain Farts

Come on, we have all had them at some point! Brain farts. That moment when you walk into a room and completely forget why you went in there. Or, when you got home with the groceries to find you didn’t pick up the one thing you really needed. Even pregnancy does weird things to a woman’s brain! I’m just saying it, girls, so you can feel better that you aren’t alone in the baby-brain fog. Cordless phones—actually, anything not tied down was likely to find itself relocated to either the fridge or the freezer. I distinctly remember the fridge ringing at some point. As I investigated, I discovered that I had shelved two cups of coffee in there, along with the phone!

How we think has a huge effect on the physical body, our mental well-being, our performance, our relationships—everything. Proverbs 23:7 says that as a man “thinks in his heart, so is he.” We become the people we imagine ourselves to be, whether victims or victors. If we imagine ourselves as winners, champions, over-comers, prosperous, and healed, that is who we will be! However, if we imagine ourselves as sick, poor, and defeated, then that is what we will see in our lives.

The Power of our Thinking

While our physical circumstances may change, there is one thing that is unchanging or absolute: Jesus! We are who God says we are, we have what He says we have, and we can do what He says we can do, if we can only wrap our minds around His Word enough that we allow it to transform us (Rom 12:1-2).

Circumstances change, storms pass over, and scars heal, but unless we take time to deal with the aftereffects of trials in our souls, we can remain stuck in them long after they have finished.

For example, elephants taken as a calves and chained to tree, with nothing more than a bicycle wheel on a rope to scare them, learn not to pull on the rope to get away. Fear of that bicycle wheel will keep the elephant bound to the tree long after it has become full grown, more than able to break free.

Grasshopper Vision

In Numbers chapter 13, twelve spies were sent to spy out the land that the Lord was giving them. The spies went on a recon mission to devise a plan to take the promised land: not if they could take it, but how. The report that came back, though, was less than optimistic:

“³⁰ Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, “Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it.” ³¹ But the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we.” ³² And they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, “The land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature. ³³ There we saw the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.””

Only Joshua and Caleb could see past the problems. The others had grasshopper vision, which, by infecting those around them eventually stopped them from inheriting the promises, too. Caleb and Joshua had a different spirit within them—they were victorious in their minds first. They were “how-to” people, not “if” people. They decided that they were well able to go in and possess the land that the Lord had promised them!

Overcome!

Overcoming grasshopper vision begins with a decision to look beyond the circumstances of today to the future and the promises that the Lord has already set in motion for us. There may be giants in the land, but we are well able to overcome them and possess all of God’s promises, with Jesus!

3 John 2: “Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers.”