Most Listened to Bonus Episode of 2024

You are listening to Blessed and Ball Stop, presented by Anchored Media. An entrepreneurship podcast for Christians all about how to make God the CEO of your business. Get ready to be inspired, challenged, but well-equipped to live and build your destiny his way.

Hey guys, welcome to the bonus episode of the Blessed and Bosta podcast. We are starting our book club today. For those of you who have missed the announcements, we are doing a book club right here on the podcast on our bonus episodes where every quarter we're going to read a book together and then we're going to discuss it on the episodes.

Our first book club pick is Battlefield of the Mind by Joyce Meyer. Now this is one of my favorite books of all time. This book has stood the test of time. I mean, it has almost 20,000 five star reviews on Amazon. Like that's how good this book is. So today we're going to discuss chapter one. But before that, let me introduce the book by reading the synopsis of what it's about. And then we'll get right into the discussion.

Again, the title of the book is Battlefield of the Mind by Joyce Meyer. The description says, worry, doubt, confusion, depression, anger, and feelings of condemnation. All of these are attacks on the mind. If readers suffer from negative thoughts, they can take heart. Joyce Meyer has helped millions win these all-important battles. In her most popular bestseller ever, the beloved author and minister shows readers how to change their lives by changing their minds.

She teaches how to deal with thousands of thoughts that people think every day and how to focus the mind on the way God thinks. And she shares the trials, tragedies, and ultimate victories from her own marriage, family, and ministry that led her to wondrous life-transforming truth and reveals her thoughts and feelings every step of the way. Now let me tell you something, Ms. Joyce wasted no time.

My first highlighted point is in the introduction page 10. And I am reading if I give you page numbers, just so you know, I am reading this digitally, not the physical book. So I will try to give you the chapter in a page number that I have to help you get close to it.

So on page 10 in the introduction, Ms. Joy said, I have divided this book into three main parts. The first part deals with the importance of thoughts. I want to establish firmly in your heart forever that you need to begin to think about what you're thinking about.

So many people's problems are rooted in thinking patterns that actually produce the problems they experience in their lives. Satan offers wrong thinking to everyone, but we do not have to accept this offer. Learn what types of thinking are acceptable to the Holy Spirit and what types are not acceptable.

2 Corinthians 10, 4, 5 clearly indicates that we must know the Word of God well enough to be able to compare what is in our minds with what is in the mind of God. Any thought that attempts to exalt itself above the Word of God, we are to cast down and bring into captivity to Christ Jesus.

She's going to go into more detail later about thinking about what you're thinking about, but this just really hits home in the beginning because our thoughts, I feel like we allow them to run free and it's so important to understand that the enemy is very strategic in planting these little miniscule thoughts in our mind and if we're not careful and if we don't cast them out.

and bring them into captivity like the word tells us to, then they can become strongholds. And she talks about that here as well. She said, the devil is a liar. Jesus calls him the father of lies and of all that is false. And that's in John 844. He lies to you and me. He tells us things about ourselves, about other people, and about circumstances that are just not true. He does not, however, tell us the entire lie all at one time.

He begins by bombarding our mind with the cleverly devised pattern of little nagging thoughts, suspicions, doubts, fears, wonderings, reasonings and theories. He moves slowly and cautiously. After all, well laid out plans take time.

Remember, he has a strategy for his warfare. He has studied us for a long time. He knows what we like and what we don't like. He knows our insecurities, our weaknesses and our fears. He knows what bothers us most. He is willing to invest any amount of time it takes to defeat us. One of the devil's strong points is patience.

If you've been listening to me long enough, you know that I believe that one of the secrets to success is self-awareness. And I believe that this doesn't just apply to business, but this also applies to spiritual warfare. If you are self-aware enough to know how your trauma presents itself in a day to day, if you're self-aware to know your own doubts and insecurities and fears and things that the enemy can use and pray upon to defeat you, then that will allow you to

In my opinion, be more strategic in your prayer life and be more aware in the ways in which the enemy is going to try to plant these nagging thoughts. And I love that she emphasized that the enemy is patient because I feel like a lot of the times we are aware of these major attacks. If you lose your job, if you go through a breakup, if you're having strife in your marriage, if you want to have children and you haven't been able to, if your business isn't making money or

Something that is obvious, we can see those things. But the enemy doesn't just use those big efforts to destroy us. He's patient enough to plant these nagging thoughts that we accept as true, and by us accepting them as true, they become strongholds.

So if God, and remember this week, we were talking about how God is calling a lot of you to the forefront and to speak. So if you have always struggled with the insecurity about, let's say, the sound of your voice, then the enemy can plant seeds of people ain't going to hear what you're saying because you sound crazy. Oh, you have an accent. They're not going to be able to understand what you're saying. You shouldn't even cut that microphone on because why do you sound like that?

Oh, you're going to get a bunch of one star reviews. People are going to talk about you. You're going to get a lot of comments. You shouldn't even put that out. Nobody is going to understand what you're saying. They're not going to think God is using you. How can he use you when you sound like that? Like these are those pesky thoughts that the enemy will plant into your mind. And if you accept it, it will become so overwhelming that he is successful at muting you when God wants you to be vocal.

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One of the things that I deal with is giving up control. Like I like to be in control. That's just an element of my nature that can be a hindrance to me doing what God has called me to do. And it can be an opportunity for the enemy. So thoughts that I have to just be proactive about is, oh, God is taking too long. Let me just do it. I might as well just do it myself because God hasn't answered this prayer yet. How long am I going to have to wait?

You really, and these are the thoughts that come. You're really going to just wait on God, but you have bills that need to be paid. You have a mortgage, mortgages. You have things that you need to do, so you're just going to not do nothing. Like, these are the things you're capable. You could figure it out. You could create something and put it on sale and make the money you need for this as opposed to just waiting for God to tell you what's next. These are thoughts that the enemy has used for me.

And these are also thoughts or this is the element of my nature that I constantly keep surrendered to God and that I also constantly keep top of mind because I know that it's an opportunity for the enemy. And so when these thoughts come in, I have to immediately cast them out.

I have to immediately make them subject to the word of God. And a lot of these thoughts or these opportunities that are available for the enemy are a result of trauma of our upbringing. That's why going to therapy, allowing God to deliver us from our past, things like that is so important because if not, all we're doing is leaving ourselves vulnerable to unnecessary warfare.

In the book she gave an example of a husband and wife who were having a lot of strife in their home so much so that the kids were being impacted and one of their kids she said had a stomach condition from nerves because of all the conflict that was happening in the home.

She said that the wife was nagging, argumentative, combative, all of that to the husband. The husband was very passive. He was a pushover, wasn't really walking in his role as head of the household. And the wife wasn't walking in her role of being submitted to her husband and allowing him to lead their family.

And the root of that in the wife life was that when she was growing up, her father was abusive and disrespectful to her, to her mother, but she had a brother who could do no wrong. And that experience created this narrative in her mind that I'm not gonna let anybody push me around. I'm not gonna let these men think that they're in control. And so that's not a healthy foundation for her to be a loving and submitting and doubting wife.

And the enemy was using that to call strife in her marriage. The husband growing up dealt with a lot of rejection. And that made him timid and passive and not showing up where in his marriage, because now his wife is walking all over him. And instead of him taking the responsibility that he has in his home, he just retreats.

And these things are things that the enemy is using to destroy their marriage and to destroy their family because the children also are impacted. The anchor scripture of this chapter is Ephesians 6 and 12, which says, for we are not fighting against flesh and blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world against mighty powers in this dark world and against evil spirits in heavenly places.

So she sets the tone of this chapter and of the book, because this is chapter one, to let us know that this is a spiritual battle. This battlefield of the mind, it's spiritual. It's not about people. It's not about you arguing with your husband. It is about the spiritual, the unseen world, the way that the enemy is using those traumas to destroy you today. So you have to actively engage in this battle.

The victory is already ours. I set this in a message I gave a few years ago. We can't forfeit a fight that's fixed in our favor. This fight is fixed for us to win it. The enemy is already defeated. So imagine we forfeit something that's rigged in our favor. That's ridiculous, right?

So in a book, she of course gives some weapons and one of the weapons being the word. She emphasized John eight verse 31. It says, Jesus said unto the people who believe in him, you are truly my disciples. If you remain faithful to my teachings and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.

Ms. Joyce goes on to say, here Jesus tells us how we are to win the victory over the lives of Satan. We must get knowledge of God's truth in us, renew our minds with his word, and then use the weapons of 2 Corinthians 10, 4, and 5 to tear down the strongholds in every high and lofty thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. These weapons are the word received through preaching, teaching, books,

CDs, DVDs, I'll go on to say podcast and make it more modern conferences and private Bible study. But we must abide, which means continue in the word until it becomes revelation given by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Continuing is important.

In Mark 4, 24, Jesus says, the measure of thought and study you give to the truth that you hear will be the measure of virtue and knowledge that comes back to you. I repeat, we must continue to use the weapon of the word. And as she goes on to discuss, the other two spiritual weapons are praise and prayer. But even praise and prayer are rooted in the word.

So for those of you who are experiencing mental battles in this season, you're experiencing the enemy just really manipulating you via your thoughts and you're tired of it. You now recognize that this is a spiritual battle, that these thoughts are not your thoughts, but they are the patient dispatching of the plan of the enemy to destroy you. The first thing you need to do is to get in your word.

You need to read it and study it and understand it in this. I love this book because it's super scripture heavy. So as I am mentioning these scriptures, I want you to go back and study them. That's a big reason why we're doing this book club because it's not about the book that we're reading. It's about the book that is pointing us back to which is the Bible.

So in the show notes, I'm going to include the link of course this book, but I'm also going to include the link of the scriptures that we covered in this discussion because I want you to go back and read them in your Bible. So that's it for this bonus episode. Again, if this blessed you, leave us a five star review, subscribe, share this episode with the friend. If you don't have the book, get it. We're going to be starting with chapter two next week. I love you guys and I'll see you in the next episode.