Justification of thought
I give glory to God for all gained knowledge. Earlier in my walk, I always talked about things I have discovered, done, etc. Or things that people have shown me. Now when I look back at some of my earlier posts, it was God doing it all along. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one
can boast.” Praise the Lord.
After talking with a few folks, who have confirmed via their own thought patterns, it has become obvious that when the flesh battles with the Spirit, the flesh wins when I justify the matter at hand. The Spirit wins when I decide to just be (Ultimate Choice).
The best way to explain how this happens for me is when my soul is sucked into a tennis/ping pong match of thought… PING: The righteous choice and thoughts of the Spirit: “Your body is a temple”. PONG: The bad choice and thoughts coming from the flesh: “It’s ok to do it because <y>” (PING = the Spirit ministering to my soul, PONG = the flesh ministering to my soul). Check out this awesome e-book on Spirit vs Flesh to understand this further. Ultimately, I would have to make the choice. In order to stop the justification, it was necessary to first break free from this ping pong game and become a spectator.
For example, quitting smoking. When I wasn’t a spectator and I was a player of the game, I would see the cigarettes coming at me to play this game. My spirit says that I don’t like to smoke and it doesn’t feel good in my temple. (ping!).. The flesh says that I’m addicted, I like smoking, I’ll just smoke a 1/2 one, I’ll quit one of these days, I’m smoking natural tobacco, etc. (pong!).. This is the ping pong match. When I chose to smoke, the Spirit lost the game and I would be pushing Him to the side, being selfish, choosing the flesh’s desires. When I decided to not play the games any longer and just be, I then stood back as a spectator. I surrendered the self, which allowed the Spirit to explode into focus. So then, I just be.. I don’t play the game, I just be.. watching the thought patterns ping pong back and forth. Analyzing. Seeing what thoughts are what.
For any smoker, these will ring very familiar: “Oh no, i need a cigarette, I’m having a withdrawal. I am addicted. I can’t help it. I’ve done well so far, I’ll just have a couple of puffs. Day 3 is the hardest! I haven’t had one in a week, I’m ok now if I have just 1. I’m stressed, one won’t hurt. I got this beat, now I can smoke one here and there whenever I want..” and so on.. These are just words of justification that are like a vacuum and get us back into the ping pong match. They get us back into playing a game, which is a struggle. If we make the ultimate choice and surrender.. and allow the Spirit to explode into focus, then the game doesn’t exist. It is very simple: I don’t like smoking, so I don’t smoke. Withdrawals, addiction, getting all nervous, eating, etc was part of the ping pong match. The game doesn’t exist when the choice is made to not allow the thoughts of the flesh to materialize. See what they are, they are not of what the Spirit’s desires are…and they were not my desires either. So it was a no brainer… Let the Spirit play the game, be the battle warrior.. I can be in peace…
When I play the games, I sometimes choose to surrender my own desires and let the Spirit’s desires fill me… Thus an automatic choice would take place, and I would be happy/glorious. Sometimes… I would justify the choice, and I would end up in some form of a negative emotion/situation/thought. Then I decided, via help from the Lord through my friend Jim, that thinking of choices on every aspect is just sucking me into trying to do this on my own. I join the battle in my mind, the ping pong match. This takes me away from my special place. I decided to not play the game…so that there is no losing. I made an ultimate choice to just be w/ the Spirit. Just be.
And now, I see a force that wants me to play the game (the thought forming)… a vacuum, sucking me in. I see a ping pong ball coming at me and I don’t pick up the paddle to hit it back. I just step aside, yield, and let those balls keep on passing me (yielding to the thoughts versus engaging them. Once the thoughts are engaged, it’s a struggle to not snowballl them). Without picking up the paddle, I’m winning 100% of the games, as long as I just be. Some times, I fail. But I also recognize almost every time when I picked up the paddle to play (most of the time via justification… some of the time because I wasn’t playing attention), and I will drop the paddle immediately. The next ping pong ball coming into my court just goes on by. I still win.
Thought is a powerful thing. Thinking of thought, analyzing it, watching the formations of thoughts, and making wise choices before the thoughts are into full bloom (yielding/stepping aside from them ahead of time) are the things that have helped me to begin to move away from justifications. Once a thought of the flesh is in full bloom within my mind, then the justification game starts and it’s much harder to make the individual choice the Spirit prefers on that specific scenario. Sometimes I recognize the forming of a thought in time, and sometimes I don’t catch it. If I could throttle the speed of my mind down to 5% of normal speed, it would make things easier. 
If I have learned one thing, is that I use to think way too fast. I thought things were automatic.. I was like on auto-pilot. Once I started to look and analyze how the body, thoughts and emotions interact.. The world opened up.
Praise the Lord for giving me the strength, knowledge and wisdom to see the deceptions.
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[…] “God created this marijuana for a reason. It’s all natural. I can smoke it!” – I justified my actions by creating a god to be who I wanted, so I felt good about smoking pot. “God just wants me to be happy! It’s ok.. I’m not hurting anyone.” – Again, justifying my actions so I can feel good about what I do. The list goes on and on… I continued to believe in a higher power, a god, but the god that I believed in was fully based out of selfish motives. This god of mine that I created so happened to fit perfectly into everything that I did in life. Worth repeating.. I created a god that so happened to fit perfectly into all that my life was. I fully justified myself. (Check this out: Justification of thought) […]
I am determined to use this teaching to help stay off of hte anti-depressant medication that I had been taking. I got off of them prior to my third trimester of pregnancy with my 2nd daughter. It was hard getting off of them and I really dont’ want to start up on them again.
Previously I had been on them for 10 plus years. My doctor having told me that I had been clinically depressed most of my life along with general anxiety disorder.
Like I said, after reading this article, I want to try as hard as I can to stay away from the meds. I don’t think I need them. I have already been able to turn my thought life around. I was spiraling into depression and despair again recently. Wishing I could go back in time and undo some decisions I had made. These decisions, however, were ones that I made while praying for God’s will to be done. So, obviously, he opened the doors that I wanted him to open, but now I was wishing them closed after the fact! BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU PRAY FOR! I told myself, I can’t keep doing this. I have to live with the decisions that I have made! So I have decided that what God has done is good for a reason and all things will be worked out by him for good! I will defeat negative thoughts with a firm stand against satan – telling him he is not allowed in my mind! I am going to focus on Christ and him alone! I am going to go forward to the work that he has for me to do. I am reading the bible more and more, getting God’s word into me. I am not going to give in to despair and depression. So far, it is working!
Thank you Joseph for this teaching! And thank you God for revealing it to Joseph!!
– Andrea
Rochester, NY
Hey sister, I want to throw some advice out here.
Please do this with the dr.’s guidance. I have watched people walk in an underdeveloped faith, without the dr.’s guidance, and end in negative consequences. They ended up causing more damage than good and in the very end, it hindered their faith.
I have watched someone confess to me after he didn’t get a healing that he was doing righteous works for God. He tried to walk as perfectly as possible in order to get a blessing of a healing. This was righteous works of men in order to get something in return (the root of their action), and such works are but filthy rags. The root has to be Christ and Christ alone.
But, with that said, I will encourage you. It sounds like you have been off of them already because of your pregnancy. So that’s a bonus! Work with your doc on this. But here, this will help you – http://serious-things.com/healing-why-we-often-miss-it/
They are short writings by a Pastor. He sees many people miss their healings, he explains why, and what to do about it.
Yes, if you are watching the mind (Jesus said to be watchful and pray), you will see the attacks of the enemy. Please, take your time and read this too – http://serious-things.com/tactical-spiritual-warfare/ (there is a link at the bottom of this too.. weapons of warfare)
I believe these 2 links I have supplied will be of great assistance to you. I just seen my one friend go off of some serious medicine and it caused brain damage. :( I have heard of others losing their legs cuz of diabetes (dropping meds, believing in their healing), and so on. Please, be wise beloved..
in love,
-joseph
Wow Joseph, this blows my spirit away. in a good way. The wind of God is strong here. Just catch it, and ride it!
Andrea, I have been through these kinds of decisions before. Never take any pressure from others who tell you it is not spiritual to be on meds. This pressure is not of God, it will weight you down. It is wisdom to be on meds if God wills it for now. It is wisdom to be off meds if God wills it for now. And now is all that matters in these choices. The choices are made in the now. So listen to Joseph, there is wisdom there.
What I am hearing through Joseph is to no longer make decisions on my own, hoping that God will help me make the best decision in its own time. I mean, for example, should I take meds today or not? Which, I could ask is God’s will? I need to know before bedtime, God! Help me make this decision God!
No. What I hear now is to make the decision to see God continually. Then God can help me make the decision in its own time. Don’t concentrate on the choice, concentrate on God through Christ. Use earthly (your doctor’s and others) knowledge to the extent that it is God’s will to use that knowledge. Be practical and also of the spirit. Both are possible! One day you can very well be free of the meds, but maybe not quite yet today. But if God delivers you today from the need of the meds, great!
Blessings, Mark
amazing timing on your comment. This topic is very old and you jumped in on it? Why? How? lol. God moved you.
I had a long response typed up, and my page refreshed.. Lost everything I was saying. I will probably type up a new post soon.. It’s about this thing we call faith.. v. waiting on God.
I will say this.. God has already spoken. When we are looking for guidance it is because our knowledge is limited on what God has already said on the topic. There aren’t new words from God needed.. it’s just our knowledge is limited on His character.
As a bro in the Lord put it.. He talked about our knowledge in God is like plots of land. Some people have smaller plots, some have larger. Within the knowledge we have of God, His character, His will.. we can walk freely and make the choices. If we don’t know what He has said, there isn’t a new thing He will speak.. we have to seek Him out in the scriptures, sermons, daily devotions, etc.
I.e. Paul. He knew it was God’s will to spread the gospel. He didn’t pray, wait, look for a new word/guidance when traveling. He even said.. “And we decided to go to ___ city.” He knew it was God’s will.. he just went. BUT… there were times when the way he had chosen was made difficult. The Spirit stopped him.
So what I get out of this is something like the easy button on staples. When we know His will.. I.e. the great commission. We just do it. We make decisions with the provision God has already provided and we do it. If we start to go in a direction, things will get hard.. There will be stumbling blocks. I.e. you make a phone call, the phone dies. People don’t call you back… You’re dwelling on it and you stub your toe.. He knocks ya upside the head.. lol. Basically.. the way will be rocky and difficult. We can always FORCE our will against God’s will if we don’t pay attention to His stumbling blocks. But when we are walking in His will.. things are provided… and things move smooooothly.. peaceably.
Hi again Joseph,
I think I see what you are getting at. I do not want to imply that all one needs to do to hear God whisper His will to us is to “see God”, or to be in His luggage so He will carry us always with Him, or to always ponder upon His face and glory majesty. There are no magic formulas.
Rather, it is only by being sustained by His presence that whatever the best answers are to our life situations, they are more easily found when we are bathing in His mystical waters. When we are focused on His grandeur within and without, then there are fewer hindrances to finding our proper course in life. And again, we do not focus on God whispering His will to us, so that we may know and apprehend His will. Rather, we focus on His portrait being painted upon our souls and spirits. The answers come more easily then, but when and how and whether they come in a fashion we understand is a different issue. If you can find the answer to your question in the Bible, then take this road.
No formulas! Only the Holy One living in His waters within us. This is the river of life within. God whispers if He whispers. If there is no whisper which we detect, there is still an answer. Just do your best to do what you believe God would have you do. It is no more complicated than this.
Bottom line, don’t make following God’s will a difficult thing. Don’t make ascertaining His will a hard thing. If there is a way that seems best, then this may be the best. If it is not, you will still learn along the way. Learning is more important than being more perfect in choosing His way and will, because it is often difficult to know His perfect will for every situation. And that is okay. God doesn’t make this life easy for us always and He doesn’t expect us to know exactly what His path for us is always. It’s okay. Just do what we can do in the way which seems to be right. If we have a verse to back up what we do then great!
Flowing with you in glory, Mark
When it comes to hearing that still small voice.. For me, it isn’t really a voice.. It’s an unction. Something pressed on inside of me.. on my soul. And I will hear something. I talked to Andrew about this recently.. and it dawned on me.. There was a common word that almost every unction began with.. “Go.” That’s for me though..
I have watched some people in ministry use their emotions as God’s guidance.. I can’t say too much about it being right or wrong, but what I can say is that I watched how people said “Well, I just feel it.. It’s hard to explain. I have to do this thing.. it’s in my heart”.. and I watched what they attempted to never materialize. If it was God moving them, I’m sure it would materialize. But then again.. who am I to rationalize God? I don’t know.. Maybe God is working on their obedience/faith/patience? Maybe He just wants to see if they will listen, He’s buidling them up… and when they hit a snag, to build up their trust and patience? I cannot peer into the unseen and see all..
It’s really hard to say sometimes.. Like you said, I think it’s for each person. As long as it lines up with God’s character and His will as revealed in His word.. we’re good. When someone wants to do something and I don’t find it to be biblical.. I would encourage against it. BUT.. I know a man that was fully directed by God to marry a prostitute… Would you encourage such? I wouldn’t.. but if they said “God directed me..”, I’m standing back and praying for them.
I like to look at my life as an example. Like with those leaves.. I received the confirmation and I ran without God. Much stumbling around, wasting gas. Was it God’s will for me to go help others and shine the light of Christ. Sure, I don’t see any challenges with that. But, it was all me.. I can’t say there is anything wrong with that, but to say “God led me..” that’s a whole other story. It would be best to say that I walked in what I thought was God’s will for me that day.. It didn’t turn out. Or did it? :) It’s a great testimony/lesson for me. :)
I think our stumbling around trying to find God’s will is great. The baby learns by trial and error to walk. Our stumbling is as it should be. If our emotions are not directing us properly we will hopefully figure it out at some point. I would possibly place a difference between being led by emotions and intuition, however. But don’t ask me about how to be led by intuition. No experience there.
Many have been the times I have thought I heard God, and it did not work out. But it did! God worked on my anger about being led astray. And there is plenty to work with there. It’s all good if we’re endeavoring to board the glory train. Everything works out to the Glory.
I think your leaves worked out great! You learned that when following God, or what you believe is God, that you need Him to flow in with the details sometimes. If you didn’t learn that, well, eventually, somehow, all this experience will teach you god things. How can our seeking Him not work out?
Failure is success, when seeking God. There is no failure for those who are in God.
I like your example about the prostitute. This really sums up God’s interactions with man in the Bible. “Abraham, sacrifice your son.” God was always transforming the spirit game. How would we react to someone saying they were swallowed by a fish?
I believe it is God’s will for us to endeavor to be led by Spirit even if we never get it completely right even once in this lifetime. Even if we never have a “success”. The success is in seeking. Expect “failure” at hearing God if that is freeing for you! But pursue God. Be a happy stumbler.
For me, I’m opening up to God’s fish games. Mark
I wanted to respond to your comment concerning Paul, because it relates to all of us.
When Paul decided to go to various cities, we don’t know what led to that decision. It could have been as simple as Paul saying “Hey Luke (or whomever), where do you think we should go next?” And Luke might say Corinth, and Paul might say “just what I was thinking”. And it might have seemed well to those others who might have been traveling with him to go to the same city. If that’s how Paul was often led, by seemingly ordinary ways, then that is completely of God. But I’m sure he prayed about such things…Jesus prayed all night long at times. But I’m also sure Paul didn’t fret if there was no seemingly miraculous sign given him concerning where he should go. However he was led, it was good.
Paul knew that God’s whisper did not have to be directly in his ear. The whisper could be as simple as thinking (and saying), “yo, saints and dudes, Corinth is like, only 25 miles down this road. What do ya’ll think?”
The whisper need not have to have much to do with us, because it is not about us, it’s about God. (But don’t forget his dream about Macedonia.)
The sheep hear the shepherd’s voice. But how that voice speaks is going to be different for each of us. But we should endeavor to hear it.
On my way to Corinth, Mark
Oh, Joseph, it is not so miraculous as you think with me. All this is in the recent comments section, so I saw it there!
What is miraculous is that God has given the ability to the human to communicate of His treasures over these long distances. How else could the words of God be communicated all over the earth? As Jesus said, the gospel will be preached to all before He comes, and this internet godtoy I have in front of me helps in that regard.
Being led by God is a murky subject for me. Is it God’s will for some to be led more by a godly intuition, or for others by godly reasoning, or by other godly means of seeing His will? What even is godly intuition? Perhaps the women of God could help us men figure that out. But I have no positive experience with this as being a tool of God’s leading for me.
But Joseph, have you not written some time ago of God telling you to rake some leaves, and you go out to the four corners of the earth to find the proper lawn of God’s choice, and as you pull in to your driveway, God says “those leaves”, meaning, God wanted you to rake your lawn and not the rest of the world’s lawn at that time? So you know that God can whisper, right? But we can not rely on the whisper, I think. We can rely on God to help us make our choices, even if those choices are made mostly from godly reasoning, or reasoning which is in line with God’s view of life on earth.
However one is led, the way God leads me is in no way better than the way God leads another. If God leads one by His whisperings, and another by illuminating their godly reasoning to help make a choice, it is all of God. Their is no inferior Christian, or inferior way of being led if one is seeking God’s will in all.
And so I might say to those who struggle to know God’s will for their lives, the struggle is part of God’s will! I know the struggle from a very close vantage point. You are not out of God’s will if seeing God’s plan for you is difficult. You are only in less than God’s will if you are not seeking His pleasure. It is those who seek who shall be rewarded.
And so I want to leave Andrea and all those who are seeking God’s will with the knowledge that the seeking is the important thing. The finding is only icing on the cake.
One way Andrea can approach her med taking is to keep taking meds until she sees some godly reason, informed by correct scientific knowledge, informed by experience with the meds perhaps, to taper back on it. But this advice is not universal. If you are in a rush to please God by not taking the meds, then this hurriedness is not of faith. God will not pressure. It is best to honor the body which God has made by being cautious at times. The correct choice will leave you in peace. Seek the peace that is beyond measuring; if your choice is correct you will not be in frustration with the results. You will not be in the position of thinking, “why did I try to do this God’s way, and now look at the mess I’m in with my body”.
And the best advice is, prudence. I do not want to be responsible for someone not taking their meds and then having them do permanent damage to their vessel. This is not God! And this is why I say also, heed the seriousness of Joseph’s words. Do not try to impress God by going off your meds. Do not let your faith ruin your temple! Do no harm to your temple! Obey God, not what some call the faith message!