Think a minute…Years ago I visited someone in prison. I was deeply saddened as I watched all those people locked up, living their life inside a small room. Although many of us have never been convicted of a crime, tragically we still live our entire lives locked inside a prison. Saddest of all, we are the ones who build the walls that hold us inside. So, we’re not free to live our life to the fullest. We become our own worst enemy through our own wrong thinking about ourselves. Someone said: “When you lose your confidence, you lose the battle.”
In zoos a baby elephant is tied with a strong steel chain to a large post. At first, the young elephant pulls and tries to break free from the chain…but finally it gives up and stops trying. After that, only a thin rope is needed to tie that huge, powerful elephant down and stop it from moving anywhere. For the rest of its life that elephant believes the lie that it is too weak to break that thin little rope, so it never even tries again.
Sadly, in a similar way, if I let myself believe I cannot go any further in life, even though it’s not true, then I won’t. That is the destructive power of believing the lies of my own wrong thinking about myself. The enemy I am fighting is in my own mind.
But it can happen the opposite way too. “Nearly every man wastes part of his life trying to show abilities he does not have to get other people’s approval he cannot keep.” A popular T.V. program in the U.S. is American Idol. It lets ordinary people show their singing talent. The problem is some of them have no singing talent at all! Yet they fool themselves into believing they do! Remember: “You can’t put in what God left out.” Don’t waste your life trying to succeed at something you were not made to do.
There’s a saying: “The best psychologist is the one inside you.” But that is only true if the One living inside you is your Creator. Only He can help you know and become the person He designed and made you to be. Won’t you ask Jesus to help you break out of the prison of your wrong thinking and sinful living? If you ask Him to forgive and free you, He can help you start seeing and being all that He made you to be. Just think a minute…