Defeating the Giants in Your Mind: Spiritual Authority for Lasting Breakthrough
Success in our lives is often predicated on our ability to resist the temptation to view ourselves as inadequate in the midst of a huge promise or a tough situation.
The spirit of inadequacy is a devious evil artist who spurs us to paint self-portraits that are purposely, disproportionately brushed to present us as midgets in a land of monsters.
For example, Moses sent 12 spies into the Promised Land to develop a plan to inhabit their inheritance. But 10 spies came back with a bad report: “There we saw the giants… and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight” (Numbers 13:33 NKJV). Consequently, the Israelites became terrified and refused to conquer the land. Ultimately, all the Israelites who were delivered out of Egypt and miraculously crossed the Red Sea on dry land died in the wilderness, except Joshua and Caleb. The irony of the situation is that 40 years later, when the children born in the wilderness finally entered the Promised Land, they didn’t encounter a single giant for 370 years, and then a teenage boy (David) killed him with a rock!
Points to Ponder
Inadequacy painted 10 spies as tiny, cartoon grasshoppers who were staring at the Promised Land through the eyes of fear. They superimposed their perspectives of themselves on the people of the land. Yet the truth is, they were at war with ghosts—monsters hiding under their beds—invented by their own sense of inadequacy and exaggerated by their intense fear. Ultimately, those ghosts that haunted them destroyed their destiny!
Truth is the ultimate ghostbuster. It destroys the unbelief that grows in inaction. Inaction anesthetizes courage and rocks radical faith to sleep. But truth is a powerful weapon against fear, which often masquerades as wisdom, when it’s actually a homeless coward unwilling to live in the shelter of responsibility and perseverance. God has called us to live by faith, to trust Him with our whole heart, and to act on truth. Everybody in the world knows what it’s like to be afraid, but the dogs of doom stand at the doors of our destiny. In other words, fear is often a demonic dog that barks when we get close to our Promised Land!
Scriptural Meditation
Romans 8:31-39
“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring charges against God’s elect? God is the one who justi- fies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, but rather, was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or trouble, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? Just as it is written: ‘For Your sake we are killed all day long; we were regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’ But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Insight
Paul made it clear that God’s got us, and if He is for us, who can be against us? I once heard T. D. Jakes put it like this in an online sermon: “God didn’t send Goliath to David to kill him; He sent him to reveal Him.” Meaning to reveal Himself—the giants in our lives are there to reveal God in us, who wants to work through us to defeat the enemies around us. If you’re in a tough place, before you reach out for help, reach up for Jesus. He’s right there, ready to carry you through the valley of the shadow of death.
Activation
Storming the Gates
“Enter His gates with thanksgiving…” (Psalm 100:4).
Get a piece of paper or journal and write down two things you are thankful for.
Truth Infusion
“You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).
Write down something here that the Lord tells you about how He feels about you. Trust that He will tell you something new every day because His love for you is endless.
Meditate
“This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night…” (Joshua 1:8).
Think of a time that you felt inadequate. Were you listening to fear or wisdom? Write down your thoughts about acting on wisdom vs. fear.
Live It
“But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not just hearers who deceive themselves” (James 1:22).
By now, you have written down 11 truths that the Lord has told you about yourself in the daily “Truth Infusion” part of each day’s activation. Go back to each day, and as you reread these truths, let them truly sink in to your mind and spirit. Now, as you go about your day, if feelings of fear or inadequacy pop up, remind yourself of your royal identity!
Question Reality
Jesus said, “So take care how you listen…” (Luke 8:18). Notice this doesn’t say be careful what you listen to. Instead, Jesus said be careful how you listen. What does it mean to listen with care? Allow me to use an analogy to explain this principle. Everyone in the world speaks with an accent. When we hear someone speak with a different accent, we are convinced that they’re the ones with the accent. We not only speak with an accent, but we also “see and hear” with an accent!
Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). The Greek word for truth here is alētheia (Strong’s G225), and it means “reality.” Many people live in a virtual reality because the lenses of their lives have been damaged or are dirty. For example, if you wear glasses and you suddenly sneeze, you might get boogers all over your lenses. Now the way you see is affected by what’s on your lenses. It would be easy to think that every- one else you see has boogers on them, when in fact your reality has been altered because your glasses are dirty.
There’s a great practical example of this in the world of aviation. Pilots can experience a condition called spatial disorientation. In severe weather, this condition can cause pilots to feel as if their plane is upside down and rising, when in fact it is actually the opposite. If the pilot trusts his feelings, he might then turn the plane upside down and point it toward the ground, thinking he is leveling it out. This usually results in the plane crashing into the ground! The pilot experienced a virtual reality—it looked real, felt real, and seemed logical—but it wasn’t real. The pilot would have been fine if he would have believed his instruments instead of trusting his feelings.
Our core values are the lenses of our soul. They are the foundational principles of our lives, by which we view reality and determine truth. Core values are the lenses that determine the way we see life. They are the interpreters of the events in our world. When something happens to us or around us, our core values dictate what we think about it. Our core values determine which circumstances in life we attribute to God. They are the pilots’ instruments and gauges, or the glasses by which we see and understand life’s circumstances.
If our core values are actually true, then our lenses are clear and we are likely living in reality. But if our core values are distorted, what we hear is not what’s being said, and what we see is a distorted perspective. Therefore, being careful how we listen means discerning if our core values are real, accurate, and true.
Points to Ponder
Unresolved trauma, unforgiveness, and demonic accusations are some of the most common ways our core values become distorted. In my own life, I had two abusive step- fathers who distorted my reality. Their violence in my life skewed my perspective of fathers and authority. My distorted core values said, “Fathers shouldn’t be trusted, and authority is used to control and manipulate people.” There were boogers on my core value lenses. This created attitudes of mistrust and disconnection with people whom I desperately needed in my life. I tried to “right” my plane and “level” my trajectory, but I trusted my feelings instead of the gauges of truth. Consequently, I finally crash-landed on the island of isolation.
Scriptural Meditation
John 8:31-32
“So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, ‘If you continue in My word, then you are truly My disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’”
Insight
Freedom begins with knowing the truth. Jesus said, “If you continue in My word…you will know the truth.” Reading the Bible is the prerequisite of knowing the truth, which is the path to liberty and peace. When I suffered my nervous breakdowns, fear was continually dictating my reality. I finally determined that I would believe the Bible and doubt my fears. I read and memorized large portions of the Scriptures. Every morning, I put those verses on like glasses, and I relied on them to define my reality. Mine was a three-year journey to the Promised Land of peace. Consequently, I never returned to the land of bondage.
Activation
Storming the Gates
“Enter His gates with thanksgiving…” (Psalm 100:4).
Write down two things you are thankful for.
Truth Infusion
“You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).
Write down something here that the Lord tells you about how He feels about you. Trust that He will tell you something new every day because His love for you is endless.
Meditate
“This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night…” (Joshua 1:8).
Do you “see and hear” with an accent? Ask the Lord to show you what circumstances in your life have affected the way you view the world, and then note them here.
Live It
“But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not just hearers who deceive themselves” (James 1:22).
Based on what the Lord has shown you today, take action to bring closure to any unresolved trauma, unforgiveness, or demonic accusations against you. For example, my two violent stepfathers distorted the way I viewed fathers and authority. To clean the “boogers” off my lenses, I had to forgive my stepfathers and choose to believe that there are good fathers in the world. You may have people you need to forgive too, so you can clean off your lenses. (If you need some guidance on a forgiveness prayer, refer back to Day 16.) How are you going to work toward cleaning off your lenses this week? Write down your plan.
Finding Your Superpower
There’s a famous story in the Bible of a young man named Gideon who was living a life of fear and trepidation. The Israelites’ archenemies, the Midianites, had oppressed his people to the point where they despaired of life itself. Gideon was hiding in a winepress, beating out wheat, when his life suddenly took a dramatic turn for the best. An angel from the Lord visited him, proclaiming, “The Lord is with you, valiant warrior” (Judges 6:12).
But Gideon, disheartened from years of defeat and anguish, replied,
“O my lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, ‘Did the Lord not bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and handed us over to Midian” (verse 13).
The Lord had already had enough of Gideon’s cowardly countenance and blame shifting:
“And the Lord looked at him and said, ‘Go in this strength of yours and save Israel from the hand of Midian. Have I not sent you?’” (verse 14).
But Gideon had lost sight of his superpower and had become obsessed with his poor family pedigree. He argued,
“O Lord, how am I to save Israel? Behold, my family is the least in Manasseh, and I am the youngest in my father’s house” (verse 15).
But the Lord was done with Gideon’s small-minded, fearful approach to life:
“Yet the Lord said to him, ‘I will certainly be with you, and you will defeat Midian as one man’” (verse 16).
Ultimately, Gideon supernaturally defeated Midian with an army of only 300 men!
There’s much more to this amazing story, but most of the drama involves God trying to convince Gideon that he has to let go of who he thinks he is, so he can embrace his God- given, supernatural purpose. At one point later in the story, God got so frustrated with Gideon that He had him sneak down into the enemy’s camp to hear what they had to say about him. Gideon got there just in time to hear an enemy soldier relating a dream to a fellow soldier:
“‘Behold, I had a dream; a loaf of barley bread was tumbling into the camp of Midian, and it came to the tent and struck it so that it fell, and turned it upside down so that the tent collapsed.’ And his friend replied, ‘This is nothing other than the sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel; God has handed over to him Midian and all the camp’” (Judges 7:13-14).
Points to Ponder
It’s imperative that each of us get our eyes off the things that disqualify us from being a superhero in God, and find our divine superpower! Maybe you feel you were born in the wrong family, race, or country. Yet in God, you were born to be a superhero! Got weaknesses? When we are weak, then we are strong. Too young to be a superhero? Josiah was 8 years old when he became king of Israel. David was around 15 years old when he killed a 9-foot, 6-inch giant with a rock. Think you are too old? Moses was 80 years old when he led 2 million Israeli slaves through the Red Sea, to freedom. For that matter, Caleb was 85 years old when he finally entered the Promised Land and took the land of the giants for himself.
Scriptural Meditation
Luke 9:1-2
“He [Jesus] called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all the demons, and the power to heal diseases. And He sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to perform healing.”
Insight
You were created to walk in the power of the Holy Spirit. You were predestined to win—equipped with the supernatural gifts to succeed in life, and given authority over all the power of the enemy. You should hear what the enemy has to say about you! The devil is terrified that you will discover your purpose, tap into God’s power, and carry out your mission to destroy his evil works.
Activation
Storming the Gates
“Enter His gates with thanksgiving…” (Psalm 100:4).
Write down two things you are thankful for.
Truth Infusion
“You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).
Write down something here that the Lord tells you about how He feels about you. Trust that He will tell you something new every day because His love for you is endless.
Meditate
“This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night…” (Joshua 1:8).
Read the following scriptures, and then write down what each scripture says about what God promises to give us.
Psalm 29:11
Psalm 138:3
Isaiah 40:29-31
Luke 10:19
Acts 1:8
Ephesians 3:16
2 Timothy 1:7
Live It
“But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not just hearers who deceive themselves” (James 1:22).
What do you need to let go of so you can embrace what God has given you that you just listed from Scripture? In other words, what mindsets or thought patterns are holding you back from your supernatural purpose and divine destiny? Write down your thoughts, and then act accordingly as you go about your day and week.
