"Coming into agreement"
I never fully understood what this meant when I would hear people say it but I just realized there is an entire process behind.
We hear many “voices” every day: our own, other peoples, satan's voice and God’s voice. Some of these messages are good and some are bad. Some are right and some are wrong but one thing remains constant: satan is always speaking lies and God is always speaking truth.
We must determine and discern what we are hearing. Is it a lie or a truth based on what God’s word says about his children (us)?
Satan constantly wants us to believe lies and he sends messages into our brains.
These lies can be “bad”…
- "You suck at this, You are too skinny, you can never figure this out, this is too hard, you are not a good writer, you are not good enough, you are not pretty enough, you are not strong enough, no one likes you, you don’t have what it takes to be successful, you are alone."
These lies can be “good”…
- "You are really good at this, you are probably better than everyone at this, you know so much about this already so you don’t need to learn more, you are really good looking, you don’t need to give that ugly dorky person your time, my time is very valuable I can’t waste it on those types of tasks, I already know the answer to that problem, Wow this is easy I don’t need to work at it I can just coast"
These messages can be sexual…
- Past images of sexual encounters or pornography, horrible perverted thoughts about family, friends, children, animals or strangers, or violent thoughts
In the past I used to think that when I would have these types of thoughts that they meant that I was a bad or evil person. I would condemn myself instead of simply discerning that the thought was not consistent with God; His truth, or the person I want to be so therefore the thought needs to be rejected in order to receive God’s truth (about myself and others).
Many thoughts are from an external source, some are from within; either way they will not define you if you learn to reject them. The easiest way to reject them is to give them to Jesus for Him to cleanse you. He will then change you into that glorious person He created you to be.
Romans 12:2 “Do not change yourselves to be like the people of this world, but be changed within by a new way of thinking. Then you will be able to decide what God wants for you; you will know what is good and pleasing to him and what is perfect”.
The only way Satan can control us is through our minds. It is really genius on his part! He takes a horrible thought, plants it in our minds and then makes us think that it came from us and therefore that means we are something shameful (in the case of a 'bad' thought) or something so great (in the case of a 'good' or prideful thought). This may cause us to stop a certain activity that could bear a lot of fruit for the kingdom or makes us do a certain bad activity like stop our learning and growing process by making us think that we know everything or heard it all before.
So "coming into agreement" means we accept and believe lies (planted by Satan, circumstances or others’ words, etc.) and we then decide that is the way we feel and accept it as our own thought. Do you see how damaging this can be?! It is like steering a boat through some channels by opening and locking certain doors ultimately making the boat end up somewhere completely different than was intended. Satan can’t physically move the boat down the wrong channels, he can only affect the decision-making thought process of the person steering the ship.
Once we come into agreement with one of Satan’s lies, we then start to live our lives and make decisions out of that lie. So let’s take one as an example: “I am gay and there is no way to be healed of homosexuality”. Let’s say you have come into agreement with that lie. How are you going to live your life? Are you going to seek healing? Are you going to seek out churches to love and help you through your struggle? Are you going to seek out groups of men to mentor you? Are you going to pray fervently for the Lord to walk you through your healing journey quickly?
No. It's highly unlikely you are going to do any of those things. What are you going to do? You are going to find a group of people who believe the same lie. You are going to seek out other relationships that are going to confirm that lie. You are going to have conversations with other people who are going to confirm that lie. You are going to separate yourself from anyone who doesn’t agree with you.
False agreements and lies happen on all levels of the human psyche. It doesn’t have to be about something as major as your sexuality. It can be about small things like trying to create a document for work, or a homework assignment. If you think you are not smart enough or don’t have what it takes to complete the task that is going to dramatically affect your ability to complete the task.
Some lies you came into agreement today and some lies you came into agreement as a small child. Some lies are not about you but about God (for example, “He helps everyone else but not me”) All lies can be broken and truth invited in.
Once you have come into an agreement with a lie how do you come out of it? That’s the easy part! Living it out and continuing to call truth into the lie is the hard part. Here’s an example of how I receive healing for this. Make sure you say all of this out loud if you can…
1. Ask the Lord to bring to mind what lie you have come into agreement with
Father, will you please reveal to me what lie I believe that is making me feel this way or about this task I am working on etc.
2. Once it is brought to mind, renounce the lie in the name of Jesus Christ. “I renounce the lie that I am damaged goods or unclean.”
3. Once the lie is renounced ask the Lord what truth He would like to replace it with. This is my favorite part and it brings so much healing!
I follow this process almost daily whenever I am feeling stressed or overwhelmed. You can never ask for the Lords truth too much!
