Drive them out of your mind

Then the Israelites were about to enter the promised land, after 40 years of hard life in the desert, God gave Moses some instructions that would guarantee their “ever happy after” if they would faithfully obey to those instructions.
We are not about to conquer a piece of land but many of us are about to enter into a newness of life in the presence of God, after years of hard life on our own, and the same instructions are as relevant today as in Moses time. “If you fail to drive out the people 
who live in the land, those who will remain will be like splinters in your eyes and thorns in your sides. They will harass you in the 
land where you live” (Numbers 33:55)
The Promised Land means today our life with God and there are other occupants in our hearts and minds trying to challenge our decision and spoil this great relationship with God.
The people who lived in the land, referred by God, are today doubts and fears, complexes and insecurities abiding within you and, from time to time, acting mainly when you need to make decision that will affect your life forever.
The interesting point of all is that God commands the Israelites to drive them out. God did not do the job for them. They needed to make the decision of not compromising and accepting those foreigners to remain in the land. The same is applicable to you: you can pray and ask God for strength, but it is in your hands not to compromise with doubts and fears, not to accept complexes and insecurities and chase them away of your mind.
How can you do it today? First, you need to know your rights, you need to know your grounds and that comes through reading the Word of God, making God’s thoughts your own.
Then, knowing what God has prepared for you and empowered you to conquer and achieve, you must not only confess your faith but put it into action, into battle by fighting and driving out every negative word, thought, feeling that opposes to what God has promised. Your thinking should be straight: God promised and if I only believe, I will get 
to it. But’s, maybe’s, if’s cannot abide in your land.
Remember, if you allow them to set a tend in your mind and live side by side with you, these deceitful thoughts and feelings will be a constant threat in your life and will lead you to settle for less, much less than what God has in store for you.
Marcia Pires