Conquest of the Mind (Part 1)

By Elbert Willis

When an individual receives Jesus Christ and is born again of the Spirit of God, he instantaneously becomes a new creature in Christ. His spirit is reborn and God comes and taber­nacles Himself in that person’s spirit in the form of the Holy Spirit. From that moment forth that person is a Christian. His spirit is totally saved and he is redeemed. However, even though he has been born again, the body and the mind can still be out of line with the Word of God. You can love the Lord Jesus with all of
your heart and still have a sick body, a frustrated mind, and be unable to walk in total victory in every area of life, if your mind is not renewed by the Word. There is no defeat in Jesus, He is the Conqueror and the Overeomer, and He says we are born of Him. Therefore, through in­heritance from our spiritual birth rights, we are also conquerors and overcomers in Christ Jesus. We have natural birth rights from our earthly parents, but we also have spiritual birth rights from our heavenly Father. What we need to do is to learn more about the birth rights from our heavenly Father and begin to live in that realm, because being limited to the natural realm will continuously bring defeat.

What we are saying is that salva­tion is instant, but conquest of the mind is progressive. It is also the key to receiving revelation from the Word, (through the Holy Spirit), which must be translated into action on our part that God might be glorified. John 16:13 says, “Howbeit when He, the spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth…” The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth, and He has come to dwell within you and me, to reveal the Word unto us.

Revelation is simply a transfer of knowledge from the spirit to the mind. If your mind is continually controlled by Satan through fear, frustration, worry confusion, disappointment, resentment, bit­terness, etc., the Holy Spirit is unable to transfer the knowledge of God to your mind. Therefore, your mind must be conquered by the Holy Spirit of God. Your mind must be reprogrammed by the Word of God so that when the Ho­ly Spirit of God inside of you speaks, you will have the knowledge of the Word in your mind, and then you can understand what He is telling you to do. God wants you to have this revelation from the Holy Spirit within. He wants it to come to your mind so you will know how to act and talk in order that Jesus may be glorified.

The mind is like a computer. A computer is programmed so that it has a certain amount of informa­tion in it. Ever since we were born, the Devil (the god of this world) has been programming our minds. The Bible says in James 4:4, “…the friendship of the world is enmity with God.” This means that much of our programming done by the world was from Satan himself. When you begin to see the truths of the Bible, which are from another world, another dimension, and another Being, they do not line up with the thoughts that have been fed into your mind by this world. Because of this, the first thing you say of the Bible is, “Myth, folklore, imagination,” and your computer rejects it. Your mind cannot understand how waters can part. It cannot unders­tand that it is possible to walk on water; how you can simply lay hands on the sick and say, “Be healed, in the Name of Jesus,” and “they recover” how you can speak in a strange language that you have not learned and yet you are speaking to God. Your natural computer cannot understand how the dead can be raised, or how you could even have two births. That computer of yours has been pro­grammed by the world, and when you begin trying to put heavenly information into it, it rebels. The Devil has planned it that way because he does not want you to ac­cept the truth, the Word of God.

When I first heard of “speaking in tongues” my computer kicked it out. I said, “That’s of the Devil.” I thought it was ridiculous the first time I went to a charismatic meeting and saw people raising their hands. I didn’t go to college and graduate from the New Orleans Baptist Seminary to raise my hands! According to my past programming, that was not to be done in church because it was ir­reverent. It was the same with clapp­ing and shouting in church, my mind had been programmed against it. The first convention I went to was in Denver, Colorado, I §aw arms and legs growing out and people were taking off their glasses because their eyes had been healed.  My computer (mind) said, “How much are they paying them? What kind of trick is this?” It is for the same reason (lack of mind renewal) that people today are having such dif­ficulty understanding the Word of God. They have been programmed by the world. The best thing to do to find out what the world tells you to do is turn around and go the opposite direction and you will be closer to God. That is a key to go by until the mind is reprogrammed by the Word. Until the mind is reprogrammed with God’s language, which is His Word, you will not be able to understand what He is talking about when He speaks to you because your mind is too occupied with the language of the world. You will want to rebuke the Devil because what God speaks is usually contrary to your natural way of thinking, and you will think it is the devil speaking.

Remember, the new birth comes instantly, but the progressive education, retraining and reprogramming of the mind, must be done by the Word of God. You must erase the old and put in the new.  The old mind is filled with fear.  It has been programmed to fuss back if someone started fuss­ing at you. When your mind becomes renewed and someone starts fussing at you, you can say, “Praise the Lord!”  What has hap­pened is a reprogramming. God desires to continue this education program, and the Word and Spirit of God are the teachers. The Word of God is a new subject to a newly born child of God.

The Word of God is a subject from another world which the natural mind cannot perceive.  This is why the natural man rejects the Word of God. They reject miracles because they cannot understand them.  It is easy for me to unders­tand miracles now, but I did not understand miracles ten years ago.  My mind has been reprogrammed.

God wants His Word and Holy Spirit (heavenly knowledge inside of you) to control your mind so you can begin to act like Jesus down here.  Remember, you will not act like the rest of the world.  You are not supposed to be like them.  You have been born twice, and when you die you are going to another place. How can you still act like them?  If you act like them, you are forcing your old nature to reign and rule in your life.  I do not act like the other people out there, and they look at me like I am the one who is backwards.  On the contrary, anyone who does not accept Jesus Christ as Lord is backwards, no matter how smart they are intellec­tually. They can be intellectual giants and at the same time, be spiritually illiterate.  You can have all the knowledge in the world about law and know nothing about the Bible.  It is God’s desire that your mind become reprogrammed by the Word of God.