In order to walk with the Lord in victory, it is always important to remember where to focus your consciousness. A person in great pain can go to a hypnotherapist and be put under hypnosis so that the pain can be borne or completely forgotten.
Persons with terminal cases of cancer in extreme pain, can, under hypnosis, live through the last stages of cancer and die without pain. This is not done as a spiritual thing, it is one of the things possible for the human mind to achieve and is normal on a human level. It is by the process of hypnosis.
Christians relinquish their faith too often because they focus their conscious thought upon their problem continually, rather than on the Lord.
If we could only turn our minds upon the Lord, as David said in the midst of all his difficulty, My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed … Psalm 57:7. This meant that he was not concentrating on his troubles; his mind was on the Lord. Another time he said, I have set the Lord continually before me; because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Psalm 16:8.
If you think upon your problems, they have a way of becoming aggravated. On the other hand, you can try to suppress them and the more you try, the more those thoughts will pop back up. What you have to do is ask the Lord to help you.
Philippians 4:6–8 is an outstanding passage in the New Testament to direct the positive concentration of your spirit and your mind upon the things of the Lord. Refuse to dwell upon the things of anxiety or the things of defeat.
If we want to walk with God, we dwell upon His promises with rejoicing; we dwell upon the good ministry we receive, we don’t let go of it. A lying symptom could come, some false thing, a lie of the devil, discouraging circumstances: if we’re not concentrating on them, if we’re not allowing our conscious mind to focus on those things, but rather upon the Lord, they pass by.
It is like your range of vision. When you look at an object, you can see a certain span, but then it starts getting fuzzy and vague. Speed reading trains people to develop that span. The eyes do not have to move in short spurts across the page; they can be trained to see whole lines at one time, so that the eye scarcely shifts. Everything else is put out of the picture.
If you can have a focus that is that restricted and restrained, you can also have the same thing in your spirit. What is past cannot be seen unless you turn and look back and remember it. You cannot see the future unless you contemplate it with worry, anxiety, or anticipation. But the present, and even only certain areas of the present, can you focus on. If you want to walk with God, just keep looking up, right at this present moment. Believe the Lord so that you are not focusing on the past or the future but you are walking with the Lord a day at a time.
If you can stay in victory over a thing for two hours, you can overcome it for two days. If you can overcome it for two days, you can overcome it for two weeks. If you can overcome it for two weeks, you can overcome it for two months. If you overcome it for two months, you can overcome it for two years. If you can overcome it for two years, you can overcome it for two decades. Overcome it for two decades, and you can overcome it for the rest of your life.
Think of it—it all comes down to two hours—if you can do it. At the end of two hours, stop, praise the Lord, draw strength, and do it for another two hours. That is the way you can overcome anything that hits you.
Walk with the Lord right now. Do not focus on the thing or worry about it, keep your eyes on the Lord. You have enough problems without carrying all of yesterday’s load and without anticipating tomorrow’s problems. “Each day has enough trouble of its own,” Jesus said. “Do not be anxious for tomorrow” (Matthew 6:34). Just take care of today, and rather than worry about the troubles of today, put your mind wholly on the Lord.
Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee. Trust ye in the Lord for ever: for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength. Isaiah 26:3–4. Focus on the Lord, and the problems will not defeat you because they cannot rise up and wipe out your faith.
Faith is a matter of focus. It is not just wishful thinking—faith is an action. Love is an activity—it is an action. It is more than some ideal. If you are going to believe the Lord and love Him, do it actively. Keep expressing yourself in it, and the focus on other things will disappear.
I am in favor of people who walk with the Lord becoming quite emotional at times. When I say “emotional,” I mean expressing it with real joyfulness and real love to the Lord. It is a beautiful thing.
Research in the Kinsey studies showed that a husband and wife are almost totally oblivious to everything except one another at the moment of love. When I read that, I thought: “Oh, how I wish we could be that way with the Lord.” Don’t you wish that we could love the Lord so much that we would not hear anything the devil says? We would not be aware of anything around us. If that can be done in just a simple function of life, what could be done if the human spirit could be so focused on the Lord that everything else would be blotted out?
We would see Jesus, and nothing else. We could dwell in that state. The saints of God in the past were as capable of worrying as we are; but the thing that counted was that they came to such an intense relationship with the Lord. Not for a few moments, but day after day they had a consciousness of the presence of the Lord. They practiced the presence of the Lord. The Lord was so real to them that everything else faded out. They did not hear what the enemy had to say; they did not respond to circumstances that would be confusing. They opened their hearts wholly to the Lord.
Believe that God can help you walk with the Lord. Lose sight of everything else and see only His presence. Do not focus on the problems of the past—they are gone. Do not try to borrow from tomorrow. Just walk with God today! … seek first his kingdom and his righteousness … Matthew 6:33. Keep your heart focused on the Lord. Everything else will be all right.