Daily writing prompt

If you were going to open up a shop, what would you sell?

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There are many thieves that constantly strive to steal our mental wealth — the riches of inner peace, contentment, satisfaction, joy, appreciation, gratitude, harmonious relationships, and self-control. Most of us humans have never learned to successfully set up a security system to fully protect our inner wealth. Instead, we’ve allowed ourselves to be robbed blind of various aspects of our mental health.

The first step to getting our mental wealth back is to recognize what we have lost. If we don’t know what we’ve lost, we won’t know what we need to get back. Many people proudly say: “I’m good! I’ve not lost any mental health!” But their personality and insecurities say the opposite.

The Bible gives some very practical information about how to safeguard, defend, and secure your mental wealth: “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:3-5)

For Christians the real battle isn’t physical. It’s not an external fight. We’re not called to fight against people, political ideologies, or world views. We’re called to an internal fight — within our own heart, mind, and soul. We don’t use human weapons or physical weapons. We use spiritual weapons that have divine power to demolish the internal strongholds and arguments that try to keep us from a growing, surrendered, personal, intimate relationship with the living God. We don’t try to take over a nation’s government. We fight to take captive all the thoughts within us and make them all be obedient to the risen Jesus Christ.

Some powerful but inner weapons are direct, personal revelation from God (listening to His internal voice), surrendering to and obeying His inner presence by doing His will instead of our own, being consistently led by the Spirit, and persistently resisting temptation, the devil, and wrongful (impure) thoughts, desires, and feelings. These mighty weapons are too often ignored.

The rock of direct personal revelation from God is higher than I am! The rock of Spirit-given revelation (1 Corinthians 2:10) brings supernatural light and divine insight. Spirit-spoken words burn in the heart. (Luke 24:32) They enable us to say, “I was blind but now I see.” (John 9:25) Refuse to settle for the pebble of mere human teaching and mental analysis of Scripture. Ask God to give you the giant, life-empowering rock of miracle producing inner revelation. (John 16:15-19)

Words only heard or read
Without revelation
Are spiritually dead.
They’re just thoughts in the head.
Being fed mental bread,
Alone is not enough.
We all need to hear words
That are directly said —
Spoken within the heart —
From the true mouth of God.
Learn to be Spirit-led
And revelation fed!
(1 Corinthians 2:10)