Play the Right Mental Movies

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Jeremiah 29:11

I can still remember what happened when I visited a lady from my congregation in the hospital. Heather had suffered a stroke that completely paralyzed the left side of her body. As I prayed for her, she lifted her right hand in a gesture of prayer.

Amazingly, her left hand followed suit, albeit slowly. This was something that she had been unable to do following the stroke. By the grace of God, she was beginning to experience healing in her body, with sensations starting to seep back into her left arm.

Within a few moments, though, as she lay in the intensive-care ward, intubated and hooked up to incessantly beeping medical equipment, her left arm started to tremble with strain.

“Don’t worry about praying for a breakthrough,” I assured Heather. Smiling at her, I gestured to one of my pastors who was with me and told her, “Leave the praying to us.”

Then, tapping my index finger on the side of my head, I told her, “But watch your mental movies. Make sure that you play the right movies in your mind.”

What did I mean by that? I was telling her to see what God sees and ignore all the sounds, scents, and sights that her natural senses were picking up in the hospital environment.

I was encouraging her to fill her mind with mental images of herself being healthy, strong, and basking in the love of her family at home. I didn’t want her to keep seeing all the worst-case scenarios in her mind.

Then I said to her, “It takes a thought to heal a thought.”

It was a word that I had received in my spirit for her. For some reason, I just felt like the enemy had succeeded in planting a wrong thought or mental picture in her mind, and that had to be removed and replaced with the right thoughts, pictures, and beliefs that are based on the unchanging Word of God. Shortly after our meeting, Heather was discharged from the hospital and her condition improved.

My friend, if you are being tormented by wrong or negative thoughts in your mind, you need the truth of God’s Word to uproot them. Keep meditating on God’s Word and promises to you.

As you do, the negative, defeatist thoughts that have kept you in fear and anxiety will be replaced with God’s good thoughts to bless you with peace and wholeness in every area of your life. Let His Word give you a vision of a bright future full of hope and good things!

This devotional is taken from the book 100 Days of Right Believing—Daily Readings from The Power of Right Believing.