Depending on how a door is hung determines if one is entering or leaving a room. For me life has been perhaps both regarding doors: leaving one atmosphere and entering another. But it is not a physical door. The door is in the areas of my mind, which is why the word inwardly is in the title of this entry.

Last piece I wrote was about saying no to yourself. Once I allowed those words to infiltrate my mind, doors a) started closing and b) began to open. Let me explain.

there is so much inner talk we say to ourselves that is not good. It allows the mind to think that nothing good will come, so why bother. Negative inner talk molds us to being stuck in the same ways of doing things, even though experience has proven it doesn’t work. But what happens when one chooses to do something different, something new? It is what God has told us in Isaiah 43: 19:

“Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.”

If we bring God into the problematic circumstances of our lives, particularly the mental instability of our thinking, the doors of our mind start to open, and newness appears. In the book of James the bible speaks of you have not because you didn’t ask. Old thinking would say, why bother to ask regarding making other arrangements to pay a bill. New thinking involves picking up the phone and asking the question, and viola!  A new payment date has emerged, and the day before it the payment was due! Now the mind has experience a refreshing solution, and doors start opening to doing life in a new way. If that worked out, I thought, why not try something else?

And so I did. From seriously changing how to pay bills, to making drastic changes regarding the caring of my mother (moving in with her when my lease is up, which will be in a couple of months), going to the gym in the am instead of after work. And let me not forget the most important thing that really started the stubborn closed doors of my mind to open to something new.

It is one thing to read the promises of God; it is quite another to actually believe those words will work for you. This may seem obvious, but for me doors opening inwardly meant I had to believe those promises were for me. And so I started to say as a type of agreement with God:

“I believe and trust that You will supply all my needs according to your riches in glory by Christ Jesus. You promise you will do exceeding abundantly above all I ask or think, according to the power that lives with me.”

Then I started meditating on the power that raised Jesus from the grave is in me, and with the help of God I wanted that power to be released in me, so He could do the work that needs to be done.

Because of this, old ways of thinking are changing. While I am still going through difficult circumstances, I am encouraged not to worry, because God has me in the palm of His hand, and nothing or no one is able to take me from that spot. God is more than enough, as I learn to allow myself to open up inwardly…