“that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, and attaining to all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ”
that their hearts may be encouraged
Discouragement can lead to attitudinal problems. The Bible attacks this problem with the principle of displacement. The principle of displacement means that we replace negative thinking with thinking about the principles of the Word of God. We displace sinful thoughts with God’s thoughts.
Principle:
The principle of displacement changes our attitudes to live victoriously over attitudinal sins.
Application:
How many times have you cast out a sinful thought, and after a while came it back into your thinking? We believe that if we will a sinful thought out of our mind, it will stay out, but it won’t.
The mind cannot stand a vacuum. When we cast out a sinful thought by sheer willpower, that thought will be sucked back into our mind when we stop willing not to do it. To gain victory over it, we must displace sinful thought with a principle from the Word of God. That principle must match the sin.
If we are angry, we must learn a principle that deals with anger, such as Ephesians 4:31,32. This passage sets forth the principle of non-duplicity. If I do not forgive someone who has wronged me, yet I accept forgiveness from Jesus for me, that is duplicity. I need to forgive with the forgiveness with which I have been forgiven. When I do that, I execute the principle of displacement.
The Word of God is living and operative. It is able to penetrate to the very core of our being. It can change our lives (Heb. 4:12).
