Today, I would like to share on topic, which
I called Mind Games or Breaking Down Mental Strongholds. I'm going to share some of
my testimony. I know we have a lot of new people, and I'm not usually speaking
up here, but my husband asked me to speak, so I have to obey. Yes. And you know, there are
two sides of freedom. It's like a coin of two sides. One side is deliverance. We all know it's
demons coming out of a person. And another side is is demolishing strongholds, which is strongholds
being cast down. They're usually in our mind of course. And John 8:36 it says, whom the Son sets
free is free indeed. That speaks of casting out of demons through the anointing. John 8:32, it
says, when you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. That speaks of Jesus breaking
down the strongholds in our mind of a process. Okay. And I went through the hard time in my life,
which I'm going to share right now, in a moment, but before that I just want to share a little
bit about me, where I come from, and my salvation story, so I grew up in a Christian home, I a PK,
pastor's kid. I am a fifth generation Christian, which I just found out, not long ago. I thought it
was just four generations, but it's fifth and I'm super thankful to the Lord for that blessing to
come from that bloodline of Christians. But growing up in former Soviet Union things, and Christians
don't really have an easy life, like in America. And I was growing up in a society that rejected God,
that Society was atheistic, communistic, they persecuted Christians, they thought it was
American religion, a sect, you name it whatever, they rejected it. Everybody knows
where you grew up, that, hey, this family is weird, and they treat you as such. Going to school
as a little girl, going to high school later on you realize, oh, there's something wrong with you,
that's how I took it. We are not normal. We are not like everybody else. And I was very angry about
it because I was constantly treated as such in school, and I didn't have any friends, and I really
wanted to be normal. I wanted to be like everybody else, and I was angry with God, and even partially
with my family. I didn't understand why do we have to be different, why do we have to go to church,
and I remember a time coming to a class in my high school year, and I overheard a teacher talking
about my family, and it hurt me so much, and it was not in a good light. It wasn't a good conversation,
so I always felt the rejection from the society. And I grew up in Moscow, which is a capital of
Russia, it's a huge City, where, Christians, they met only like a church in homes at first,
because we weren't able to gather in public buildings, and it was just very secluded and
you just don't have friends outside of that and this made me really sad. And I remember, one day,
it I was sitting with my friends at home, and the TV was on, we were just chilling, I thought they
were my friends because I kind of took a path of away from the Lord and I really wanted to be
accepted, I really was seeking that. And I remember watching this TV, and accidentally the TV show came
up of an American preacher speaking and preaching a sermon with translation, and my friend, so-called
friend, took a shoe and threw at me, right in the living room and says, it's your stupid religion. I
got so scared, and I realized at that moment that I can never be like everybody else, because the
Lord has called us to live a different life. I remember, when I was 19, and it was time for us to
move to the United States, and the last service at my church, my parents' church, I was standing there
and I had a conversation with the Lord in my head. I said, Lord, I don't understand why they're praying,
why are they worshiping you, why are they singing and I had why why why, I don't see anything in it,
I don't even know if you're real. I was having that conversation in my mind, and in a split second,
I remember like it was yesterday, the Lord had touched me so deeply. I felt like, He took me underwater,
the sound disappeared far away, and He starts speaking to me. I heard His voice inside of myself.
He told me, Lana, I am real. Just as simple as that. Tears start rolling down my face, and I couldn't,
like, the only thing that I could respond was, oh my God, you're real, oh my God, you're real. But, sadly
at that moment, I didn't give my life to Jesus, I just experienced Him. And I know, it's not enough to
experience the Lord. It's not enough to know that the Lord is real. You have to take that step and
surrender to Him. And that was His next call for me. We moved to the United States and I go to this
big church, and there was a service. The first month when we came to the United States, there was
a service, and there was an altar call, and the Lord touched me again, and He challenged me, Lana, now, I
want your life, and I broke down crying and weeping on the floor. And my brother, my sister, they were
standing beside me, and I was like so embarrassed. I was covering myself, but I knelled down to
the floor and I broke down, and I said, Lord, I'm giving you my life, and take this mess, I was empty,
depressed, I had nothing going for me. I was with this deep void inside of my heart. And I said,
Lord, I know You're real now, please take me and whatever I have, and I give it to you. And that day
was the day I gave my life to Jesus, and I started to walk the path with the Lord Jesus Christ. And
later on, 5 years down the road, I got married with Vlad, and I started to experience
something that I had never experienced before. I moved to the new city, there was a new church,
our church was still small, no family, no friends, everything brand new, brand new marriage. Basically, I felt like, I had to build my life from zero and I had a very difficult time. And how
many of you know that the devil will always take advantage of the lowest point of your life, where
you are the weakest and the lowest, and he will just, like, take advantage of that and hit you
hard. And I was also struggling with battling and actually had some generational curses on the
top of that. And so, that's what happened to me. The devil took advantage of my struggles at that
time when I moved here, and I started to experience something very ugly, and very very bad. I started
to experience demonic torment. I couldn't sleep at night, without nightmares, night paralysis. I
remember even waking up screaming in a sweat, in the middle of the night, being tormented by demons,
and even coming to church, it affected our marriage, Coming to church, I couldn't pray, I couldn't
open my mouth, I felt like the dark demon or cloud was sitting on me ,and I couldn't move. It was
awful. After that came hatred towards people, awful jealousy for no reason, and the devil, just, he was
taking advantage of everything that I was going through. And we know that the anointing drives out
demons, and the truth breaks down the strongholds in our mind. You know the devil always will build
slowly, stronghold after stronghold, lie after lie, in our minds, we accept this slowly, but surely.
And guess what it always takes time to break it down in our minds. Amen. It's the process and it's
not necessarily the presence of the truth that sets us free. It's the application of it, and that
means we have to put in an effort. Right? And that's what I started to do. I started to, we started
to realize that, okay this issue is spiritual, and we have to look for spiritual solution, so we
went to this ministry overseas, and the prophet prophesied over me. It was spot on, about
generational curses. He prayed for me and, I believe that was broken. Deliverance, what it
does, it unties your hands to fight for yourself. I know that we are humans, and we're people. We
always want to have, and I had that, I was like, Lord, why can't you just deliver me, and that's it, like
with a snap of your fingers, and everything's going to be just fine, you're able to. Right? And yes, God
is able to but guess what? He always always takes us to the process because He is God of a process.
He could have created this world in one day, but He took seven because He is the God of the
process. And the process that we go through, we become different people. We become who He wants
us to become, and if we just get delivered, and we don't realize that there's another side to it,
we still have to, you know, renew our mind, grow, and this is example with a soap. If you have soap
in your home, it's not going to make you clean. Right? You just have to apply that soap for you
to actually be clean and not stink. Right? Same thing with the truth. Applying the truth of God's
word daily, that's what sets us free, and breaks down those strongholds. Amen. The devil is always
interested in building the lies, and strongholds in our mind, but it's the application of God's truth
that breaks them down brick by brick. Amen. So, the difference between a demon, and a stronghold is
this, a stronghold is a house of thoughts, it's the devil's house, demon's house. That's where he lives
in. And Matthew 12:29, it says, how can anyone enter a strong man's house, and carry off his possessions
unless he first ties up the strong man. The strong man is a demon, a stronghold is his house, your
thoughts. If you cast out a demon ,but you don't work on breaking down his house, you know, it's not a full freedom. But, we want a full freedom. Amen. So, this is what I started to
do after I received my deliverance, I felt like my hands were untied to fight for myself. Before, I
couldn't even pray, I couldn't open my mouth, nothing. Not that it was easy afterwards, it's
just, I could do it. And so, I started to, I had a job that I could listen to my earphones, basically, the
whole day, and so, I plugged my ears and I was, brainwashing myself, basically with the truth of
God's word. Guess what? It was painful. Okay? When you live so long in torment, in negativity, in demonic
thoughts, one positive thought hurts your mind. Right? How many of you experienced that? To come out
of that, we have to put in that effort. And so, I had to do that. And when I started to do that, the Holy
Spirit started to work on me. I remember sitting in a parking lot of CBC, when I went to college, and
I was in so much agony and pain mentally because I struggle with that dark depression, and I opened
up my Bible, and I started to read it out loud, it was so painful to hear myself read the word of God
to myself. But, that's what got me through because the lies of the enemy that we have to combat them
with the word of God and something unique happens when we, out loud speak that to ourselves. The Holy
Spirit is starting to work because we are doing that by faith and the Holy Spirit is working with
our faith. Amen. So demons they enter quickly, and they leave quickly. Strongholds are built over
time and get destroyed over time. There are three kinds of state of mind that we can find ourselves
in, and if you are taking notes, I would highly encourage you to do so, I'm going to have
points here. So number one state of mind, a slave that is a victim mentality. Let's take for example,
Israelites, they were in slavery in Egypt for over 400 years. They were slaves. They had victim
mentality. They needed someone, a deliverer to deliver them, that speaks of deliverance. Okay? The
anointing of God comes, and delivers them, so they got out of the Egypt, and they found themselves in
a desert. That's number two, survivor mentality, and that is a wilderness mentality. It's kind of like,
you're in the middle, you're not a slave anymore, but you're still struggling. You're still
not victorious, you're not in a promised land, and this is where I find myself with with the
three three years of me being struggling after my deliverance, with mind renewal, and breaking down
the lies that the devil has placed in my mind. For all these years, I found myself in this limbo, in
a middle way. And that's not where the Lord wants us to be. Amen. He wants us to go to the
promised land. He wants us to be an overcomer. He wants us to be victorious person. And the next
stage is a soldier. This is where God wants you to be. Sonship mentality. Mentality of the Kingdom.
Mentality of where we work with the Lord. And here's what's interesting. Look at what God said
about some enemies that stayed in the promised land. You would think that, we're finally
in the promised land, we're just going to have it, so good and so easy. But the Lord, on purpose did
something. Judges 3:12, now these are the Nations which the Lord left that He might test Israel by
them that is, all who had not known any of the war in Canaan, this this was only, so that the generation
of the children of Israel, might be thought to know war. At least for those who had not formerly known
it. You know God delivers us from bondage, but He never delivers us from battles. Right? You
know why? Because God created us for dominion. If you don't have anyone to dominate, any enemies,
how are you going to be walking in that calling? This is what God wants us to do? He unties our
hands to fight. And this is what happened to Israel as they come to the promised land, and
bounders enemies, and the Lord wanted them, He wanted them to learn to fight, to fight for their
freedom, to fight for themselves, to fight for their territory, to fight for their land. Amen.
And that's what I started to do, I started to fight for myself. I'm like, Lord, okay it's painful, but I'm
going to trust you, I am going to fight. You know what helped me? I heard one sermon once, and
the guy said, the preacher said, it takes the same amount of energy to be negative, and depressed as
it is to be positive and stay in faith. It was so simple, but profound. Like it spoke to me. I'm like,
okay, I guess I'm just going to have to do that. Right. And since it's going to take the same
energy, I'm just going to fight. And the Lord just equipped me to fight for myself and I started
to do that. And guess what, there are things that we have to be delivered from, but there are things
that we have to go through to learn and to become someone else. Amen. And we have to differentiate
which is which. If you struggling with demonic oppression, that's not something the Lord wants you
to go through. You have to be delivered. If you have constant nightmares, sleep paralysis, depression,
that's not something you have to go through. It's something you can receive
deliverance from, but there is things in life that grow us, some things in life that we go through.
You know, this world has troubles, tribulations and don't ask the Lord to deliver you through
them, ask the Lord to make you into that Soldier, so you can fight, and so you can overcome, and so
you can become a Victorious person. Amen. James 1:2, it says, dear brothers and sisters, when
troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. Just think about
it. When Troubles of any kind come your way, do we usually consider that as a joy as humans? No
way right. We try to run from it, but here's where the catch is, if we go through stuff and
the Lord builds us and makes us into more like Him, makes us strong, makes us fight battles, makes us
this person that no one can take away from us, an overcomer, then we overcome things and it becomes
a great joy. Amen. Not that the troubles bring joy, no, they don't. We don't like troubles, right?
But, the potential is for joy because God wants you to overcome. Amen. I'm going to share four lessons
that I learned going through my pain. Number one, recognizing your enemy and face him. This is what
I had to do. I kept blaming myself. Why I'm such an ugly person on the inside? I blamed myself.
I bet myself down, and that's exactly what the devil wants you to do. He wants you to focus on
yourself and feel bad. Oh! you're just beyond repair, and there's nothing you could do. You're just such a bad
person. You're this and that. You hate people. You do this, and there's no change for you. And that's the
devil's goal to make you believe that to make you believe that he has nothing to do with it.
God is at fault. You're angry at God, and you just blame yourself. You're focused
as on yourself. But guess something happens when you realize, that's not always the case. And that
God loves you and He wants you to overcome. God is not at fault. Okay? Yes we're not innocent,
we have a role to play, but we can't believe the lie that the devil wants us to believe. He
is not innocent. He is the one that's pushing all these things on us. And when we recognize and
face our enemy in a specific area of your life you're struggling, you can actually shoot straight.
Right? When you don't know who and what to shoot at, you'll shoot like everywhere, and you'll
hit everything, and nothing. Right? But God wants us to be specific, that's why He opened up. We were
looking for solution, and he showed us. He showed me who my real enemy was. And it was not myself, and
I want to release someone today, who's listening me. If our eyes are on yourself constantly,
in guilt, shame, condemnation, I want you to realize, you're not the enemy. The Devil is. And you need
to identify him. Identify your enemy. Number two, Seek Jesus's face more than your freedom, because
your freedom is a byproduct of being near Jesus. It's so easy for us like as humans to get carried
away with ourselves, our sorrow, our depression, our situation, and lose sight of Jesus, get so desperate
for deliverance or healing that we forget who the real Healer is, because it's painful for us to
look to Jesus when we are so obsessed with ourselves. And I encourage you to take your eyes
off of yourself, and look to Jesus because He is the only one who can deliver you. He's the
only one who delivered me. Amen. Number three, Allow the Holy Spirit to take your thoughts,
to take you and your thoughts through cleaning process by His presence and His word. We
have to be patient. We're giving the devil so much time, half of our life sometimes, to destroy
our life, and then we are angry at God, like I was. Why can't you just do it at once Lord? It
would be so much easier for everybody. Right? But, no. The Lord wants to take us to the process
and we have to allow the Holy Spirit to do that. Allow the Holy Spirit to work with you. Give Him
time, patience. Amen. Number four, Enduring suffering. 2 Timothy 2:3, endure suffering
along with me as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. When you become, and realize that you are
not just somebody, but you are a soldier in the army of Christ, your mentality
shifts, that you are not on a vacation, you are in the army of God. We are fighting a
spiritual battle. Okay? And we endure suffering as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. That tells me,
obviously, we all will go through some suffering. Amen. And we have to learn how to endure it. The
person you become through the process is far more valuable than the miracle or deliverance or
the outcome, we're so desperately after, because God builds something in us, and that is so
precious. When I went through, what I went, those years, honestly, I wouldn't want to take it back,
because I became a different person, and no one can take that away from me. The Lord has grown
me, and He will grow you, He wants to see you be a soldier, not a victim. Okay. And not a slave to
demons. Amen. Let's give God some praise. Come on. We know that the Devil, he's
working so hard for your mind because this is his battlefield. If he wins your mind, he
wins the battles, but we are not going to let him do that. Amen. We're going to take back our minds,
take back our thoughts captives. The Bible talks a lot about renewing of our mind. In Romans 12:2
it says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our mind, that
you may prove what is that good and acceptable, and perfect will of God. It's very important
that we take that scripture and, we work with that, with the Lord. And let me give you just seven
practical steps on how to renew your mind, and if you want to write that down. Number one, Don't
wait for your circumstances to change before you start changing your mind. And this is the lie
that we often believe that the reason why I'm so negative and my life, it's because my life sucks,
because if my life would improve, my mind would improve. But, that's not true. We cannot allow
our mind to be on a level of our circumstances, doesn't matter if we are going through poverty,
or we're going through hardships, or sickness or anything of that sort. We can't allow our mind
to drop there. Okay? Because God works like in the opposite way. He brings the the light before He brings the sun, in Genesis. Right? Because He becomes our light, and
when we have that light in our mind, our mind gets transformed before our life gets
transformed. Number two, Stop believing that you can't control your thoughts, and that is another
fallacy. We can control our thoughts. The Bible tells us in Philippians 4:8, think on these things.
That means we have to take action. We can choose what we think on. We can choose where we gravitate
our mind to. It takes some work, but we have to choose to do that. Joshua 1: 8, it says, you should
meditate on it day and night. Psalms 1:2, it says, on His law he meditates day and night. And it's just
to proof that we are responsible for what we think. We cannot allow our mind to wander, or to wander
into our default thinking and mentality. We have to navigate it back to the Word of God. Number three,
what you feed your mind becomes your mindset. You can't control your mindset, but you can control
what you feed your mind with. So, when you feed your mind with the Word of God, when you feed
your mind with the teachings of the Lord, this is where we learn to take our thoughts captives. And we can't allow them to run rampant and think whatever they want to think because our
default as humans is negativity. We we default to our thinking maybe, I am lonely, I am nobody, I
will never get married, I will never have children, I am this, I am such a bad person, that's
what I was doing, and it was so hard to pull my mind towards the Word of God, and to say, you know
what, no, I am a child of God, God loves me. For goodness sake, He said, He loves me, that means
I have to believe it, and I chose to believe it and slowly but surely my mind started to shift,
Holy Spirit started to work with me, I started to experience the presence of God on me,
and my body. And He started to like, peel me like an onion. All of those lies, that I believed
in my mind, He peeled that off, and that all takes process, like I mentioned. Number four, Confess what
you believe, not what you feel. When I was sitting in that car confessing and reading out loud the
Word of God, it's very powerful, this is what it says in Joshua, and the Lord instructed
Joshua, this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth. So now this is the instruction
I want to give you, if you are struggling, let the Word of God not depart from your mouth, not only
your thoughts, but read it to yourself out loud. If you're falling or like you're in depression
or darkness or something, just read the Word of God out loud because it does something very
beautiful, it has power, we have power in our mouth, in our mouth we combat the devil's thoughts
with the Word of God coming from our mouth. Amen. Number five, resist negative thoughts and assist
positive thoughts. Bad thoughts are like weeds, they need to be pulled out, which is work. Right? You
pull them out, one by one, and the good thoughts, godly thoughts, the thoughts of the Word of God,
they need to be, they're like seeds, they need to be planted like you plant them. Okay? And that
takes time and work and so we see this process, process of uprooting the weeds and planting the
seeds. And it's never at once. It's only one thought at a time. Don't allow the devil overwhelm
you right away to say that's how I felt, oh, I'm so overwhelmed, I'm so negative, there's just no
way I can change. No. You can. But you can do one at a time. When you catch yourself having this
pattern of thinking that you were thinking like I was, I am lonely, I'm so lonely, just change that
thought. Just one at a time. You know what? No. I'm not lonely. The Holy Spirit is with me, with me He
lives inside of me, I cannot be lonely, just talk to yourself. Number six, celebrate the process.
It's going to take time to see change. Take one step at a time, one thought at a time. Make
a decision to never give up, and that's huge. We have to make a decision today that you will not
give up, you will fight for your freedom. And number seven, Expect Miracles. Expectation is
a breathing ground for miracles. Do not allow your mind to imagine bad things. I know, we
all probably, have that, and you know, I actually struggled with that. When I just had a baby, the
devil would like bring me such horrible thoughts of something happening with a baby, and my mind
was just like pulled by something towards that, and I would experience like shaking of the fear,
and then I had to stop, take that negative thought capture it, recognize it, that's from the enemy,
this will never happen, and out of my mouth to say, no, get away from me devil, that's not going
to happen, the Lord's going to keep us safe, the Lord is our refuge, the Lord is our Rock, the Lord
is our Salvation. This will never happen to my child. And I knew a girl, who I prayed for
a girl, who had constantly, those intrusive demonic thoughts, when she was driving through
the bridge, she would always have a thought pull over and like, you know pull over off the bridge
and it became so hard for her to drive through the bridge, that it became very very hard and
we prayed and she needed to recognize obviously that's demonic. The devil is playing tricks,
playing games with our minds, and we need to come against that, and stand against that. Amen. Expecting
good, not bad to happen to us. Come on. Amen. Because the Lord is always working with our faith. Without
faith, we cannot please God. The Bible says, and this is where the faith comes, we're believing for good,
we're believing the Lord, we're believing that He says, He is who He is. That He is faithful, that He
will deliver us. Amen. Amen. Let's rise to our feet.
