The enemy knows the role your mind plays in shaping your destiny. He knows your mind is the gateway to your destiny.  As a result, he constantly organizes obstacles on the way.

The devil is amind-blocker. He organizes programmes to blind your mind, because he knows thatwhen your mind is blinded, your destiny is blocked and your future becomesuncertain. We shall consider 6 obstacles to mental excellence:

1.      1.Sin

Adam before the fall was a symbol of supernatural mental excellence. He knew everything. He single-handedly named all the animals that God created. He was excellent. But the devil got him-through sin!

God has not changed.When you habitually live in sin, you’re destroying your mental capacity. Dr.T.L. Osborn said something very profound along this line. He said, “Every time you sin, something dies in you” And I believe one of the things that die inpeople when they sin is their heritage of mental excellence.

Sin! That’s Satan’snumber one trap. By enhancing and promoting your taste for sin, he drags you into the net of mental failure.

2.Accepting the Status Quo

The next trap that the enemy uses to block men’s mental excellence is to make them accept the statusquo. He gets them thinking, “This is where I belong. God has tried. This is just okay”

Listen to me: the moment you stop pushing, you start crashing! Don’t ever get to the point where, if you don’t make it, you conclude that it means God has not planned for you to makeit. Such an attitude is accepting the status quo, and it paralyses mental excellence.

Where you are today is a wonderful place, but God has a more wonderful place for you tomorrow. The results you have now are quite wonderful, but God has more awaiting you. The top is where you belong.

When life is void of progress, it becomes a burden. And nothing motivates the brain to walk like seeing something ahead of you. Let your attitude be, “I don’t care where I am now, the best is yet to come.”

3.The Trap of Past Failures

Another obstacle to mental excellence is the trap of mental torture generated by dwelling on the irreparable past. Satan connects you so much to the past, which you can’t see anything ahead anymore. If you stay glued to the negative past, your great future loses its colour.

The past is dead! It can no longer be corrected. So leave it in the grave and take the next step forward. Only those who are smart enough to bury their past enjoy a great future.

I know an elderly person who never travels by air (though he’s educated), just because he’s seen one or two planes crash in the past.

I told him that there are more car accidents than plane crashes. He has not freed himself from the past, and that dulled his mentality. So even if something good is waiting for him in Canada,for instance, he won’t go! This is just a typical case of how the devil paralyses one’s mentality.

4.Pride of Past Achievements

The fourth obstacle to mental excellence is the pride of past achievements.  What appears standard today very soon becomes sub-standard tomorrow. 

Bless God for your past achievement, but it’s only a pointer that you can get more done in the future, if you choose to. For you, even in old age ,you will still bring forth fruits (Ps.92:14).

God said He has a place for you to be greatest among the greatest. He said He will set you up on high,above all the nations of the earth. But you’re so far down the ladder, yet you are taking a break!

To remain mentally awake, you have to keep moving towards a well-defined target. I said in my book, Towards Excellence in Life and Ministry, that when your assignment becomes a task, all your senses will come alive. Life is not a joke. When your assignment becomes a task, all your brain cells will take on new life.

Where you are today may look amazing, but it’s not good enough for tomorrow. The world is watching to see you take steps. If you pitch your tent too early, you will lose relevance in no time. Bless God for where you are now, but He has a bigger place for youahead, so keep moving forward!

5. Comparison.

Here is another trap;it’s comparing yourself with others especially the less privileged. You have your life to live; you have a mission to accomplish. You have to believe in the principle of identity. You are here on a mission. I don’t know what anyone else is sent to do, but bless God; I’m on a mission on this earth.

Don’t be trapped by comparing yourself with others. Whether negative or positive, you are answerable only to God. Stop wondering about what the other man will do, do your own!

6. Fear of Curses and Enchantments.

If you have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus, curses and enchantments have lost their hold on your life. You are now connected to the blessing channel of Abraham. And we know that God said to Abraham that He will bless him and make him a blessing (Gen.12:3)

That means you can’t be cursed, molested, enchanted or bewitched! Yet many have stopped thinking, because they have been made to believe that there’s a curse working against them. As a result, they operate in this consciousness, saying to themselves,“No matter how much I try, from the fourth till now, it has been the same”

Many year ago, while driving on the highway, I overtook a woman I perceive must be one of the terrible witches in that city. She met me at filling station where I had stopped to refuel, and with gleaming eyes snapped at me, “You overtook me like that? There’s no way you will get to where you’re going.” And I quickly reply her, “As soon as I get there, you will hear.”

You know there’s a word used to describe fear—paranoid. Why? Because it has a paralyzing effect on its victim.  People who live in fear hardly think well. Fear paralyses mentality. Be free from it now, in Jesus’name.

Don’t also miss this   10 Principles of High Flying Achievers

David O. Oyedepo

 (born September 27, 1954) is a Nigerian Christian author, preacher, the founder and presiding Bishop of Living Faith Church World Wide, also known as Winners’Chapel, and its affiliated international churches known as Winners Chapel International, with headquarters in Ota,OgunState, Nigeria. Oyedepo is the senior pastor of FaithTabernacle, a 50,000 seat church auditorium, reported to be the largest church auditorium in the world by the Guinness Book of Records.

PS:This article is culled from “Towards Mental Exploits” by Bishop David Oyedepo.

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Felix A. Duyilemi is the international best-selling author of “How To Borrow God’s Brain To Succeed” and other best-selling books

He helps businesses and individuals craft compelling stories, expand their concepts of possibilities, and dream bigger dreams.

When he’s not learning new concepts, he’s speaking or writing. Reach him at [email protected]