www.the-hijacked-mind.com johnmatthew.ministries@gmail.com The story follows an aviator who, while flying at a high altitude, hears a rat gnawing on delicate wires somewhere in the plane. Fearing a critical electrical failure, he realizes the rodent cannot survive at high altitude, high flight. The pilot steadily ascends until the gnawing stops, as the rat suffocates in the high-altitude air. This parable teaches that "worry is a rat." Just like the rat, worry and fear cannot survive in the high-altitude "atmosphere of faith." Whenever anxiety about a crisis or stress gnaws at your mind, believers need to climb to the stars of God's Word and into the presence of God, where fear explodes by the dynamite of faith.

You can live your life as a Christian, guided by the reasoning factor, and never experience the supernatural factor. But you will be a joyless and unhappy Christian, dominated and saturated by worry and fear. What plagues the church of Jesus Christ is the joyless Christians dragging their swords against the dusty trails of life-joyless and loveless. Lost joy is an undertaker's best friend; joy is suffocated by a sobbing voice. Listen to the gloom-and-doom jockeys on the media, and you will sink into the ditch of darkness and depression. There is a saddening lack of old-fashioned, simple-hearted, overflowing Christian joy; there seems to be more joy in the lobster tank at Red Lobster than in most churches. Joy is not taught-it's caught. Rejoice in the Lord, who is the Lifter of our heads! Rejoice in the mourning. Rejoice by choice. If we lose our joy, we have lost our Christian credibility. In the presence of Jesus Christ is the fullness of joy (Psalm 16:11).