You cannot trust everything you think! 2 Corinthians 10:3-5: For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. The mind is an incredible creation. It, in itself, possesses an unbelievable creative power. It can come up with the most astonishing inventions and devise the most amazing visions. Look at the telephone, the television, the computer, microwaves, fridge freezers, satellites, men going to the moon, spaceships, modern medicine, the most elaborate of buildings, all types of motor vehicles. But equally the mind possesses the ability to sink to the depths of corruption and be one of the most destructive things on planet earth. Despite the wonderful capability of the mind, 1 Corinthians 2:14 tells us: the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. This tells me: we cannot even trust what we think. Let your guard drop for a moment, and you will quickly see exactly how corrupt your mind is. Your mind has the ability as a Christian to think the most holy and purest of thoughts, but, equally, given half a chance under the influence of the flesh, it has the ability to think the most corrupt of thoughts. Romans 8: 6-8 says, to be carnally (or naturally) minded is death Because the carnal (or the natural) mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. This word enmity, as some of you know, means hostile. This passage tells us: that the natural mind is hostile to the law of God. We live in a day where many Christians are unable to identify the voice of the devil. The main reason for this has to come from the fact that so few truly know God s voice revealed in His sacred Book.
To be totally fair, we need to recognize, it is difficult to discern the voice of Satan because he is an invisible being and because his is a spiritual voice, not an audible voice. Because of this, many fail to recognize that he is secretly influencing who they are and what they do. They ignorantly take ownership of the ideas he plants in their mind, imagining they have emanated from themselves. Unless someone is in the Word of God they might never know that their mind is being oppressed by the devil himself. The mind is defined as: a set of cognitive faculties including consciousness, perception, thinking, judgement, language and memory. It is usually defined as the faculty of an entity's thoughts and consciousness. It holds the power of imagination, recognition, and appreciation, and is responsible for processing feelings and emotions, resulting in attitudes and actions. The brain is the physical organ where our mind operates. The mind is where our thoughts come from. Wikipedia explains: Thought is a mental act that allows humans to make sense of things in the world, and to represent and interpret them in ways that are significant, or which accord with their needs, attachments, goals, commitments, plans, ends, desires, etc. No one else can "know our mind," apart from God. Man, and devil, can only interpret what we consciously or unconsciously communicate. That is why it is a foolish endeavor to spend your whole life trying to unravel other people s minds - as the psychologist do. Saying this, the enemy is not stupid. He is careful in where he targets. I have said this many times: he is a strategist. He hits believers where it has greatest impact. He attacks God s people in the place where they make their decisions. Satan's main target as he tries to take you out of the game is your mind. His aim is to paralyze you there so that you will be ineffective for the Lord. His aim is to direct his fiery darts there in the hope of you receiving a lie and then embrace that lie.
The sooner we realize that not everything that goes on in our heads is us, we will be in a better place to fight back against the enemy. I am here this morning to exhort you to guard your mind. Filter what you receive. Test it by the Word of truth! Because the mind is the special target of the devil, Scripture admonishes us to fortify it. 1 Peter 1:13 says, Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind. The idea in this text is that the mind needs protected. It is so important to discipline your thought life. You have to guard what you let into this mind. You choose what is welcome in there or not. Satan attacks the minds of God s people; by projecting the fiery darts of the wicked (Ephesians 6:16). He has to try and mess about with your thought life. He has to paralyze your mind with destructive information in order to stop you doing what God requires and being what God expects. Once you embrace the lie you become totally ineffective for God. You may say the right thing, you may even do the right thing, but the reality is it has no impact because what you are doing is not energized by faith. There is no way of us gauging how damaging one lie can be if believed and acted upon. Instead of stepping back and ascertaining why they are constantly defeated, and then confronting it and overcoming it, many have come become accustomed to living the lie that they received from the enemy. Many spend their whole lives the victim of a timely fiery dart that Satan propelled into their mind, which they embraced, and which defined their character for the rest of their life. I want to expose four common plagues over this next few weeks that result from receiving the fiery darts of the devil. If you pitch your tent at any of them, then you will become a victim of the enemy. That might explain why we lose our spiritual vitality.
Fear Deception Depression Perversion Of course, there can be an overlap in these subjects, but these plagues are distinct and equally harmful. If you do not have your guard up then you are susceptible to be struck by any of these fiery darts. I am totally convinced that when James 4:7 says Resist the devil, and he will flee from you, I believe it is talking primarily about his evil subtle voice. It is important for the Christian to know: the voice of Satan must be actively resisted for you to hear the voice of God clearly. If you have been involved in any type of spiritual counseling you will know that the majority of Christians that are struggling today, do so, because they have let the lies of the devil governor who they are and what they do. Our main reading this morning in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 gives us some crucial counsel on how to operate our minds. It reads: For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. After telling us what the Christian warfare is not (it is not natural warfare), the Holy Spirit tells us what the warfare is. It tells us that spiritual conflict is concentrated upon the mind. The Bible is telling us that we have the ability to pull down strong holds by rooting up every demonic lie or thought that is not of God. We are instructed to pull down every imagination and thought in our minds that exalteth itself against the knowledge or basically, that runs contrary to the Word of God. Until you remove the junk from your mind you will never effectively hear from God. But when you do, you will be liberated.
The instruction to bring into captivity means to control, to conquer, to make captive. The instruction to bring into obedient means to bring into submission, to make compliant. The reason we have so many ineffective Christians today is that they do not know how to fight the battle of the mind. To enter into spiritual victory, you must pull down everything that is not of God and that does not accord with His Word. If you are not careful, and if you're not intentional, you could find yourself being driven by the lie of the devil, rather than the truth of God. Many people are tossed to-and-fro on a daily basis because they are not rooted in truth. They have no absolute confidence because they have no source of hope. What I mean is: their test of what is right and wrong is what they feel or what they think. Brother/sister, this is the place of death. I have been a Christian long enough to realize: what you receive, is what you believe, is what you become. Natural feelings and natural thoughts are corrupted by the fall and are untrustworthy. They are up when circumstances are up, and down when circumstances are down. We are all susceptible on the daily basis of thinking corrupt thoughts. This week I let my mind get the best of me on a subject and I had to repent. I said to God, I feel bad after all these years I still have the capacity to think like that. I'm sorry. The only thing I m thankful for is that I hate going there. It is not me. It is not who I want to be. The only reason I feel like this is because you live within me and sin and selfishness are not welcome here anymore. The devil has your profiled. He is familiar with your family heritage. He knows the sinful traits that have plagued your family tree for a long time. After all, he has been the one that has been keeping them in bondage. He is also very familiar with your life's journey. He knows your weaknesses, he knows your strengths, he knows your failures, he knows your hurts. He has a good understanding of your vulnerabilities. He knows whether it is your habit to stand by faith upon the truth of God s Word, and he knows whether you
are neglectful of that precious Book. He also knows those who just read this Book but are governed by this Book. You can fool your spouse, you can find your pastor, you can fool your friends, but you re not fooling the devil. Believe me, he knows exactly who are operating by faith and doing him harm. He knows who are playing at it. Armed with this information, he didn t target shoe in a particular way. Anytime I have gone to speak at Morningside College to the football team, I normally speak after they are getting their briefing for the next day s game. There, they play videos of the opposition. They will highlight their pattern of play. They identify their weaknesses. They identify their strong points. They will show their movements from different camera views. They will highlight their main players. They will outline a plan of how they intend to target and overcome them. The devil does this with you! How do merchants know how to entice you to buy their goods? By profiling you! They have a mountain of information on you your viewing habits and your spending habits. They use that to lure you into certain behaviors. They know where you spend, when you spend and how you spend. Satan works like this! We need to realize that he is a strategist. He picks his victim, he picks his moment, and he picks his temptation. With the amount of information he possesses on your family tree, and the amount of information he has accumulated on you over the years, he can have a pretty effective attack upon you. Do you ever wonder why he hits you with the same old same old? Because it works! His aim is to plant the thought and get you to take ownership of it. Once that happens you lose your peace.
Once that happens you lose the anointing. Once that happens you lose your power. Once that happens you lose your joy. Once that happens you lose your perspective. Once that happens you lose your direction. Once that happens you become fruitless. That lie of the evil one becomes a seed that starts to grow into an ugly tree, if you re not careful. Satan knows he only has to get you to believe the lie in order for you to be impotent. I cannot emphasize this enough: if your mind is not saturated with God s truth, then you are wide open to the devils lies. If you are wide-open to the devils lies then there is no limitation to how dark your mind can get. David testified in Psalm 1:1-2 1 Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. 2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. God told Joshua testified in Josh 1:8 8 This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. Josh 1:8 8 This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. Can you not see it? This was a daily ritual for the man of God! Why would it be an option for so many Christians in our day living in such an evil day?
Here is the answer if you want to walk a prosperous path and have good success in life. By immersing yourself in this Book it starts to become who you are. You begin to love what He loves, and hate what He hates. What results is blessing, prosperity, and good success. Who wouldn t want that? Scripture says that yielding to the voice of God brings spiritual prosperity and good success. I asked myself: what is the opposite to prosperity and good success? I sometimes do this. It helps me identify where people are and it hopefully helps me effectively minister unto them. After all, it makes sense if this is what it is like on the path that God has directed us, the opposite must also be true when we veer off the path. The opposite to prosperity is poverty and deprivation; the opposite to good success is great failure, disappointment and come to nothing. Conclusion Php 4:6 Be careful (or anxious) for nothing; Basically stop worrying! Php 4:6 but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. Php 4:7 And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Php 4:8 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. Php 4:9 Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you. Theologians call this passage the blueprint for godly thinking
Now it is not enough to empty the mind. You must fill it with the right stuff. This is what is allowed to lodge in your mind: anything that is: True, Honest Just Pure Lovely Of good report If you do this, you will experience the peace of God like you haven t for many years. This Scripture confirms the results: if you take away the surround words it says: And the peace of God... shall keep your... minds through Christ Jesus. All of these wonderful things listed here can be found in the Word of God. That is why we have to live upon the Gospel.