"For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ." 2 Corinthians 10:4-5
"For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but agains principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." Ephesians 6:12
From this scripture we see that we are in a war. Our enemy, Satan, attempts to defeat us with strategy and deceit, through well-laid plans and deliberate deception. He lies to you and me. He tells us things about ourselves, about other people, and about circumstances that are just not true. He does not, however, tell us the entire lie all at one time.
He begins by bombarding our mind with a cleverly devised pattern of little nagging thoughts, suspicions, doubts, fears, wonderings, reasonings, and theories. He moves slowly and cautiously. He knows what we like and what we don't like. He knows our insecurities, our weaknesses, and our fears. He knows what bothers us most. He is willing to invest any amount of time it takes to defeat us. One of the devil's strong points is patience.
Through careful strategy and cunning deceit, Satan attempts to set up "strongholds" in our mind. A stronghold is an area in which we are held in bondage due to a certain way of thinking.
"If you abide in My Word, you are truly My disciples. And you will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free." John 8:31-32
Jesus tells us how we are to win the victory over the lies of Satan. We must get the knowledge of God's truth in us, renew our minds with His Word, then use the weapons of 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 to tear down the strongholds and every high and lofty thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God.
Two other spiritual weapons available to us are praise and prayer. Praise defeats the devil quicker than any other battle plan, but it must be genuine heart praise, not just lip service or a method being tried to see if it works. Also, praise and prayer both involve the Word. Learn to fill your prayers with the Word of God. (Joyce Myers Battlefield of the Mind)
One of my strongholds is that I'm always thinking people are thinking something about me. I can totally alienate someone because I'm thinking that they are thinking something about me and that's why they were not friendly towards me. Then I come to find out they were not thinking anything about me and I conjured up this whole scenario inside my head for nothing.
I know...it's exhausting; but I'm aware of it and can usually get in front of Satan when it starts. That is just one thing I'm working on...and no...I'm not going to talk about everything. This book will be interesting---and hopefully I will be able to break through on some things.
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| Breaking the cycle of just going around...and around....and around. |
1 comment:
Oh dear! Another book to put in my Must Read list, LOL! This was excellent, I really appreciate you sharing it.
What stuck out to me today was the part about Satan knowing what bothers us most. As you know, I had a "helpful" commentor recently that bugged me. At first I just thought she really was trying to help. And really, she probably was.
But after two days and multiple comments... I realized she had used my own biggest fear against me, as kind of ammunition to throw in my face to justify why she was challenging me.
I had been working on defeating that fear, and had made progress. So for her to come along and rub my nose in it that way... well, what you wrote here sort of shined light on the whole thing.
She didn't mean it to be hurtful... but the enemy of my soul sure did! Thank you for this post... it really helped me!
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