Pleasing God, Making Disciples of Jesus Christ

The Devil, Our Minds, Our Thoughts

PSALM 25:6-7 – Remember your mercy, O LORD, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for the sake of your goodness.

THEME OF THE DAY. THE DEVIL, OUR MINDS, OUR THOUGHTS. The human mind is an amazing thing. Medical experts tell us over 10,000 thoughts a day run through the human mind. That’s a lot of activity! And when it comes to the Christian life, the mind is everything. How we think, or better yet, how we control our thinking will determine a whole lot about our walk with the Lord. Lose this battle for control of our thinking, and the lies of the world, our condemning conscience, and the deceiving devil will hold us hostage, leaving us with a joyless and powerless Christianity. And we are told of the intensity of this battle for the mind by the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Corinthians . . . “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). He uses aggressive military terminology – destroy, take captive – to show us not only the intensity of this fight, but its seriousness. Yes, friends, the mind is the battleground in the Christian life. The devil knows this and will daily attack us in this area. His primary tactics employed are distract the mind, deaden the mind, and deceive the mind.

First the devil will attack our thought life through distraction. Distraction is what defines our world. There is so much activity, so many things screaming for our attention, and these things press upon our minds, making our thoughts like butterflies darting all over the place but barely spending any time in one place. And when our minds are constantly surrendering to distraction by the things of the world, it carries over to the things of the Lord. Like listening to the Word preached on Sundays. Like trying to pray for extended periods of time. Should distraction get the upper hand in our thinking, it will lead to the second tactic of the devil against our thinking . . .

Distraction by the devil will lead to a deadening of our mind. Oh, our minds don’t go brain dead, but what happens is we lose the ability to meditate on deep, difficult, spiritual subjects. If we do meditate, we cannot do it for very long. Our culture doesn’t create meditators. It creates mindlessness in people. Social media, cinema, instant information by just Googling, and a pleasure-seeking culture produces a culture undisciplined in its thinking. And this carries over into our Christianity. I would venture to say most Christians don’t read books that challenge the mind, like theology, like doctrine, like commentaries, like books on the Person of Christ. Why? These require no distraction and mental discipline to spiritually benefit from them. If the devil persuades us to let distraction produce a mind undisciplined, deadened to serious meditation on divine truth, the Christian will constantly lose spiritual battles because their minds are not filled with and controlled by God’s Word.

The final, and predominant area of attack by the devil towards our thought life is deception. This is when we believe his lies and not God’s truth. Let a Christian listen to these words from the devil, “You are not really a Christian. God doesn’t love you, look how you still sin. No, He won’t forgive you again”, and defeat is certain. If we are going to win spiritual battles, our minds must think God’s thoughts about us. For instance, the thoughts in today’s scripture – God’s steadfast love and goodness to us. Here is where we fall too often. We listen to Satanic lies about our identity instead of our Savior’s truth about our identity. That is why we must be in the Word daily, in fellowship with Christ-centered people, diligent in prayer, and committed to be under the Word preached. Our minds must be renewed to think God’s thoughts of us. If no renewal occurs, we are left to ourselves to fight the war against the devil and that always produces defeat.

Our minds are where we win or lose spiritual battles. Let’s recognize this daily reality and then commit to a mind saturated with the Word of God. Such mental discipline will equip us to defeat our foes in this all-important war (Colossians 3:16).

PRAYER: “Lord, help me to renew my mind in Your truth and not listen to the devil’s lies.”

QUOTE: “Our joy in the Lord depends on thinking God’s thoughts about ourselves and our sin.”