Battlefield of the Mind

The battlefield of the mind is a place of intense warfare. On any given day a person can experience deepest thoughts of joy and depression on the same day. At one moment you can be enjoying the bountiful blessings of the day and the next moment can receive some bad news that takes the wind out of your sails.

At one moment you can dwell on the promises of God and enter each day with faith and confidence. Something can happen during the day that distracts you and alters your course just a bit. By the end of the day you can start entertaining doubt and sink into depression.

A person can truly seek God and yearn to be closer to Him and to walk in holiness. Suddenly an unexpected temptation comes your way and maybe at first you resist saying what you are really thinking, you resist the temptation to doubt, and you resist the temptation to rebel. Then your mind begins to drift from holiness to the hollowness of sin and before you know it you find yourself shamed and in need of repentance.

You can wake up weary with the challenges of life only to be overcome with even more trials that buckle the knees and cripple the mind. Weary you find prayer a chore, Bible reading laborious and you lose hope and you lose heart.

I say it again, the mind is a battlefield. Satan shoots the fiery darts of little seed thoughts, that if they take root, get us off course. So what is the hope? How do we combat this constant assault on our minds?

Two things will help. First, we must take up the shield of faith. [Eph 6:16] "In every situation take the shield of faith, and with it you will be able to extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one." This shield of faith is indispensable if we are going to defend the battlefield of our mind.

The all out assault on the mind comes from all sides. If we take the shield of faith, our confidence and trust in God in every situation in life, then we can live with peace. [Phil 4:6-7] Step out from behind that shield for even a second and you become a vulnerable target. How many are losing the battle of the mind right at this point. We are not hiding behind the fortress of trust in Almighty God.

A second way to win the battle of the mind is found in [II Cor 10:3-5] "For although we are walking in the flesh, we do not wage war in a fleshly way, since the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly, but are powerful through God for the demolition of strongholds. We demolish arguments and every high-minded thing that is raised up against the knowledge of God, taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ." We fight through God to take every thought captive.

There are some thoughts that are traitors, spies, and infiltrations by the enemy. Each of these thoughts must be arrested, sentenced, and executed to keep us on track. What kind of thoughts. Bitterness, un-forgiveness, anger, doubt, depression, suicide, giving up, lust, greed, vengeance, hopelessness, rebellion, and so forth. These thoughts must be taken captive. We cannot dwell on such thoughts without suffering defeat.

So there it is. A simple two fold strategy to win the battle of the mind. Take up the shield of faith and find refuge in God's protection. Secondly, take every thought captive and with it destroy every stronghold of Satan in our minds. If we do these two things we will be well on our way to wining the battle of the mind.