Dwight Fletcher | Arrest your mind

STEPHEN COVEY, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, said: “Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny”. Freedom begins in our thought life when we start working on dismantling them. “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” 2 Corinthians 10:5 (NIV).

The devil’s chief target is the mind, because the most effective way to influence behaviour is through thinking. He started it with Adam and Eve by influencing them to doubt God’s truth. He tried it with Jesus in the temptation in the wilderness, by twisting God’s truth.

Our mind is the control centre of our entire being. The enemy knows that there’s nothing bigger or more powerful than God, that’s why he seeks to distort everything and “exalt” those distortions in our thought life. Many of us struggle with ungodly thoughts. When they start to plague our minds, we must counter them with the truth of God’s Word. Some of us struggle with our identity as Christians because we have believed wrong doctrine. When we walk around saying that we’re sinners saved by grace, we walk around saying we’re sinners. If we call ourselves sinners we’re expecting to sin as a norm. We are not called to sin but to live in holiness. When we’re saved by grace the Scripture never uses the word sinner to describe us again. It says we are saints. We must therefore replace that thought and start confessing that we’re saints.

We must start working on every thought that has captured our hearts and minds with faulty ways of thinking. The divine power to defeat them comes from the Word of God empowered by the Spirit of God. A stronghold is a fortress made of thoughts. Therefore, to dismantle the fortress we must dismantle our faulty ways of thinking. “… take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” 2 Corinthians 10:5 (NIV).

As we discover the areas in our lives that are in conflict to the Word of God and His plan for our lives, we must conform those areas to what God has said. As we break down the evil strongholds, we will build godly ones. “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son...” Romans 8:29 (NIV). Ultimately, God the Father wants us to look like Jesus (God the Son). He wants us to press towards that goal with all our hearts and minds. Satan and our sins are already defeated foes. Jesus defeated Satan and sin on the cross and rose with resurrection power through the Holy Spirit. He has shared that power with us, so we have it working on the inside of us. It’s not Satan who defeats us; it’s us opening ourselves to him.

“… many of our spiritual conflicts simply are not going to cease until the character of the Lord Jesus is formed in our hearts.” Francis Frangipane, The Three Battlegrounds. We must learn that it’s better to develop godly virtues than to spend our time praying against the devil. It’s the joy of the Lord that casts out spirits of depression and our living faith which destroys spirits of unbelief; God’s perfect love casts out fear. We must focus our time on developing Christlikeness because it’s the greatest weapon against the attacks of Satan and has divine power to demolish strongholds and set us free.