Good day, Mdm!
I didn't plan for this sharing.. However, as I was reading this book "The Power of Right Believing", I came across this section which I thought is interesting and thought I should just slip it in before taking the flight tonight.
Here's the extracts:
The Enemy's Strategy
The enemy knows that if he can control your thought life, he can manipulate your emotions and feelings. For instance, if he can make you entertain thoughts of guilt, failure and defeat, you will begin to feel lousy about yourself, physically weak and even depressed.
Our emotions are flags that indicate to us what our thoughts are. Thank God for emotions. They tell us if something is terribly wrong with our thoughts. Many of us are not cognizant when our thinking slides down a slippery slope to fear, doubt, pessimism, and anxiety. However, God has designed us in such a way that we can quickly recognize our thinking through our emotions.
Try this: whenever you begin to sense negative emotions like fear, worry, guilt and anger, stop and ask yourself, "What am I thinking?"
Your emotions follow quickly at the heels of your thoughts. If your thoughts are negative, you will naturally produce negative emotions. Conversely, if your thoughts are positive in Christ, you will produce positive emotions.
That is why there is a battle for your mind. The devil wants to keep your thoughts negative so that he can keep you defeated. He is a master of mind games and he doesn't play fair. When he first tempted Adam & Eve in the garden, he made them doubt God's motives, by lying to them and insinuating that God was deliberately withholding something good from them. He made God appear stingy, when in reality God was protecting them.
The devil's strategy hasn't changed - he is still using lies, accusations, guilt and condemnation to ensnare believers today and to make them doubt God's perfect love, forgiveness and super-abounding grace.
Many years ago, when I was fairly new in the ministry, together with another pastor, I prayed for a lady who was oppressed by the devil. She was not a believer. While we were praying for her, all of a sudden the woman growled menacingly in a deep male voice, "I want her mind!" Whoa! It was the first time I had prayed for a demon-possessed person and the demon actually spoke back! I remember it vividly till this day. Well, we prayed for her and cast the demon out of her.
Now, please don't worry, as a believer in Jesus, you can never be possessed by the devil. He can oppress you mentally. But he can never possess you. I shared my experience with this woman to unveil to you the enemy's strategy. He wants your mind! He wants to keep your mind negative, oppressed, depressed and pessimistic. He wants you to remain in wrong belief, knowing that as long as you continue to believe wrong, you will continue to live wrong. There is a battle for your mind and we win it through the power of right believing.
The Bible says "He (Jesus) who is in you is greater than he (satan) who is in this world." Amen!
Hope you are blessed by this extracts. Most probably, we will discuss more on the topic of spiritual warfare when I return from my trip.
For now, Grace and peace be with you always!
Shalom,
Bro
No comments:
Post a Comment