~ Winning the Battle for Your Mind ~
“The Scriptures teach that God has provided a way of escape from every
temptation (see 1 Cor. 10:13)… If you don’t take captive the initial thought
[of temptation], you will probably lose the battle to temptation. We all have
to learn how to practice threshold thinking. We need to take the way of escape
the moment our thoughts are contrary to the truth and righteousness. For
example, a man struggling with lust sees a pornographic picture. He has the
opportunity to respond by thinking, My relationship
with sin has ended. I don’t have to give in to this. I choose right now to take
this thought captive to the obedience of Christ. I’m not going to look at it
and I’m not going to think about it. He stops looking at the picture and
gets rid of the magazine or leaves the place of temptation. If he hesitates at
the threshold [of temptation], stares at the picture and begins to fantasize
about it, he will trigger an emotional landslide, producing a physical response
that will be difficult to stop. He must capture the initial tempting thought or
it will probably capture him.” (155)
“People who study human behavior tell us that if you continue to
repeat an act for six weeks, you will form a habit. If you exercise that habit
long enough, a stronghold will be established. Once a stronghold of thought and
response is entrenched in your mind, your ability to choose and to act contrary
to that pattern is very difficult. It is like driving an old truth down the
same dirt road for so long that deep ruts are established. After a while, you
won’t even have to steer the truck. It will naturally stay in the ruts of the
road and any attempt to steer out of them will be met with resistance. A
stronghold is a mental habit pattern. It is memory traces burned into our minds
over time or by the intensity of traumatic experiences.” (156-157)
“Homosexuality is a stronghold. In God’s eyes there is no such thing
as a homosexual. He created us male and female. However, homosexual thoughts,
feelings and behavior can usually be traced to past negative experiences or
tempting thoughts. Such experiences precipitate sexual feelings, fantasies and
disorientations, causing some to believe a lie about their identity.” (158)
“Do we have to remain victims of these mental strongholds for the rest
of our lives? Absolutely not! If we have been trained wrong, can we be
retrained? If we have learned to believe a lie, can we now choose to believe
the truth? If we have programmed our computers wrong, can they be reprogrammed/
Absolutely, but we have to want to renew our minds. How? Our lives are
transformed as we renew our minds through the hearing of God’s Word, Bible
studies, personal discipleship and Christ-centered counseling (see Rom. 12:2).
Because some of these strongholds are thoughts raised against the knowledge of
God (see 2 Cor. 10:5), learning to know God as a loving Father and yourself as
His accepted child is a starting place.”
(158)
“More is going on in your mind than prior negative conditioning. You
are not just up against the world system in which you were raised and the
resultant flesh patterns you have chosen to adopt. You are also up against the
devil who is scheming to fill your mind with thoughts that are opposed to God’s
plan for you. In addition to previous thoughts that formed mental strongholds,
we have the present-day responsibility to manage our thoughts according to 2
Corinthians 10:5: ‘We are taking every thought [noema] captive to the obedience of Christ.’ Why do these thoughts
need to be taken captive? Because they are contrary to God’s ways and they may
be the enemy’s thoughts. Notice how Paul uses the word ‘thoughts’ (noema) in 2
Corinthians in relation to Satan’s activities. In 3:14 and 4:4, Paul reveals
that Satan is behind the spiritual hardness and blindness of unbelievers: ‘But
their minds [noema] were hardened. The god of this world has blinded the minds
[noema] of the unbelieving.’ Paul also states that Satan is deceiving and
dividing believers: ‘I am afraid, lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness,
your minds [noema] should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of
devotion to Christ’ (2 Cor. 11:3). ‘We are not ignorant of his [Satan’s]
schemes [noema]’ (2 Cor. 2:11). Satan’s
strategy is to introduce his thoughts and ideas into your mind and deceive you
into believing they are yours.”
(158-159)
“If Satan can place a thought in your mind—and he can—it isn’t much
more of a trick for him to make you think it is your idea. If you knew it was
Satan, you would reject the thought, wouldn’t you? When he disguises his
suggestions as your thoughts and ideas, however, you are more likely to accept
them. That is his primary deception.”
(159) As examples Anderson gives David and the census in 1 Chronicles
21, Judas Iscariot in John 13, and Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5.
“Satan is a defeated foe; therefore, his power is limited, but he
still has the ability to deceive ‘the whole world’ (Rev. 12:9). Jesus said:
‘The devil… does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him.
Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature; for he is a liar, and
the father of lies’ (John 8:44). Satan has no authority or power over you
except what you yield to him when you are deceived into believing his lies…
Because Satan’s primary weapon is the lie, your defense against him is the
truth. Dealing with Satan is not a power encounter; it is a truth encounter.
When you expose Satan’s lie with God’s truth, his power is broken. That is why
Jesus said, ‘You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.’ (John
8:32) That is why He prayed, ‘My prayer is not that you take them out of the
world but that you protect them from the evil one. Sanctify them by the truth;
your word is truth’ (17:15,17). That is why the first piece of armor Paul
mentions for standing against the schemes of the devil is ‘the belt of truth’
(Eph. 6:14). Satan’s lie cannot withstand the truth any more than the darkness
of night can withstand the light of the rising sun. We are not called to dispel
the darkness; we are called to turn on the light. Deceiving spirits are like
cockroaches. They come out only at night, and when you turn on the light, they
head for the shadows.” (161-162)
~ Healing Emotional Wounds From Your
Past ~
“Some Christians assert that the past doesn’t have any effect on them
because they are new creations in Christ. I would have to disagree. Either they
are extremely fortunate to have a conflict-free past or they are living in
denial. Those who have had major traumas and have learned to resolve them in
Christ know how devastating past experiences can be.” (187)
“How does God intend you to resolve past experiences? In two ways.
First, understand that you are no longer
a product of your past. You are a new creation in Christ: a product of
Christ’s work on the cross. You have the privilege of evaluating your past
experience in the light of who you are today, as opposed to who you were then.
The intensity of the primary emotion was established by how you perceived the
event at the time it happened. People are not in bondage to past traumas. They
are in bondage to the lies they believed about themselves, God and how to live
as a result of the trauma. That is why truth sets you free. As a Christian, you
are literally a new creature in Christ. Old things, including the traumas of
your past, ‘passed away’ (2 Cor. 5:17). The old you in Adam is gone; the new
you in Christ is here to stay. We have all been victimized, but whether we
remain victims is up to us. Those primary emotions are rooted in the lies we
believed in the past. Now we can be transformed by the renewing of our minds
(see Rom. 12:2). The flesh patterns are still embedded in our minds when we
become new creations in Christ, but we can crucify the flesh and choose to walk
by the Spirit (see Gal. 5:22-23)… The second step in resolving past conflicts
is to forgive those who have offended
you.” (188-189)
“Why should you forgive those who have hurt you in the past? First, forgiveness is required by God. As soon
as Jesus spoke the amen to His model prayer—which included a petition for God’s
forgiveness—He commented: ‘For if you forgive men for their transgressions,
your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, then
your Father will not forgive your transgressions.’ (Matt. 6:14,15) We must base
our relationships with others on the same criteria on which God bases His
relationship with us: love, acceptance and forgiveness (see Matt. 18:21-35).
Second, forgiveness is necessary to avoid
entrapment by Satan. I have discovered from my counseling that
unforgiveness is the number one avenue Satan uses to gain entrance to believers’
lives. Paul encouraged us to forgive ‘in order that no advantage be taken of us
by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his schemes’ (2 Cor. 2:11)… Third, forgiveness is required of all believers who
desire to be like Christ. [Ephesians 4:31,32].” (189-190)
“Forgiving is not forgetting. Forgetting may be a long-term by-product
of forgiving, but it is never a means to forgiveness. When God says He will
remember our sins no more (see Heb. 10:17), He is not saying, ‘I will forget
them.’ God is omniscient; He cannot forget. Rather, He will never use the past
against us. He will remove it as far from us as ‘the east is from the west’
(Ps. 103:12). Forgiveness does not mean you must tolerate sin… [Forgiving]
someone doesn’t mean you must be a doormat to the person’s continual sin… It is
okay to forgive another’s past sins and, at the same time, take a stand against
future sins. Forgiveness does not seek revenge or demand repayment for offenses
suffered. ‘You mean I’m just supposed to let them off the hook?’ you may argue.
Yes, you let them off your hook
realizing that God does not let them off His
hook. You may feel like exacting justice, but you are not an impartial judge.
God is the just Judge who will make everything right in the end. ‘“Vengeance is
Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord’ (Rom. 12:19). ‘But where is the justice?’
ask the victims. It is in the crucifixion of Christ. Christ died ‘once for all’
(Rom. 6:10). He died for his sins, her sins, your sins, my sins. Forgiveness
means resolving to live with the consequences of another person’s sins… We are
all living with the consequences of someone else’s sin. We are all living with
the consequences of Adam’s sin. The only real choice is to live with those
consequences in the bondage of bitterness or in the freedom of forgiveness.” (190-191)
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