“You may believe that you are responsible for what you do, but not for what you think. The truth is that you are responsible for what you think, because it is only at this level that you can exercise choice. What you do comes from what you think. ” (Marianne Williamson)
So guard your thinking!
Satan’s primary attack is in the mind. He begins his battle in our thoughts and thought-processes. Few believers make much of this, even whilst acknowledging it as obvious. It seems that we are content to just let it happen.
Consequently, our guard is down much of the time. We allow the media a field day in the making and shaping of our minds and the minds of our children. A decade or so back, a Nielsen Report concluded that American children age 2-5 watch an average of 32 hours of TV per week.
If anything, it sounds like a low estimate.
And a normal adult is bombarded with media images, TV, radio, internet, in an unstoppable media Tsunami of news and views 24/7. Theoretically, the adult is more discerning than the child, but the filter can quickly get clogged. Even our own thinking can get cluttered and confused:
“Sometimes we have thoughts that even we don’t understand. Thoughts that aren’t even true—that aren’t really how we feel—but they’re running through our heads anyway because they’re interesting to think about.
If you could hear other people’s thoughts, you’d overhear things that are true as well as things that are completely random. And you wouldn’t know one from the other. It’d drive you insane. What’s true? What’s not? A million ideas, but what do they mean?” (Jay Asher)
The Bible speaks of “the weapons of our warfare” which are to be utilised in day-to-day intellectual war-zones in the battlefield of the mind. 2Cor 10:4 suggests that the area of our thoughts is a battlefield and the warfare begins in our thinking processes before spreading into other areas of our lives like a computer virus, affecting the whole.
The powerful phrase in the old Authorised Version is “Casting down imaginations,” which Meyer’s NT Commentary translates as “We pull down thoughts (Romans 2:15), i.e. bring to nothing hostile deliberations, resolutions, plans, calculations, and the like, raising themselves like fortresses against Christ.” We have to deal with a whole raft of negative nonsense, pulling out the rubbish as if you’re de-cluttering an attic. There’s stuff that’s redundant and useless, past its sell-by date, and not worth keeping. It’s just cluttering up your head-space and preventing clear thought.
But that word “imagination” is very telling. The Bible tells us tht we have “the mind of Christ“which suggests a new model of thinking. An Old Testament picture of that comes in the poetry of David in the book of Psalms, and the statement: “I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes.”(Psalm 101:3)
Wicked imaginations are from the devil. We are to pull down Satan’s strongholds and cast down his thoughts, which produce wicked imaginations.
The antidote is also there in the book of Psalms: “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord.”(Psalm 19:14).
The meditation of our hearts—or our thought lives—should be acceptable to God. Win the battle in your mind and you will rejoice every day of your life in the victory God gives you over the enemy.
But this is more than a call to “Try harder” (though that call is never redundant and always apt). The only way to counter that “evil imagination” is to provide alternative content.
And this was Paul’s point in Phil 4:8:”Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.”
A replacement diet
This is not a diet supplement, as if you can eat all that junk food, add sprouts and be virtuous. On the contrary, it’s a total replacement diet. Instead of feasting on gossip, lies and innuendo, you are nourished on truth and honour, goodness and kindness. Instead of feeling slightly sick and headachey because you’ve over-indulged in malice, cruel jokes and unforgiveness, you learn to drink the clean clear water of grace and honesty.
And it tastes wonderful.
Dr Ken Baker 