Be on your guard

The mind of a Christian is always a battle field between good and evil. This began in the Garden of Eden when Eve allowed the devil to take charge of her thinking. From the beginning, man had everything right around him. There was no sin and he did not have any choices to make because everything had been set right for him. There was no evil or sin. Then one day, the enemy came with the aim of trying to bring him down. In the book of Genesis 3 when the serpent appeared to the woman, he took control over her through playing with her mind. He made Eve doubt what had been clearly set by God by causing a thought that was not right to get into her mind. A simple “did God really say that you must not eat from any tree in the garden?” brought the whole human race down because she allowed this to confuse her and in the process she lost control over her life and her freedom.

How many times has a similar thing occurred to us? We have allowed the enemy to destroy us by just a simple thought. How many times have we given the devil victory by allowing him to take control over our mind by a simple thought that we entertained in our minds? How many times have friendships been broken because of entertaining a simple thought of envy, jealousy, wanting to control others or marriages fallen because of entertaining a simple thought of lust, dishonesty? I will not lie to you by telling you that such thought do not come. The truth is that as long as we are living in this world, we will always struggle with such and many more ungodly thought. We will struggle with thoughts for self glorification after achieving something great even in ministry even when the glory belongs to God. Thoughts of Jealousy and envy might come to our minds when others are 'prospering' and it seem like 'we are not'. Lust; when we see seductive dressing, and even thoughts of revenge when hurt by others. However, how we will deal with these thoughts and desires is what will determine whether we will win or lose the battle of the mind and thus have victory over the enemy.

The bible tells us that we should be on our guard because the enemy is wandering around looking for someone to bring down (1 Peter 5:6-11). However, very many times we have forgotten this. Or maybe we expect to see the devil come to us with horns on his head and spades (like I used to think when I was a child) written on him ‘devil coming to tempt’, then we will fight him? NO, the Bible says that we are fighting against spiritual forces of the darkness (Ephesians 6:12) which includes the ungodly thoughts planted in our mind by the devil who is a spirit. 

We have to be on our guard because such thoughts will always present themselves to us (James 1:2-3). However, we need to realize that how we deal with them is what will determine whether we win or lose. We may decide like Eve to let the enemy to overcome us by giving in to the thoughts and allowing them to grow in us and we will fall. We might act also like David who after seeing a naked woman decided to give in to his thoughts (2 Samuel 11) and desires of lust and sinned against God. However, we can decide to say no to entertaining the evil thought planted in our minds, we can decide to destroy them once they get in our mind and refuse to let them take root in our minds which destroys our relationship with God. We can decide to follow the example of Christ who decided to say no to all the temptations and thoughts that the devil was trying to put in his mind (Luke 4:1-13) which he realized would cause him not to accomplish his mission on earth.

We can however, only achieve this by being on our guard. We need to keep our spirits sensitive (as my best friend calls it). To achieve this we need to:

·         Keep praying to be tuned in to God and to know his ways. I believe that one of the reasons why Jesus won over the temptations of the devil is because he had been praying and fasting (Matthew 4:2) so he way alert. We also see him overcoming his flesh in the garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:41-44) when he prayed so sincere to God and told him exactly what he felt and God gave him the strength to go ahead and die for us. We need to keep praying (Ephesians 6:18), and when we go to pray, let’s be real with God, let us learn to tell God what we feel and ask him to help us overcome it.

·         Read and know the word of God to avoid falling. The bible in the book of Psalms 119:11 says that we need to hide the word of God in our hearts that we may not sin against Him. We have the example of Christ who although he was God; he used the Word (Luke 4:4,8,12) to overcome the enemy in the wilderness after fasting for 40 days and nights.

We have victory over the enemy which we received when Jesus died on the cross and rose again and we should therefore not give in to the tricks of the devil and not let him take control over our lives by using the thoughts he plants our minds

God bless you!