Satan’s Mind Games: How to Outsmart the Battle Plan Against Your Mind
Excerpted from Radial Healing.
Just like a real soldier, one of the first steps to crafting a battle plan is to survey the battlefield.
We are fighting against a cultural current that the enemy is using for his advantage.
As humans, we are three-part beings—we are a spirit, we have a soul, and we live in a body. However, most of the time, we only focus on the body. If you’ve been on a diet, you know how much the body can take over the other two parts. If you give up sweets or cut coffee cold turkey, your body will talk to you and try to convince you to cave. That is why making decisions based on biblical wisdom and the guidance of the Holy Spirit is so important, especially when culture tells us to define reality based on our preferences or emotions. We need to raise our awareness of the spiritual and soulish realms.
Hosea 4:6 (KJV) says, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” The New Living Translation says, “My people are being destroyed because they don’t know me.” Today, Christians are being destroyed because they don’t know the Holy Spirit and are ignorant of the spiritual realm.
The devil didn’t give up on you when you got saved; he doubled down. He saw Jesus walking on earth, so he knows what a believing believer (much less millions of them) filled with the Holy Spirit can do. It scares him because he will be in for an early retirement if we start exercising our authority. The enemy isn’t concerned with you attending church. What really scares him is when you get filled with the Holy Spirit and realize who God says you are. He really starts sweating when you start believing like Jesus. Sadly, many believers are unbelieving believers, meaning they’re not believing correctly. They might know the right biblical answers but don’t believe them. The devil is also not concerned with what you know, but he is concerned with what you believe, because that’s when you start manifesting heaven on earth!
John 10:10 calls the devil a thief whose sole purpose is to steal, kill, and destroy. The enemy wants to pull you away from God and steal everything good from your life. He doesn’t want you to live in peace, experience joy, or know how powerful you are. He wants you to be sad, bound, sick, broke, and anxious, and he has plotted evil schemes to make that happen. They come in the form of the strongholds we discussed in the last chapter. The devil also steals through lying. If he gets you to believe the wrong things, he steals the right things from you because you can’t have what you don’t believe. So many people have had their health stolen from them because they believed the enemy’s lie that God gave them sickness or that healing isn’t for today.
Thankfully, God has given us foolproof weapons that “have divine power to demolish strongholds” (2 Corinthians 10:4 NIV). You can destroy, uproot, overthrow, and tear down every lie and scheme the enemy plots against you. Second Corinthians 10:5 (NIV) goes on to say, “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.”
The enemy has waged war against our thoughts, and the battlefield is in our minds. So, our battle plan is to:
Consistently take inventory of our thoughts and emotions
Identify lies
Disown and reject the lies and renounce previous agreements with them
Replace the lies with biblical truth
Our thoughts can open doors or close doors; they either resist the enemy or give him a foothold in our lives. So, the goal is to capture rebellious thoughts before they get to the heart. At first, these thoughts may not feel out of the ordinary. The devil does not tempt us with desires that are completely out of left field. If you have never stolen anything in your life, I don’t think he will waste his time trying to tempt you with the idea of robbing a bank. The devil does not come to a healthy, sober person trying to convince them to do meth. No!
Instead, temptation happens one compromise at a time. Let’s say that a suggestive photo pops up on social media, and you stare for a little too long. A week later, you feel a pull to look up similar images online. If you keep giving in to similar temptations, the rabbit trail leads to watching things you would have never considered viewing before that first photo appeared. Every time you give in, the feeling of shame compounds. You can nip shame in the bud by recognizing that those rebellious thoughts were never yours to begin with.
What do I mean by that? The enemy throws darts of fire at you in the form of thoughts. These negative, fearful, sinful thoughts cross your mind, and if you think they’re your thoughts, then the devil accuses you of having them and brings shame and condemnation to you. The fiery darts might keep coming, but remember you have the mind of Christ. Therefore, those thoughts aren’t yours, so don’t agree with them.
The Power of Your Agreement
Negative thoughts are not from God, and they are often not from you either. Lies are from the devil, and you can choose whether or not to agree with them. Here is what Jesus had to say about the devil:
He was a murderer from the beginning. He has always hated the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44).
So, being able to discern the voice of God from the voice of the enemy is crucial. First and foremost, the enemy will attack how you see yourself. His strategy is exposed in Genesis 3 when he tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden. It involves:
Deception
The first thing the enemy did was cause Eve to question God’s goodness. He asked, “Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?” (Genesis 3:1), as if God was withholding something good from her.
Disempowerment
Next, the enemy made Eve question her identity. He told her, “You will be like God,” when she was already made in His likeness and image (Genesis 3:5).
Division
Eve gave into temptation, and she and Adam were banished from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:23). The enemy’s strategy will always try to isolate you from God and people.
The enemy plants thoughts in our minds the way crooks plant false evidence. Then, he will deceive you into thinking that you devised the thought and that you are the bad one. For example, the enemy will plant an idea like “Go sleep around; everyone is doing it.” In response, you may think, “Huh, maybe sex outside of marriage is not as big of a deal as they made it out to be in church. Could be fun.” Then, even if you didn’t act on it, you feel shame as if the original thought was your own, and you are stuck with the idea as if it were. And to make matters worse, you attach this to your identity and start thinking of yourself as an adulterer and a pervert.
Your agreement has power. Whenever you agree with a thought that does not align with the Word of God, you add another brick to a stronghold that protects the lies and keeps out truth. Think about
it. When you agree with someone, you have something in common with them. That is why it is crucial to agree with God’s voice, not the enemy’s. You are a child of God, which means that no other voice should define you except His.
Jesus said things that empower us, told us how He saw us, and what we could do, like these:
I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 16:19).
I tell you the truth, anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to be with the Father (John 14:12).
Ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it! (John 14:14)
Our plan to overcome the enemy’s strategies starts by changing the way we think. Rather than conforming to a culture that strays further away from reality, we are called to claim truth. Instead of identifying with sadness and pessimism, we are people who believe in the best and renew our minds with hope.
You are set apart for the glory of God. Let’s return to Romans 12:2, which says, “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” The New King James Version says, “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
The Greek word for renewing is anakainōsis, and one of its translations is, “a complete change for the better” (Strong’s G342). Past trauma, shame, or destructive memories and thought patterns do not have to define you forever. You can completely change and know God’s perfect will for your life! The question is, how?
To put it simply, renewing your mind is as straightforward as replacing the lies and negativity with life-giving biblical truths. Scripture and science alike back up this fact.
