Winning the Battle for your mind: Take captive every thought

Winning the Battle for your mind (Chapter 9)


“For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 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.”

‭‭2 Corinthians‬ ‭10:3-5‬ ‭NIV‬‬


Strongholds 

The main targets that must be destroyed are the "strongholds" in the mind. Strongholds are bad patterns of thought that are burned into our minds either through repetition over time or through one-time, deeply shocking experiences.



Threshold of a decision

The moment we are tempted to get a need met in the world instead of Christ, we are on the threshold of a decision. If we don't immediately choose to "take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ", we will begin to consider it as an option.



The Bible teaches us that God has provided a way escape for every temptation. But this escape is at the threshold. If you don't control the temptation when the thought first occurs, you run the risk of allowing the temptation to control you.



Expose the lie and you win the battle

Satan has no power over us except what we give him. When we fail to take every thought captive we can be deceived uni believing his lies. How?



1. Be transformed by the renewing of your minds, by filling it with God's Word.



2. Prepare our minds for action. Follow through.



3. Take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. What a thought pops into your kind that doesn't agree with God's Word, refuse it right away and choose instead to believe and act on the truth.



4. Turn to God in prayer.





Source: Stomping out the darkness by Neil T. Anderson & Dave Park (1993)