The Mind and The Believer 1

As a child of God, you need to understand that the spiritual struggles/battles we face or fight always starts and ends in the mind

Whoever can control the mind will control the physical world

The mind Is the most active part of the soul

The soul is divided into

The Will

The mind and

The emotion

The soul has “the conscious mind” and “the subconscious mind”

When you are learning any new skill, you learn it with your conscious mind but as you master the skill, the knowledge translates to your subconscious mind

For example, driving

We learn this consciously but over time as we master it we begin to do it subconsciously

We can switch to autopilot easily

Even when we sleep, our conscious mind is turned off but our subconscious mind remains active

It is when the subconscious mind is turned off that we say somebody has died

When we do affirmations and declarations, we are programming the subconscious mind to act in a certain way

We know that the subconscious mind controls the conscious mind

Satan understands that if he gets a hold of your mind he gets control of your life

When you hear that someone has sold his soul to the devil, it means the life of such a person and all of the person’s decision-making will be influenced by the devil

Satan has no gain in the death of such a person

For the person to fulfill the agenda of his or her master, he or she must be programmed to unleash mayhem in the world of men

He cannot use the dead

This is why the devil does not go to the cemetery to recruit the dead

Your biggest battles in life have nothing to do with your relationships falling apart, lack of money, losing your job, or the pain or betrayals

The goal of the devil is to make you mentally weak

Once you are mentally weak, the devil can begin to control your mind and your thoughts

This is when he can suggest to you that your enemy is your blood brother or blood sister

This is when he can focus your attention on superstitious beliefs like “enemy of your father’s house, village spirit, ancestral spirit, sin, demonic influences, etcetera, and misdirect your focus in life

When the devil tempted Jesus, he intended to buffet the mind of Jesus and misdirect it towards things that were ungodly and unspiritual

Jesus was asked to prove that he was the son of God by turning stone into bread

He knew that a mentally weak man would not see his true intention which was to get Jesus to do his will but Jesus saw through it

He told Jesus to jump from the top of the temple, quoting the scriptures about angels watching over him but Jesus knew the devil was not after the physical manifestation of his suggestion but testing to see if he would be foolish enough to do as he had suggested

The third was asking Jesus to bow to him, again promising that he would give Jesus the world but Jesus knew by bowing to the devil he would have conceded defeat and failed his assignment which was to defeat the devil and his hordes and liberate men from the chokehold of his reign over them

It was all about mental strength and the mind of Jesus

What people don’t understand is that their greatest protection against Satan is to protect their mind

The mind is the most sacred thing the believer has control over

Psychologically, we are trained to program ourselves for good habits

We must position ourselves to know that spiritual reality is affected by the state of the mind

Your mental health is important as a believer

The Spiritual life is supposed to flow from the Holy Spirit to your Spirit, to your soul, and then to your body

Your mind is a very important part of the process

If you claim to walk with the Lord but your mental state is not okay, you have to know there is a problem and be quick to address it

2 Corinthians 10: 3 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have the divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 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.

Notice where the problem is, it is “Argument”, “Pretension that sets itself against the knowledge of God”, “Taking Thoughts captive so that they can be made to obey the reality of Christ”

What does this mean?

I sit down in my house, I am supposed to pay my rent and I have no job

The landlord is on my case

I have no food to eat. I have no money in the bank. I have prayed and I have fasted. I am tired.

My wife and I are married but we don’t have a child, we have been waiting for 10 years

My wife’s direct boss is on her case making life difficult for her

We are a family under siege

I tell my wife I want to go to the next-door neighbour to see if I can get some money or foodstuff to borrow

My wife says I am not believing in God enough, why would I be borrowing or going abegging when I can pray

I say to her that I have prayed and now I need to take a step of faith

Then I get a phone call, a colleague calls and says he has something to tell me

I ask what it is

The colleague says it was a dream he or she had

That my mother or mother-in-law is a witch and when he or she told her pastor the dream he confirmed the same and told him or her to call me

The conversation has successfully planted an idea in my mind

Do I believe it or do I hold on to the word of my confession that witches can never touch or harm me because I am in Christ?

If I do the former, I have tacitly accepted that witches have power over me in my mind but as you can see, this will not be the obvious way I will look at the issue

I might tell myself this revelation came as a result of my fasting and prayer for several days and convince myself this revelation came from God and then begin to run with this new information

This is the argument

I either buy into it or remain steadfast in my conviction of the truth which is based on the word of God

Thoughts

Certain thoughts creep into our minds when we are dealing with issues in this new reality we walk in as believers

Suppose someone who is a drug pusher/ armed robber, murderer, prostitute, embezzler, or the like becomes a Christian, and they lose their child to a motor accident or they get cancer or another disease

What is your thought, your conscious thought once you hear this?

Do you feel he or she deserved it?

Do you think it is Karma?

Do you think it is the past catching up with him or her?

Are you back to the thought that the wicked shall not go unpunished?

Are you saying he or she is suffering under the weight of curses and enchantments of the devil?

Or are you immediately on your feet declaring and speaking life and comfort to the heart of the affected one without trying to justify or rationalize the issue in your heart?

Which thought would take preeminence in your life and consciousness at that moment?

Is your thought filtered through the lens of the gospel or is it filtered through another belief system that has nothing to do with Christ?

What about pretensions?

Someone comes to you in the name of the Lord to deliver a prophecy, then he or she says you have to kill a fowl, drip the blood in a bucket, read Psalm on it, pour water on it, and bathe with it and your problems will be solved

This person has misrepresented Christ to you but he or she came to you in the name of Jesus.

What would you do?

Submit to the prophesy and carry it out or weigh it by the word and tell yourself this does not affirm the reality I walk in as a believer

Which would you believe?

This is the battle we all fight daily in our minds

They vary from situation to situation and are weightier depending on who they are coming from but they decide the reality we walk in consistently as believers

Most of the things we battle with are of the mind

The fear of tomorrow, the fear of anything, thinking the worst of any situation, losing patience, and getting riled up over issues

I remember when I was in my third year in the university, we went on an expedition to a mountain in Iwo, Osun State

I led a team of student journalists to Oke Oore, where a lot of idols were worshipped

We intended to make a documentary to be presented at a National Competition

We got there and the power of God moved, we did the project successfully

I got back to school and it was two weeks to examination

I needed my fees to be paid and help was not forthcoming from anywhere

God had been paying the fees before that time, I had never had a carryover but that waiting period before he did it was always nerve-racking and edgy for me

I was rarely able to study or concentrate

A thought came to me that I could go to that mountain and seek the help of the juju men there to do a charm that I could use to talk to my father who lived in America at the time but had refused to pick up my calls or support my education in any way

I was going to bow to an idol and get charms as a born-again Christian because I was under pressure to pay my fees and I wanted to use charms to get my father to send me the money

I didn’t see things as I ought to

My mind had been taken over by the moment that I forgot the word of God and who I was in Christ

I forgot how I got the admission and all the wonders that God had done to keep me in school, I was like King Saul who was made a King but forgot who gave him the throne - I was given admission by God but I wanted to keep the admission through the devil

It was a battle of the mind and at the time I was found wanting on the day of adversity

I was on my way to the jujuman, I had already boarded a taxi when the Holy Spirit said “Where are you going?”

It was loud and clear

I said “I am looking for a solution to pay my fees”

He said you will go to those tattered beggars who have never seen 100,000 Naira before at once in their life to collect a charm that will pay your fees of 400,000 Naira?

I knew this

I saw them

They were dirt-poor

I mean, if I had any sense…

I started laughing at myself in the taxi

I laughed and laughed and laughed until the taxi driver thought I had gone mad and parked his taxi by and told me to alight from it

I did

I returned to school on foot still laughing hysterically

Two weeks later, I was summoned to the School gate by the University’s security personnel

I ran there thinking I had done something wrong

When I got there I met the lead Jujuman of the mountain at the school gate

He told me since we came to do the documentary, things had not been the same

The charms had gotten destroyed and many of the worshippers on the mountain had left because they felt we brought a bad omen to the mountain

He said things had gotten so bad for him, he prayed to God and he was told to come and see me so that I could tell him what to do

Ha!

I almost fainted

Imagine that I had gone to him first…

I would have undone the work of salvation that the Holy Spirit was doing in his life because of my selfish issues which are temporal and of no eternal value

I led the man to Christ and till today he is one of the missionaries that I support in ministry

This event taught me quite a lot about what matters and what does not matter that much

I realised that I needed mental toughness- the Lord is my strength and my salvation!

Apostle Paul had mental toughness, he called adversity light affliction and the Bible said the disciples were glad to go through pains for the sake of Christ

They were not namby-pambies like many of us are

Not griping and complaining all the time about things that do not matter

-GSW-