B. Battle for the mind must be won.
“Larry, I desperately want to walk in purity and victory as a genuine believer, but I am regularly tempted with lustful fantasizing, viewing pornography, masturbation, sexual experimentation, even weird thoughts about being gay. I don’t want to be a hypocrite and walk in sexual uncleanness, disobey God, lose out on abundant living, experience guilt, defeat and condemnation, even risk blowing my future—yet how do I break free?”
When a person repents and genuinely trusts Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, ceases striving to achieve victory over sin and instead stands in that victory as an accomplished reality, then one must understand and win the battle for the mind!
Listen closely. Satan’s cover is about to be blown! His chief objective is to keep people ensnared in habitual sin by controlling their minds. He knows that we are the product of our thinking, and if he can manipulate our thought life, he can control our actions.
“But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ” (2 Cor. 11:3, KJV).
The secret to dealing with our actions is to deal with our thoughts. That is where temptation begins—in the thought realm. If you deal with sin decisively in the arena of thoughts, the actions take care of themselves.
“Sow a thought—reap an act. Sow an act—reap a habit. Sow a habit—reap a lifestyle. Sow a lifestyle—reap a destiny.” (This quote has been attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson and many others.)
A thought itself is not sin. It is simply temptation to sin. We can’t help who knocks on the door of our mind, but we can decide whom we let in.
To deal with any sin, in this case sexual sin, we’ve got to take the Western approach: “Head it off at the pass!” An undisciplined thought life makes one a “sitting duck” for the enemy’s “fiery darts” in spiritual warfare.
“For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:4-5, KJV).
A seductive and sensual thought comes subtly crawling across your mind. If you don’t “bring it into the captivity of Christ” (rejecting it firmly as out of sync with God’s Word), that thought can become a “stronghold” (hold onto you with a strong hold), and produce “imaginations” that slowly but surely lead you down the path to sinful action.
If you’re a guy viewing and lusting after a provocatively undressed Miley Cyrus or Beyoncé gyrating sensually; then replay the tape in your mind while showering or lounging in bed; finally, you let your imagination run wild as your hands wander freely…. the archenemy of your soul will soon squeal gleefully and repeat once again, “Gotcha, sucker!” It’s not rocket science.
The ladies can fall into this same pit through erotic fantasies stemming from romance novels or imaginary interludes with that “hot” dude or imaginary lover.
We simply can’t sit back and be passive (Satan starts with “sat”), hoping this pattern will one day go away. “Sin lieth (Hebrew: “lurks like an animal”) at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it” (Gen. 4:7).
So be vigilant in what you let in through the eye gate to your mind and “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles (Satan’s favorite wile is “wait awhile”) of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand” (Eph. 6:10-13).
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