When people are battling with a situation, most of the time, they try to find earthly solutions or use earthly weapons to get rid of the unwanted situation. But today’s passage says: “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”. However, most of the time, even when using the weapons God has given us, we still lose our spiritual battles? Why?
The Bible says that our weapons to fight things that are not normal in our lives are not carnal; this simply means that humanistic attempts are useless in spiritual warfare. We cannot defeat the devil with bombs and guns, but with the weapons of the Word of God. You see, most of the time, when someone is suffering from alcohol, depression or drugs for example, people think by stopping their addiction they would be better. The truth is that those people are not bound to alcohol or drugs, because these are only the manifestations of the true bondage that is their mind. You see, the devil knows that the way a person thinks is how that person will act. If he can convince a person to believe something untrue then he can cause them to fall and defeat them in the spiritual warfare. Therefore the alcoholic thinks they need alcohol in order to feel good, but he is bound because the devil has control of his mind; the drug addict thinks he can’t survive without drugs and is therefore bound by it because the devil has control of his mind, the sex craved thinks they will not survive without sex and cannot control his body because the devil has control of his mind… the bondage is actually in the mind!
Now, why does the devil attack us from our minds? To urge us to do what will cause our fall. It is not Satan who buys the drug the drug addict takes! Satan only makes sure the addiction is in place in the person’s mind and that it becomes a stronghold. Why? Because of the following Scriptures (don’t forget that Satan knows the Bible too, so he changes it to trick the children of God). The Bible says, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own” (1 Corinthians 6:19). Yes, the devil knows that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost and he also knows that the Bible says: “If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple” (1 Corinthians 3:17). The devil knows that to defile the temple will lead to the ultimate destruction by God Himself in the lake of fire for all eternity; therefore, he uses the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life (1 John 2:16) to war against us in this spiritual war. Don’t forget that he is already doomed for hell. Now, for you to be able to follow him to hell, he will push you to disobey God or do things that will take you to hell. If he destroys someone’s body, he will have to pay the price. So he urges the person to destroy his own body. My friend, our flesh desires all these things that are against the will of God because it is totally worldly… and we know those things: “The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:19-20).
My friends, our minds are being deceived by the devil whenever our flesh seems to be pleased with what leads to disobeying God’s, which affects our spiritual battles. Therefore, any spiritual warfare battle starts from the renewing of our mind through obedience in God’s Word: we need to align our thoughts, our mind with the Word of God… turn the lies the devil has made us believed, “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (verse 5) then we will be able to effectively and efficiently use the weapons we are given to wage war against the enemy. Stay blessed in Jesus’ name.