My Majestic Mind – Part II
(Key Text – Ephesians 4:23 – "And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;" )
Part II – The Spiritual Offensive
2 Corinthians 10
3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: 4
(For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down
of strong holds;) 5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that
exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to
the obedience of Christ;
This week I want to use a football analogy which will oversimplify the game. Basically
there are two sides: the offense and the defense. The majority of scoring, on a successful
team, comes from the offense. However, good defense is also needed to be successful. A few
years ago I took part in a video game football league. We were so serious that we kept
statistics and everything. Within the league, although I had the number one defense in
every category, my record at the end of the season was roughly 7 wins and 4 losses. Why?
Because I didn’t have any offensive fire power. All I had to do was score an average
of 19 points every game and I could have been undefeated. In other words, when it came to
"ball strategy," I could defend but I could not attack.
In our text, Paul gives us some insight on spiritual warfare. He starts by telling us
that even though we walk in the flesh, we don’t wage war in the flesh (3rd).
Paul understood that the thing holding him back wasn’t standing right in front of
him. It wasn’t the people on his job, the people at the bank or the people in the
mall that looked at him funny; it was something spiritual. This is why he follows up the 4th
verse with, "For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal." In some
translations the word "carnal" is substituted with either "fleshly" or
"worldly." This is to re-emphasize that he didn’t need to war physically;
he needed to war spiritually. You see, just because our coworkers, family or friends raise
hell and persecute us for being children of God, there’s no need to punch their
lights out. That won’t help us get where we are trying to go anyway.
We need a spiritual offensive, and that’s why Paul is hinting we should not choose
the physical or "temporary/weak" weapons. Instead, he tells us that the right
weapons are "mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds" (5th). If
we tap into the arsenal of God, we will find weapons built to bring down the strong holds
of the enemy. Strong holds like hate which is one thing we should not be carrying around.
However, many of us do and even enjoy ourselves while doing it. To overcome this and other
strong holds, the 5th verse tells us to cast down imaginations, and every high
thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God and bring into captivity every
thought to the obedience of Christ. Let us elaborate.
The good portion of the spiritual battle is fought right within our minds. We walk
around hating people and even hoping for bad things to happen to them. Then we top it all
off with a "Yeaaaaah!!" However, we need to cast down those types of
imaginations. Too often we spend too much time planting our own bad seeds, and then we
have to pray for God to wipe out that harvest. We’ve let too many seeds of doubt be
planted in our minds, and then those same seeds grow up and choke off the dreams and
visions God has sent us. After all of this, we’ve had to go into a defensive mode,
spending time on our knees praying to recover from self-inflicted curses. This is a prime
example of having a weak offense and a strong defense. For too long we’ve been on the
defensive, praying prayers like "Lord if you could just hold the devil off,"
"Oh God, just protect me from satanic attack" or "Jesus, just watch over
me." Now these are fine, but why not pray prayers that put us on the offensive?
Prayers like, "Jesus, high priest of my profession, I call forth the salvation of my
unsaved loved ones" or "Lord, by the power of your spirit, I shall crush every
strong hold of the enemy."
Too many in the body of Christ have setup DEFENSIVE mechanisms and not OFFENSIVE ones,
but today that changes!!! It’s time for us to deploy our spiritual offensive against
the principalities of darkness. We no longer subject our minds to the spirits of failure,
misery, depression or low self-esteem. As the 5th verse says, we bring into captivity
every thought to the obedience of Christ. This means that we "load" up our minds
with the promises of God, not the doubts of hell. We become empowered to prosper and not
destined to fail. We begin to meditate on the blessings and no longer fall victim to the
curses. We’ve been losing this war too long because we’ve been waiting on
miracle after miracle to save us — from our own damage. Now don’t get me wrong,
there is nothing wrong with waiting on the Lord – IN DUE SEASON, but there comes a time
when the troops have to rally an attack and I’m here to tell you today…. Right
Now…. GOD HAS COMMANDED THE TROOPS TO ATTACK!!! It’s time for us to be the HEAD
HUNTERS instead of the heads that are hunted!! So bring every thought under the captivity
of Christ and place in your minds on the things that belong there — the things of God,
by God, and from God!!!