Don’t Allow the Devil to Steal Your Destiny
We all have mind battles—things that trigger our thought processes to go into overdrive with worry, stress, anxiety, analysis paralysis, and fear. We can relate to these feelings because we’ve experienced one or more of them on multiple occasions throughout our lives. It’s a struggle because these emotions are controlling us.
We cannot win the battle until we understand it.
Our mind is so intricate that it can process a wide range of emotions and thoughts, from joy to sorrow, from our shopping list to world problems. We analyze, ponder, and overthink situations. Our mind runs rampant with vain imaginations and false scenarios. Our minds can think, visualize, and construct the words we want to say, create fantastic movie characters, costumes, and set designs, and so much more. I’ve often wondered how people think all this stuff up.
However, all the fascinating things the mind can do and the different directions it can go also explains why our mind can be a battlefield.
Our thoughts come either from our own minds or an attack from the enemy. The latter is a lie that we believe, leading to spiritual warfare. No matter what the source, however, we can capture and control our thoughts.
Our thoughts are emotion-based reactions to life. We often entertain negativity. We’ll think about an offense, guilt, rejection, or fear, and entertain it instead of dismissing it. Then it becomes part of us. As we focus on the negative, what didn’t happen, or things that didn’t go our way, we begin to spiral downward in our thinking. We focus on our circumstances instead of praying to turn our situation around or believing the Lord will manifest His best in our life. We start to feel bad about ourselves and what has happened, drawing us into depression, defeat, and fear.
We’ve all heard the lies of the enemy:
- You’re no good.
- You’re never going to amount to anything.
- No one will ever love you.
- No one cares about you.
- Why don’t you kill yourself?
When we hear negative words from our family, friends, coworkers, or others, the enemy is quick to use them to trigger negative thoughts such as these in our minds. We start to believe the lies, and they become us. The enemy has ensnared us in a mind battle.
Tormenting thoughts that the world would be better off without them can cause people to contemplate suicide. But it’s all a lie! God put each one of us on this earth for a reason. Scripture tells us:
For I know the plans that I have for you, says the Lord, plans for peace and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. (Jer. 29:11)
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, so that we should walk in them. (Eph. 2:10)
Don’t allow the devil to steal your destiny. Your life is worth living. How do I know that? Because your life is worth living. God has a mission and a purpose for you, a kingdom assignment for you to accomplish. There is a portion of the world that you need to change and reach for Jesus Christ. He has plans and ways that are higher than your ways. (See Isaiah 55:8–9.)
As I write this, He is ministering to your heart. He is delivering you from captivity in your mind. He loves you that much; He wants to open your heart to the message being presented, and surrender your mind, will, and emotions to what He wants to do in your life. You are worth it all. You are worth everything to Him. Press in and press through to your breakthrough.
is a speaker, podcaster, and author whose latest book is Mind Battles: Root Out Mental Triggers to Release Peace.
Photograph © Tiago Bandeira, used with permission
