Read 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 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 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.

Spiritual battles are being waged in the believers’ lives but few are prepared to deal with them. Obstacles are keeping us from having more intimacy with God, but we are in the dark about how to recognize and conquer these spiritual strongholds.

What’s a stronghold? It’s anything that exalts itself in our minds, pretending to be bigger or more powerful than God. It steals our focus and makes us feel overpowered and controlled. Whether a stronghold is an addiction or despair over a loss, it’s something that consumes so much of our emotional and mental energy that abundant life is strangled - our callings remain unfulfilled and our lives are virtually ineffective. These are our enemy’s precise goals.

Where is the battlefield? In any warfare waged by the enemy against the individual believer, the primary battlefield is the mind. The goal of our warfare as stated in 2 Corinthians 10:5 is to steal back our thought life and take it captive to Christ instead. The enemy’s chief target is the mind, because the most effective way to influence behavior is to influence thinking. Our minds are the control centers of our beings. The enemy knows that nothing is bigger or more powerful than God. That’s why everything that “exalts itself” in our thought life is called a pretension. Satan is a pretender. He can only pretend because he lost all the rights to presume authority over the believer’s life when Christ “disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them” (Colossians 2:15). Unfortunately, Satan is good at convincing us to believe his pretensions.

But we can be sure of this: Nothing is bigger or more powerful than God! The weapons described in 2 Corinthians have divine power to help us take our thoughts captive to Christ - help us to downsize anything that has a hold on us until we have, in effect, commanded it to bend to the authority of Christ. Spirit-led prayer and God’s Word are our most effective weapons to demolish spiritual strongholds.
-Beth Moore-

Responding - What spiritual battle is being waged in my soul? With what spiritual strongholds have I battled in the past?
Following - Protect your mind: Pray and read the Word.

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