The struggle is real, indeed! As believers, we have a very real enemy and he doesn’t play nice. Over the past two-weeks, I have encountered intense spiritual warfare raging in my mind and heart, and believe me, this was not my first rodeo with the devil.
One of the biggest mistakes believers make is to at best minimize the devil’s influence and at worst to disbelieve in him or his work to distract, demoralize, and derail your joy and service for God. I am saddened that there are people who do not believe in God, and I pray that their eyes would be opened to the truth, but the saddest of all to me is the one who does not believe in the existence of the devil.
The devil’s main arena is our minds. Therefore, He likes to mess up our thinking and confuse us with his lies. Deception is the name of his game. At the very first encounter a human being had with the devil, he tried to confuse her thinking and understanding of God’s truth. Genesis 3:1-7 recounts the very first sin committed, and the bait the devil dangled in front of Eve was in the question of verse 2, “Did God really say…?” (emphasis added)
The devil is not very entrepreneurial. He has been creating confusion and doubt in the minds of the creatures about the Creator’s explicit truth forever. God’s Word is VITAL (I cannot overstate this notion) to our spiritual effectiveness. The Word is both an offensive weapon, the sword of the Lord in Ephesians 6:17, and a defensive tool, the word hidden that we might not sin according to Psalm 119:9,11.
Intentional Bible Study
This is why I challenge you so often to be intentional with your Bible reading and study. If we fill our minds with God’s truth, we are more equipped to fend off the devil’s attempts to confuse and delude us. For the believer, spiritual victory begins and ends in the mind. Read, study, memorize God’s Word so you will be armed and defended against our very real enemy’s attacks.
You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. – John 8:32
I want to help prepare you to memorize Bible verses for when you don’t have a Bible handy. Below is a link where you can download for free my A to Z Bible Memory sheet. The sheet provides you with 26 Bible verses each beginning with a successive letter of the alphabet. You can memorize and have them ready when the devil tries to deceive you.