God wants all His children to be victorious in this final hour; but in order for that to happen, you must know how the enemy is trying to defeat you. Some of you are really going through it in your mind. The world seems as if it is being turned upside down, and you feel all alone and helpless. Some of you have even lost the desire to live. You feel like you have no purpose in life, and that is exactly what the devil wants you to think and feel. He knows that if he can get you to give up winning souls, more souls can be his for eternity.

Children of God, the Lord sees all; and He knows everything you are going through. That is why He is there to help you. God has all the power and tools you need to help you win the battle against the devil, but you have to use what God has made available.

The battles of the mind are fiery in this last hour, and God’s children are in the trenches now more than ever; but many Christians don’t even realize they are fighting a battle in their mind. The devil makes them think that what they are going through is just a part of life, and they have to deal with it. The first thing you have to do is recognize that we are at war with the devil and know when we are in the heat of the battle.

Mind Battles Began with Lucifer

A battle is a hostile encounter or engagement between two opposing forces; and an example of two opposing forces would be “good versus evil.” A great example in the Bible of good versus evil is the first conflict that began in Heaven between God and Lucifer. Harmony and peace were always in God’s Kingdom until Lucifer poisoned the minds of a third of the angels. That is where the battles of the mind began.

We all have a choice of what we put in our minds, and how protective you are of your mind will determine whether you will win or lose your battle.

The formula for how to protect your mind is very simple—input equals output. That means what you put in your mind will eventually come out in your personality, in your actions and in what you say.

Lucifer put into the minds of his fellow angels in Heaven that he could overthrow God. So the input was a message of insurrection, and the output was an all-out rebellion against God. Those angels didn’t have to follow him, but they listened to his rhetoric and believed him; and it cost them Heaven. The devil has been using the same strategy on the human race for thousands of years, and it is hard to say how many souls are burning in hell today because they lost the battle in their mind.

Bad Mind Input

How can you keep your mind protected from the devil’s attacks? You first need to control your input, what you allow into your mind. Just a few obvious sources of bad input include violent video games, bad TV shows or movies, worldly music, lewd books and pornographic materials.

Examples of bad input that aren’t as obvious revolve around people. Those who like to complain, gossip or spread rumors about things that aren’t even true are giving out negative input. If you allow any of that garbage to get into your mind, your output eventually will become negative; and you will start to gossip, complain and speak idle talk.

Jesus warned of that when speaking to the Pharisees: O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A good man out of the good treasure of then heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things. But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned (Matthew 12:34-37). We know people by the fruits produced in their lives. Jesus was also saying that what is in your heart will eventually come out through your mouth.

Good Mind Input

You have to stay alert and always protect your mind, so what things are good to input into your mind?—obviously, the Word of God. How much of the Word are you putting into your mind? When was the last time you openeda Bible and studied it? If it has been a while, then you are not protecting your mind from the enemy.

Another positive input for your mind is spiritual hymns and songs that are filled with the anointing of God. Those of you who sing and make music for the Lord need to realize that when you are playing and singing godly music, you must carry the anointing of the Lord; or the Holy Spirit won’t be able to touch people through your music. Remember that input equals output. If you are not spending time with the Lord and seeking His face daily, then the anointing won’t flow through your music.

The things Paul listed in Philippians 4:8 are all positive inputs for your mind. Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things (Philippians 4:8). All those things should be inputted into your mind daily to counteract the negative things you will encounter throughout the day.

We live in a sin-cursed world, and evil is all around. If you are not feeding your mind good spiritual food, you will eventually lose the battle to the devil’s thoughts. You must continually check to see if you have become neglectful with your mind. Are you keeping it guarded from the enemy and blocking all ungodly sources?

You have to examine what you are putting into your mind and what you are thinking about throughout each day. Pray and ask the Holy Ghost to uncover any negative sources that would be influencing your mind. Identifying these sources is a very important step in winning the battles against your mind.

You Are Special to God

You must learn to identify when you are having a mind battle, and you can begin to do that by first examining your thoughts to see if they are good or evil. To visualize what I am saying, imagine a little angel is sitting on one of your shoulders and a little devil is sitting on the other one. Then decide which one is feeding you the thoughts you are having.

God gave Rev. Angley a wonderful phrase years ago; and it is, “You are special to God.” That simple phrase is not just for children of God but for everyone. God wants all people to know how special they are to Him and how much He loves them. That is why He gave His only begotten Son, Jesus, to die on the Cross for our sins. He willingly sacrificed Himself so we could make it to Heaven one day. “You are special to God” is good input; and if you keep putting it into your mind each day, the output will be that you feel special to God.

The devil doesn’t want you to feel special to God; so he feeds your mind thoughts like, “You are worthless. You can’t do anything right. Nobody loves or cares about you. God will never forgive you for all the bad things you have done.” All these thoughts are poisonous darts of the devil; and if you let that little devil sitting on your shoulder speak those thoughts into your ear, then eventually, the output will be depression, oppression, self-pity and other destructive things.

Cain Lost the Battle

Sometimes, the devil’s thoughts are more subtle like, “If only I had talents like that person…if only I was as pretty as that sister…if only I was as perfect as that person, my life would be so much better.” The devil loves to use the “if only” strategy to get you to compare your life to someone else’s and want what they have.

This type of mind battle goes all the way back to Cain and Abel. And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering: But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect (Genesis 4:3-5). God didn’t accept Cain’s sacrifice because it wasn’t a blood sacrifice. Then the devil gave Cain a major mind battle about it and made him envious of his brother.

And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him(Genesis 4:5-7).

The Lord let Cain know he would be accepted if he did what was right. So what Cain should have done was to take some of the fruit he had grown and trade it for a lamb from his brother. Then he should have sacrificed that lamb to the Lord; but instead of doing that, Cain listened to the devil and his negative thoughts.

The Bible doesn’t tell us exactly what those thoughts were, but I’m sure they were a lot like, “Your sacrifice was a failure. You can’t do anything right. God likes your brother better than you. If your brother was out of the picture, you would be God’s favorite.” That negative input eventually led to a negative output of envy, strife and murder. And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him (Genesis 4:8).

When you listen to the wrong thoughts, your actions will be wrong; and in some cases, you won’t be able to fix them. Cain couldn’t change the fact that he had murdered his brother, and he had to live with that mistake for the rest of his life.

The Spirit Brings Help to the Mind

If you want to know if you are losing the battle, examine your actions. If you are doing things that hurt others, you don’t have the mind of Christ. Paul said we are to take on the mind of Christ. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus (Philippians 2:5). That is why it is so important to know which thoughts are of God and which are of the devil. If you don’t learn that, you will tie God’s hands; and He won’t be able to guide and direct your thoughts.

The health of your mind is so important to your walk with the Lord. The devil knows your soul is sealed with the divine blood of Jesus, and only you can break that seal by willfully sinning. The devil also knows that your mind is not sealed with the blood, so he knows he has a chance to get to your mind and cause you to fail and backslide on God. That is why every born-again child of God must go on to receive the baptism of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Spirit is the one who will lead you to pray, fast and live in the Word. He will open the mysteries of God to you and give you deep thoughts from the Lord.

If you are struggling to receive the baptism of the Holy Ghost, examine what you are putting in your mind. If you are filling your mind with positive thoughts from the Word of God as well as praises and godly music and singing, then eventually, your output will be the Holy Spirit speaking through you in a heavenly language as the Spirit gives utterance. You just have to yield to Him, and He will come in if your vessel is pure, clean and holy; and your mind is part of your vessel.

You Need the Holy Ghost

Receiving the Holy Ghost after becoming born again is a commandment that comes straight from the mouth of Jesus. He said, If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you (John 14:15-17).

One of the biggest mind battles the devil will try to give you is making you think you don’t need the baptism of the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in other tongues. He knows that if he can keep you from realizing how much you need the Holy Ghost, you will not seek for the baptism with your whole heart and soul.

Of course, the devil won’t tell you the consequences of not having the Holy Ghost living within or that you are rejecting the Spirit of truth and power from On High. He doesn’t tell you that you will miss the Rapture and be left behind in the Tribulation Period. No, the devil leaves all of that information out.

God Must Come First

The devil wants you to think you don’t have to do everything the Word commands; but the Bible says, What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s (I Corinthians 6:19,20).

You are bought with a price, and that price is the shed blood of Jesus Christ; so you are the Lord’s property. When you start putting the things you do on your personal time ahead of the Lord’s work, the devil can get in and fight you with mind battles. The Lord’s work must come first in your life. Yes, you need to go to work and make a living, but sacrificing your personal time for God’s work shows you have a great love for souls.

You can’t allow the devil to make you complacent in this final hour. You have to hold fast to what you have been taught and keep fighting that spirit of indifference until the resurrection trumpet sounds. Now is not the time to be in a spiritual sleep because the devil never sleeps. He is always planning his next attack against you, so you always have to be on guard against the devil and his mind battles by refreshing and replenishing your spirit. It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life (John 6:63).

Fight with Spiritual Weapons

Just because bad thoughts come to your mind doesn’t mean you have failed God or that you are doing something wrong. The devil is going to throw all kinds of thoughts into your mind just to see what will stick. The important thing is to recognize where each thought is coming from and get rid of the ones that are not of God. I know that sounds simple, but it is not as easy as it sounds.

The devil’s main objective is to keep bringing a bad thought into your mind until it becomes rooted in your mind, so you can’t allow that to happen. Always remember that you are at war with the devil, and he plays dirty. Our weapons against the devil are not physical; they are spiritual. The Bible says, For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) (II Corinthians 10:3,4). Two weapons you have to use against the devil are the blood of Jesus and the sword of the Word.

You have to tear down all the strongholds of the enemy and defeat the thoughts of the devil. 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 (II Corinthians 10:5). To do that, you have to use the weapons the Lord has provided. Any other kind of weapon will not do any good.

Use the Word

When you are fighting the devil, you have to use the Word of God as your sword to combat the thoughts the devil brings to your mind. For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12).

When Jesus was on Earth, He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to fast forty days and nights. After the fast was over, the devil came to Him and tried to tempt Him. How did Jesus fight those mind battles the devil was trying to give Him?—with the Word. He kept telling the devil, “It is written” until the devil retreated. You can read about it in Matthew 4:1-11.

You have to cast out the bad thoughts the devil is trying to defeat you with by using the blood of Jesus and the Word of God. The Word clearly tells about getting rid of things that are worthless and unprofitable. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell (Matthew 5:29). Battles of the mind come from thoughts of the devil that are unprofitable and offensive, so you must get rid of those thoughts as soon as they come; or you will risk losing your soul.

When you stay in the Word, the Holy Spirit will bring scriptures to your mind that will help you fight the devil and his negative thoughts.

The devil has no power against the blood Word, but you are the one who must use that Word in your mind and heart to defeat him. Paul told Timothy, Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery. Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all. Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee (I Timothy 4:14-16). When the Word is a part of your mind and soul, you will not only be able to save yourself but others as well.

Cast Out Bad Thoughts

Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men (Matthew 5:13). Children of God are the salt of the world; but they can lose their savor, or saltiness, and become lukewarm.

The church of the Laodiceans was warned in Revelation: I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth (Revelation 3:15,16). If the Lord is going to cast out those who are unprofitable in the Spirit, you had better be diligent in casting out the devil’s thoughts.

Jesus said, Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: Which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away (Matthew 13:47,48).

Keep Your Eyes on Jesus

The enemy will bring thoughts to your mind to try to cause you to look at others instead of looking at yourself, and then it will be easy for you to become a fault finder. The devil is able to bring about so much strife and division in the church when he can get people to find fault with their brothers and sisters in Christ. You need to be focused on your own walk with the Lord and not on what others are doing. Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye (Matthew 7:5).

It doesn’t matter how long you have been serving the Lord or what position you hold in the church; the devil can give you thoughts that are opposite of what God’s will is for you. Peter was one who let the devil’s thoughts get into his mind, and that caused him to deny Christ three times.

Before Jesus was arrested, He told the disciples of what was to come. And he [Jesus] began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he spake that saying openly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him. But when he had turned about and looked on his disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men. And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me (Mark 8:31-34).

When Jesus rebuked Peter, He was really rebuking the thoughts of the devil that were in Peter’s mind. Jesus wanted the disciples to know that they needed to focus on the things of God and desire the things of God, not the things of the devil.

Never Let the Devil In

The only way to follow Jesus is to deny self and carry your cross, so how can you keep yourself from falling into the same trap Peter did? The Bible says, Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you (James 4:7). You must be totally submitted to the Lord, and that includes your mind.

Think of your mind as a great fortress surrounded by a strong wall of defense and a wide moat of water. Imagine the nine spiritual fruit trees growing within those walls to sustain you, and the only way the enemy can get in is if you let down the drawbridge. You must never let him in.

The devil is fighting harder than ever against God’s children in this final hour because he knows that if he can get them to fail, multitudes of souls could be lost. That is why you can’t let the devil win. You must fight with everything you have and show no mercy to the devil and his demons. You must rescue the lost at any cost.

Let Jesus Make You a Winner

If you are a sinner or backslider today, you are already losing the battle against the devil. He has you right where he wants you—in the bondage of sin—but you don’t have to stay there. The blood of Jesus has all power to set you free, but you have to reach out for that freedom by giving your heart to the Lord. Don’t let the devil make you think you can’t have forgiveness or that you can’t live free from sin.

The Bible says in I John, He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God (I John 3:8,9).

Jesus came to Earth to die on the Cross for our sins, to destroy the works of the devil and to give us power over sin. When you confess your sins and give your heart to Jesus, you will become a new creature in Christ. The devil wants you to think you have all the time in the world to get saved, but you are not promised tomorrow. Death can be at your door at any moment, and then it may be too late to get right.

Pray this prayer right now and ask Jesus Christ into your heart. Oh, God, save my soul. Forgive me for my sins. I have come home to serve you for the rest of my life, and I believe that the blood of Jesus washes away all of my sins right now. Come into my heart, Jesus! Come on in, Jesus! Friend, if you meant that prayer, you now have Jesus Christ in your heart.

Receive a Miracle Today

Now, it’s time for your miracle. It doesn’t matter what sickness or disease you have; God made you, and He can heal you. Let’s pull down Heaven together for whatever you need. Lord, heavenly Father, you know every one of the requests of these people. Break their bondages and set them free. Heal them in the holy, blood name of Jesus Christ, I pray. Heal! And, Lord, bless them physically, spiritually and financially. Give them the strength they need and break any bondages that are causing them mind battles. Set them free right now. Amen.

Friend, look for every sign of improvement and always give God all the praise, the honor and the glory for what He has done for you. Let the Lord bless you, keep you and give you the peace in your mind that you need so you can walk with Him for the rest of your life.