No doubt about it; the enemy’s no.1 tactic is to attack your thought life. Your thought life is the initial and primary way the devil will steal the life of God from you!

Some years ago I visited with a beautiful Christian family. As far as anyone could see they had a wonderful life. They had great jobs and were making plenty of money. The had a lovely house and beautiful kids. What’s more, they belonged to a great church! What could be wrong?  

Soon after my visit, they began to confide with me that their life was unravelling. They were always fighting with each other. Pressure and strife were growing in their relationship, and they were both dealing with issues of guilt and condemnation.  

What struck me, was that here was an otherwise near perfect situation for this beautiful Christian family to live a blessed and purposeful life, yet they were being tormented by thoughts and emotions which, if they didn't get in line with God’s Word soon, would most likely destroy their marriage and their family.

Romans 12:1-3 says: ‘… do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.’ (NASB)

The battle for the Kingdom of God in our lives is always, one way or another, fought, won and lost, in our thoughts and emotions. If you don’t know this or don’t believe this, you are already being defeated in one, or multiple areas of your life!

In Ephesians 6:10-17, we’re told to be ‘strong in the Lord and the power of his might’ by ‘putting on the full armour of God’. It then goes on to list some areas that we are to get informed about, believe and act on if we are to be stand firm in the victory we have in Christ.

Ephesians lists these things: Truth- what is actually true, especially pertaining to God; Righteousness- our right relationship with God; The ‘preparation’ of the Gospel of Peace- the foundational or fundamental message of grace and peace from God; Faith- our scriptural beliefs that allow us to counter Satan’s lies; Salvation- our assurance of victory; and, The Word of God (‘rhema’), activated and spoken!  

This is a list of things that God has done for us or equipped us with. They are spiritual realities even if we don’t know about them or apply them. We don’t lose our salvation just because we get out of bed and forget to remind ourselves ‘Oh, I must remember that I’m saved today.’ Likewise, the Word of God doesn’t lose any of its power just because we neglect to use it!  

However, what does happen is, if we are not mindful of these things and neglect to place these things foremost in our mind, then Satan will attempt to fill the void with natural thinking.  

Years ago our children played rugby. An essential piece of rugby kit is the mouth-guard. It seemed like each Saturday they forgot their mouth-guards. They had numerous mouth-guards. They had drawers full of mouth-guards. But they always forgot to bring them. You have no idea how often we drove around, finding the nearest store which stocked mouth-guards. The point is, just because they owned multiple mouth-guards, they wouldn’t do them any good if they didn’t bring them, and put them on.  

Likewise, we have a choice to think as the world does, natural thinking which that limits God and relies on our self. Or, we can renew our minds daily with the Word of God. We have a responsibility, a reasonable spiritual duty if we expect to live a victorious Christian life. We are responsible for guarding our minds against worldly thinking - to purposefully, wilfully and continually ‘put on the armour of God’.