Greg Laurie Daily Devotion - March 5, 2015
Mind Control
And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. - (Philippians 4:8)
We decide what we put into our mouths. Food doesn’t simply jump in. We decide whether we will eat this or won’t eat that. We pick it up, take a bite, chew it (hopefully), and then swallow it. And when we start putting on weight, it’s happening because we put the wrong things in our mouths.
In the same way, we decide what goes into our minds. We let certain thoughts in, and we keep certain thoughts out. This is important, because the first temptation that came to Eve was to think wrong thoughts about God. We read in Genesis 3:1, “Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, ‘Has God indeed said, “You shall not eat of every tree of the garden” ’?”
Notice that he didn’t come to Eve and say, “Hi. I’m the Devil, the enemy of God. You’ve probably heard about me.” No, he was more subtle. He came slithering in like a snake.
As a kid, I collected snakes. I had tropical fish and birds, but I had snakes too. The thing with snakes is they are always getting out of their cages. They can get out of the smallest of spaces, so you have to really keep your eye on a snake.
That is what the Devil is like. And that is why we need to control what goes into our minds. It is there that we dream. It is there that we contemplate. It is there that we reason. With our minds we can reach into the past through our memories and reach into the future through our imaginations.
So train your mind to think properly and biblically, not emotionally. Fill it with the Word of God.
Copyright © 2015 by Harvest Ministries. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004, 2007. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
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