Todays devotional will look into the subject that many believers often overlook with any real consistency; much less believe that it deserves your undivided attention in order to have lasting peace within a world that promotes such turmoil or tragedies. What is this subject that I am referring to? The managing of what you entertain within the recesses of your mind. If you fail to observe the necessity to watch over your thought life with carefulness, then you will have handicapped your possibilities to advance successfully in this life.

 

Our passage that we opened up with today has several things that I wish to bring out into the open for our observation. The first one is, the word subtlety. Our adversary by definition through this word given in Scripture: operates from a mental keenness; delicately skillful or cleaver; delicately suggestive and not grossly obvious; crafty and not open to easily be seen; sly. As you can see through these definitions from the Webster's New World Dictionary, there is every indication that our adversary works from a position of exploiting the minds of people. Make no mistake about it, the devil is very crafty and able to influence the best of minds away from the truth.

 

Our next point of interest from our text is the word, minds. It comes from the Greek word, "noemah." It literally implicates the meaning for, "devices." This is very important so as to grasp the depth of what this lesson is teaching. Our minds are the drawing boards of life that plan out and produce the activities that we will eventually impart into this world. Therefore, the devil majors in crafty ways that he may corrupt the areas that we call our minds. The instrument of "devices" that we use every day to affect our world and our lives. These devices are the every day "thoughts" that we entertain and build our lives from. We need to recognize that if God can keep us thinking properly, then He can keep us living wholesome and privileged lives through Christ's teachings.

 

The devil however, anticipates our egotistic and strong need to make ourselves righteous in our own eyes, therefore, he offers his barrage of mental corruption to our minds by way of suggestions that we often buy into which contaminates the devices that we utilize within any given day. These devices are our thoughts which produce the activities that we will create and deliver to this world. Think about it. If the devil can corrupt the assembling of these devices in us by which we think are our thoughts, then he can afflict this world with all of his diabolical schemes of destruction. 

 

Let me give an example to these devices that I am speaking on, so as to clarify this point: anger for instance, would be a device in us that we could produce a righteous indignation but not use it to sin; yet, anger under the influence of the devil's suggestions and trickery could actually cause you to murder someone in the extreme cases, but this device called anger is more often used to assassinate some person's character and hold grudges and hatred towards them. Therefore, this device of anger in man has two uses by which it can be used. The influences allowed to enter our hearts will determine how this device called anger is affected within each of us.

 

The device of love is another example that we could use in our analogy of the "minds" that our text referred to as being corrupted. I have seen love that was so possessive in a person that it actually destroyed the lives of the very ones that it declared meant so much to them. As you can see by these few examples, our adversary the devil can cause much corruption in this world through those of us who do not see the importance of renewing their mind in the Word of God. If every known emotion in man is a creation of God for a perfect use in our world, then you can bet that the devil has a method of use to pervert it in order to breed his destruction for all of us inhabitants of the earth.

 

Philippians 4:4-7 (KJV)
4 Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice.
5 Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand.
6 Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.
7 And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

This passage of Scripture teaches us to develop a rejoicing heart. Sadly, too many believers today have little to rejoice in based on their underdeveloped perspectives of life itself. Why? It is because they fail to extract the truths about life from a "Source" that cannot be disputed by the devil. This passage in Philippians, also points out the need for moderation in the things that you may feel are appropriate to maintain within your life. The apostle Paul elaborated on this thought by expressing that all things were lawful for him through the grace of God, but that not all things were expedient, or profitable to keep there.  
 

The devil would like for us to read this passage we just read in the negative sense. In other words, it would sound something like this: Never give thanks in anything, there's much more to get. I say worry! Let your moderation exceed to measures that require everyone to stay out of your business or you will make them wish they had. Don't ever be careful for anything, just live the way you want to. It's your life anyway, right? Make sure you never waist your time on praying either, because there is no help that comes through that old fashion out of date philosophy; but do what you can do for yourself no matter who you have to tear down to get it. I say worry!

 

Now I understand that all of that sounds pretty easy to recognize, but is it? The devil corrupts through skilled craftiness and these schemes will go undetected when we are not awake in our minds to the truth of God's Word. We will just react to life situations and give it no thought whatsoever from a spiritual point of view; this is simply because we think emotions tell us how it really it is. But I must make this clear. Our emotions do not have any intellect, they evolve from our thoughts that we entertain, which become the very devices that we use to afflict or bless in our world.

 

Our adversary uses thoughts or words to exploit the mental devices that we will function with in our world. Those suggestions are the only means that he has to manipulate the minds of people and get what he wants. Consider this important observation: You are a spirit "being," fashioned inside of an earthly suit which enables you to produce an activity within this realm. The devil is a spirit without an earth suit. Therefore, he needs you or me to be able to impart his methods or agendas into this world. Failure on our part to put on the mind of Christ will greatly enhance his probabilities to afflict this world with his chaos and his lordship. Can you now see the importance of not neglecting to read God's Word?

 

We will normally confess what we are thinking. The Word says it best: from the abundance of the heart the mouth will speak. The devil knows this, and therefore, preys on the simple hearts and minds of those that see God's Word as irrelevant to their life. The devil therefore, being the god of this world will therefore, blind their eyes from the truth. Your mouth is the rudder of your life. You will talk yourself up, or talk yourself down by what you think! A good boxing coach will never allow his pupil to keep his arms down when he is in the ring. In fact, he will actually tie one of his arms up around by his head if he has the tendency to drop it during a fight. Why? To keep him from being knocked out by his opponent. God gave us His Word so if we tie it around our neck, we will be trained to cover ourselves up from the enemies jabs, and potential knock out blows to the head.

 

2 Corinthians 4:3-4 (KJV)
3 But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost:
4 In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. 

That word "minds" in this passage, is the same word that we have been using throughout this devotional. It again, refers to the proper uses of our God given devices [the same creativity as God has made us in His image] that are to be used for good and not for evil. It is here that we must be focused on how to operate these devices as they were meant to be used. The instruction manual of a godly life is the Word of God. Therefore, to operate any one of these devices without clear instruction from God's Word is to be greatly handicapped, and most likely you will abuse it through the devils' craftiness to deceive.