Wide-Eyed Wonder (21 Days of Fasting and Prayer)Sample

BATTLE OF THE MIND

Overview

To receive God’s wisdom and perspective, we need to war against competing thoughts.

Observation

We could have and want God’s perspective, but other things can creep in. We want to rejoice in God’s goodness, but sometimes we allow worry to steal our joy. We want to take on a posture of faith, but we allow doubt to enter our minds about whether God will fulfill his word. We believe God will provide for us, but reading the news can make us second guess whether we will have enough. The battle is against these thoughts that stop us from seeing clearly who God is and what He wants to do for us.

The verses we read today tell us that we are at war. It is a war in which ideas, thoughts, perceptions, mindsets, and worldviews set themselves against God’s truth. It is a war of “arguments and pretensions” and “thoughts” – a battle in the mind.

The enemy introduces doubts, undermining your faith in God’s promises. He causes you to question God’s goodness, reminds you of your weaknesses, and seeks to shift your attention away from God’s revelation. To receive God’s wisdom and perspective, we need to war against these competing thoughts and uproot them.

To win this battle for our mind, we must bring our thoughts under subjection to Christ’s lordship. This means that we renounce thoughts that oppose God’s way and choose instead to receive God’s truth and live by them.

Response

Let us ask the Holy Spirit to identify in us any perspectives, thoughts, beliefs, mindsets, etc., that need to be uprooted and demolished. Let us surrender them to Jesus, and renounce them.

Prayer

God, I pray You will renew my mind and dethrone every thought process and mindset that is against Your word. I seek Your forgiveness for my selfish ambitions, rational arguments, and worries that have caused me to see wrongly. I renounce these areas in my life right now, and declare that the enemy has no foothold over me. I thank You, Lord, that these strongholds are torn down and I can see clearly now, in Jesus' name, amen.