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A Bible
Study Web Site for Children, Teens and College Students |
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Bible Topic #15 |
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Who controls your thoughts?
The believer in the Lord Jesus Christ
should have a mind that is filled with God's way of thinking.
(Isaiah 55:8-11) On the contrary, God's Word is foolishness to the
unbeliever, so he can only have worldly thoughts.
How is it possible for a believer to have
God's thoughts? He must first be willing to hear, to believe, to
metabolize and then to apply sound Biblical teaching. After
gaining some spiritual growth, the believer should have the
ability to search the scriptures for himself so that God the Holy
Spirit can apply the doctrine he is learning on a daily basis from
a prepared Pastor Teacher to his everyday experiences.
When Adam disobeyed a clear command from
the Lord, he lost his ruler ship of the world. Now, Satan is the
ruler of the world, and in our cosmic system, he tries to promote
his own desire to control mankind through the use of his own
philosophies, his clever strategies and policies by means of every
kind of media that penetrates our eyes and ears. Our only defense
is to saturate our mind with the Word of God, so we will be able
to stay on the narrow road that leads to life and become a mature
believer whom the Lord can use to glorify Himself. |
In his attempt to control the minds of the human race,
Satan uses two viewpoints. First, he promotes arrogance (the outward
expression of pride) in the. unbeliever, making him think he doesn't
need God. Secondly, he attempts to make the believer in the Lord Jesus
Christ antagonistic toward the GRACE of God. What is grace? Grace is
what God does for man, (Divine Good), and God gets all the credit.
Legalism or religion opposes grace and says that God will bless man
for what he attempts to do to please God, and God will bless him for
those good deeds, but the result is always human good produced by
man's sinful nature, and man gets the credit.
The philosophy of Satan has always been to twist and distort the truth
of God's Word, and he is very skillful in using conversation to
accomplish his goal. When Satan first tempted the woman in the Garden
of Eden, he told her that God was unfair by not letting them eat of
every tree in the garden. There was just one prohibition by the Lord
they were not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Then, he flatly contradicted what God said and told the woman that she
would not die if she ate of that tree (Genesis 3:1-4). When Jesus
Christ was tempted by the devil for 40 days and 40 nights in the
wilderness before He began His three-year ministry on earth, Satan
used scripture and misquoted the Word of God to Him, and Jesus
responded by using the correct scriptures. The conversation between
them is recorded for us in Matthew 4:1-11, and also in Luke 4:1-13.
By using deceptive strategy, Satan
skillfully tries to maneuver man into situations that will advance his
evil purposes. His policy is to gain an advantage over mankind through
satanic thoughts and words, regardless of what the person knows is
right.
DON'T BE DECEIVED ... GOD IS NOT MOCKED!
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