Take the Power Back

Take the Power Back Demolished Arguments and Captured Thoughts

 

2Corinthians 10: 2-5 I beg you that when I come I may not have to be as bold as I expect to be toward some people who think that we live by the standards of this world. For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

We either believe what the Bible says or we do not. The Apostle Paul writing to the church at Corinth for the second time is not mincing his words here about spiritual warfare. Within these few verses are our keys to winning our battles through the Lord. Yet despite the verses, we sometimes find ourselves circling the same mountain or crawling through the same deserts, year after year. Remember, the enemy has already lost the battle for your soul. He knows it, God knows it, and we need to know it as well. That said; his aim is to incapacitate your walk and effectiveness for the Kingdom of God as much as possible. Jesus however came to provide us with the abundant life:

The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. John 10: 10 (NKJV)

These are the two sides that have been drawn. The enemy of your soul wants to simply steal, kill and destroy. All of the positive things God wants you to experience abundantly, the enemy seeks to ruin. He wishes to steal your joy, kill your hope and destroy your faith. The sad part is sometimes we let him. Now it is true that sometimes God has us in a wilderness experience to grow or learn a spiritual lesson but many times we either walk willingly into the desert or stay longer than necessary because we do not hold these truths in God's Word as close to us as we should. We become distracted by our situations and uncertain in the storm. We can doubt. When the trials of our life come against us we can fall into the trap of thinking that our faith is enough but God teaches us:

You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that--and shudder. James 2: 19

We need to be active participants in our Christianity. Believing in God is not enough. Knowing the Word is not enough. We can have a tendency to intellectualize the Word. We know it. We memorize it. We can do exegetical studies on it and explain our interpretations to others. But when we need to implement the Word in our lives, during our storms, we can be left with the words ringing hollow in our ears. That is often because while we may read God's Word (may) we do not do so as part of our preparation for spiritual warfare. Psalm 119 is by far the longest Psalm in the Bible and it deals with the approach we need to take to the Word of God. Within this Psalm we see the difference between merely reading the Word and internalizing it:

I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands. (V 10)

  I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. (V 11)

With my lips I recount all the laws that come from your mouth. (V 13)

I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches. (V 14)

  I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways. (V 15)

I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word. (V 16)

These are just a sampling. Seeking God. Hiding His Word in our hearts. Verbally recounting His Word. Rejoicing in His Word. Meditating on His Word. Delighting in His Word. This transcends "reading." Sometimes we can approach His Word as something tedious that we are "supposed" to do as opposed to approaching with the zeal of the Psalmist who understood that it contains the very life we seek; yet can be so elusive. It is a battle beloved and while the battle may be the Lord's we still have a part to play.

The Apostle Paul understood this in our key verses from Second Corinthians. Verse two shows that Paul has no intention of being soft on the people who have mistakenly decided to live by the standards of the world. Paul draws a distinct line between the fact that while we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. I feel the point the Holy Spirit is making here to me is that while we must live in the world, the world should not live in us. We are called out already. In fact, 114 times in the New Testament the Greek word ekklesia, is translated as the church. Ekklesia actually is translated as "a called out assembly." Going back to Psalm 119 we find one of the more poignant verses to define what our role is once we are called out: