The Stronghold
The key to winning the battle of the mind is to realize you have a new heart and mind available to you in Christ. If we utilize these elements we can always find the door of escape when temptations arise and then slip through it.
When we came to Christ we received a heart transplant. God removed the old heart of stone and replaced it with a new one made in the image and likeness of Christ. This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws upon their heart, and upon their mind I will write them” (Hebrews 10:16). The writer of Hebrews is quoting Jeremiah 31:33. Because of our position in Christ, we have his heart.
We also have the mind of Christ. 1 Corinthians 2:16b says, “. . .But we have the mind of Christ.” That is, we can know exactly what Jesus would do in every situation if we simply allow the Holy Spirit to guide us. We also find this promise in 1 Corinthians 2:12-13: “Now we have received, not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit of God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words”
These available abilities in Christ allow us as spiritual warriors to be transformed by Christ, rather than conformed to the image of this world. Our minds can think like Jesus, but we have to exercise them and rid them of the lies we have believed. Lies provide construction material for Satan to build strongholds in our minds. Strongholds are fortresses of wrong thought, unbelief, or disbelief. These stronghold color how we think and act. They also create fear, insecurity, anger, or uncertainty at the most inopportune moments during the heat of the battle. These are the moments God want us to step out in faith, but strongholds if not dealt with, will cause us to freeze up in fear. That stronghold is like a remote control the enemy uses to control us from a distance. When he hits it, we tend to pause, act inappropriately, or panic and run for our lives.
These strongholds of wrong thinking must be dealt with. They are also prisons that chain our minds in bondage to a particular belief system or thought pattern. Jesus gave us his mind so that we might take our mind captive and lay siege to these citadels of sin. We can regain control of the battlefield, but only if we deal with the enemy’s playground lurking between our ears. We must take every thought captive and deal with it.
The Siege
Perhaps you need to lay siege to some of the strongholds Satan has erected in your mind. They are footholds of enemy occupation within you. A stronghold is a traitor in your camp—in your mind. In the heat of the battle a traitor will turn against you and deliver you over to the enemy. You cannot defeat the devil if you are always fighting yourself.
Ask the Holy Spirit to show you any stronghold of wrong belief. Acknowledge how it got there. Ask God to forgive you. Renounce it! Throw the grappling hooks of faith over its walls and breach those walls with the battering ram of God’s Word, which is truth.
Take back the ground the enemy has taken in your life, and then get ready to advance in power across the battlefield. If the enemy has no ground in you—he cannot stop you.