ON THE VANGUARD

OBEDIENT THOUGHTS
"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."
II Corinthians 10:5

I want us to look for just a minute today at II Corinthians 10:5, which describes an attack of the enemy, and the resolution that God has given to us concerning the attack. Now so you are up to speed, the weapons of our strateia are dunatos, or as is better known, the weapons of our warfare are mighty and able to pull down strongholds. But what is a stronghold? A stronghold is defined as an area in which we are held in bondage because of a way of thinking. For me concerning my draw toward pornography, the stronghold was in thinking that every woman wanted me, and later on in thinking that I could never break free from it. My mind was trapped in wrong thinking. For years I wanted out of this cycle but could never get past the lies that played over and over in my head. It wasn't until I fully surrendered to God and began reading His word and His promises concerning me that I began to understand really what I was fighting against. I wasn't fighting against the internet or the countless magazines or even Hugh Hefner himself, but I was fighting against the lies in my mind that had twisted a leash around me and were dragging me further and further downward. Perhaps you know the feeling of a stronghold.
But with the understanding that we have been given spiritual weapons, we must also realize that we have been given the ability through Christ to demolish those things that once held us captive. We are given the ability to demolish arguments and pretensions that stand before us and against God. Well now, that is a great and fluffy thought, but what does it mean? In stating that we 'demolish arguments', the Greek refers to us having the skills to cast down or throw down our opponent. I think of a wrestling match - no not those fake ones on television but instead a high school wrestling match or such. Imagine the guy weighing 200 pounds going against the one weighing only 99 pounds. If I was a betting man, I would put my money on the big guy because he has twice as much muscle, strength and power over the little guy. With one move he could overtake the little guy and pin him. That is us. We are the big guy who has the speed, training, and skill to defeat the enemy. The problem is that even though in practice we know of and joke around about our power and skill, we don't use it when the match is actually going on for real. How many of us can talk a talk about beating up the devil only to find ourselves giving into sin? Yet all these arguments and reckonings are supposed to be what we are taking down. We are not supposed to fail, yet we give in and lose many times because we don't even try.
Still, in addition to demolishing arguments, we are also to use our weapons to demolish every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. Again, do we know what means? It means every item that glorifies itself higher than God needs to be demolished. It could be the sin of porn, or it could a relationship, money, food, the list could go on. Anything that is more important to you than God is an idol, and here Paul tells us that these idols must be destroyed. I look at this way. If I am standing face to face with God, and this thing comes and stands between me and God and looks me now face to face, then that thing has its back turned toward God. In essence, that thing has caused me to turn my back on God.
Paul didn't leave us without an answer, though. He told us what we must do. We must take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. Let's look at these words of command and decipher what this really means. AICHMALOTIZO in the Greek means to enslave the thoughts held within the mind. This is what we are commanded to do. Instead of being slaves to sin we are to make sin our slave. We have been given the task of taking these sins before God so that He may punish the evil one. In His way, He will bring about HUPAKOE, which is the method of bringing someone or something into submission. By casting down the arguments, imaginations, and gods that stand in the way, we find our minds free of the distractions that work to veer us away from God. It is in the fight and victory concerning this submission of mindset that we find ourselves then in the position of freedom from the strongholds that so desire to control us.
God has destined us to be strong disciples of Him, yet too many of us have moved from following God strongly to being strongly held by the enemy. It is time we surrender these thoughts captive to God so that these areas in which we are held in bondage because of our thinking no longer enslave us. It is time we wear the armor of God and combat the enemy, putting him with force and in God's power, back in his place. Are you ready to break the strongholds? Then let us start by taking our thoughts captive.