Are You Letting Satan Mess with Your Mind?

Posted on May 23, 2017 Topic : Men's Christian Living

Satan’s number one strategy to keep you in addictive behavior is to mess with your mind. He likes to plant thoughts in your mind, repeating them over and over until you start to think they are your own thoughts.

When Satan told Eve she would be like God if she ate of the fruit, whose thought was that? Was that Eve’s thought? No. That thought came straight from Satan himself. In fact, he’d had the same thought before, as we read in Isaiah 14:14: “I will make myself like the Most High.” It was Satan’s thought, but he planted it in Eve’s mind.

If you’ve seen the movie Inception, you’ve seen this depicted dramatically. The movie is about planting a thought in someone’s mind that will change the course of events for generations to come. It’s a brilliant movie, and it helps us understand Satan’s strategy for derailing each of us from our God-given destinies.

When you tell yourself, I can’t overcome this addiction, whose thought is that? Or when you think, I have to have this drink, whose thought is that? Or when you entertain such thoughts as, I am nothing. I have no value. I don’t have power over my emotions. No one will ever love me… who is doing the talking? We know these thoughts come from Satan because they are all lies, and he is the father of lies (John 8:44).

Satan has been working his deception for a very long time. He knows how to cleverly plant his thoughts in your mind and cause you to believe they are true.

He did this to King David, as we read in 1 Chronicles 21:1: “Then Satan stood up against Israel and moved David to number Israel.” Satan gave David the thought to start counting to see exactly how strong the nation really was. David decided to take a census, thinking this was his own idea. But taking this census was a sin because it demonstrated that David was relying on human strength rather than depending on God, and God judged Israel for David’s sin.

We see another example of Satan planting thoughts in someone’s mind in John 13:2. He “put into the heart of Judas” the idea to betray Jesus. In Acts 5:3, we see that Satan used the same approach with Ananias. Peter asks Ananias, “Why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?” In this case, Satan had given Ananias and his wife, Sapphira, the idea of selling a piece of property and giving some of the money to the church, pretending that they had given the full amount. This thought cost both of them much more than money. It cost them their lives.

How should we respond to Satan’s thoughts? The same way Jesus did when Peter tried to keep Him from going to the cross. Peter told Jesus, “God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You.” To which Jesus replied, “Get behind Me, Satan!” (Matthew 16:22-23). The words came from Peter, but the thoughts came from Satan.

When Satan gets your mind, he gets your actions. The key to overcoming addiction is to take your mind captive.