Do you agree when I say that we are in a  fight, combat conflict, dispute, disagreement, struggle,  strife and so on every day? We see casualties everywhere —people falling because of disease, divorce and tragedy. Looking around at all the suffering, we may think that the battles in hospitals and divorce courts are being lost. But in reality we are missing  the advanced and more important conflict that is the battle in our minds.

We need to be aware of this fact that Satan works through the lusts in this world to keep us his captives.  Satan pursues our fallen nature through the mind by  feeding our lusts with how we ‘see’ things. 

When there is a battle in our mind we fail to identify the battlefield or to correctly identify our foe. We tend to believe that people, money and religion or “the system” are our problem.

Let me give you an example of how strongholds of wrong thinking can destroy a marriage. 

“Suppose there is a  couple who certainly are not enjoying a happy marriage. There is strife between them all the time. They are angry, bitter and resentful. Now their two children are starting to show signs of being affected by all the dissension at home. The wife’s problem is that she doesn’t know how to let him be the head of their family. She is bossy, she wants to make all the decisions, handle the finances, and discipline the children. She wants to work so she will have her “own” money. She knows her attitude is wrong and wants to change. She has been to counselling sessions and is constantly asking people to pray to God to help her.

As a child, she had an extremely dominating  father. As a result her mind was made up: “When I get away from home, nobody is ever going to push me around again!” 

But she hasn’t seen any improvement because she has a hard time controlling her thoughts which in turn control her actions. She even has a hard time knowing ‘what’ thoughts to control because of the strongholds in her mind that were built very early in her life.