safe_image2WOULD YOU SIT FOR A CHAT WITH SOMEONE YOU KNEW WANTED TO STEAL, KILL AND DESTROY YOU? Yet we many times do that with the devil.

I have a friend that has been struggling with mental torment. This is my reply to her, it might help others. I have been a couple of times in extreme mental agony, I thought I was loosing my mind. But through it all, God brought me the revelation that I needed to keep in peace and joy.

I hardly ever have a day when I am down or mentally affected now. Probably can count them on my fingers in the last 2 years. People tell me I am always so bright. This is because of what I have learned in my struggle. Because of the below revelations. If you struggle at times with mental torment, please read and apply, it will change your life, literally, it did mine:

Friend, refuse to think too much, the devil loves to get us to turn things into our heads over and over and over and that gets the mind to the point that it feels physically sore. Don’t fight the devil by conversing with him, I know he tries to stirs us up, but I was like you and I got on the other side, I felt my head would explode! It was numb and sore!

The trick of the devil is to draw you into dialogue, he started that in the garden of Eden, he is still doing it. We try to fight and argue and overcome logically the arguments that come in our minds to torment us from the devil. This is striving in the flesh and it won’t work, it will only exhaust you.

What you need to do is ignore him! Yes, ignore the bad thoughts – and I know what a shock and how hard that can feel when you feel the only way to stay in control is to fight and control the thoughts! But you need to let God be in control, and trust Him to carry you and follow His principles on how to win the war in the mind, which is as described below:

Speak the word that opposes them – It is written ….. – and then take your mind intentionally away from the bad thoughts and put it on Jesus. Start thinking about His love, how He is your mind protector, how He is faithful and how you can rely on Him to help you, carry you, deliver you and sustain you.

Just tell Him – I trust you to keep me, I give up trying to fight the devil in my own strength and I choose to trust you to keep my body, soul (which includes the mind) and spirit blameless till the day of Christ (this is His promise in the Word). I throw myself at You and totally rely on You keeping me. If You don’t I will sink, I will be lost, but I know You will because You are faithful, and I know You are my redeemer, sanctifier, deliverer and my very present help in times of trouble.

The Bible says: ‘He will keep IN PERFECT PEACE, he whose MIND is stayed on (on arguing with the devil? no) on YOU’. It’s your job to only talk to the devil in ‘It is written’ terms and then put your mind on Jesus intentionally. The Bible also says to ‘SET (wilful intentional decision, nothing to do with feelings) your mind on THINGS ABOVE (that does not include conversations with the devil’s thoughts, who is from below).
Also, Romans 8:6 says ‘For to be carnally minded is death, but to be SPIRITUALLY MINDED is LIFE AND PEACE” – which means, you need to keep your mind on Jesus, not the enemy and what he is doing and what he is saying and how he makes you feel. Force yourself to take your mind away from him – that is to be carnally minded, because it is not doing the will of God, which is to keep your mind on Jesus, and the result of that behaviour is death.

Spiritually minded is to keep your mind on Jesus and on good things, like it says in Philippians 4: Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.

The devil loves to tempt us to meditate on his thoughts and on his actions in us, we need to resist that, submit to God’s way of using our mind and then he will flee from us automatically. As it says in the Bible: ‘Submit to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you.” Many of us have made the mistake for too long to jump the first part – we went straight to resisting the devil in our own strength and got exhausted and still with the enemy on our back. But if we start with the first step, of submitting to God in what He says we need to do with our mind, and also on HOW to resist the devil, we will find we will have success.

I know cause I escaped absolute mind torment to the point of insanity when I got this revelation – to fully trust in God to carry me and keep me, to use only Scripture against the devil- but not focus much on that – and to just purposefully ignore him and his thoughts and put my mind on Jesus and His word. That’s how I got delivered.

I am telling you, I went to emergency at hospital a couple of times cause I was so bad in my mind, Michael can testify and so some of his relatives and my friends who know about these times. But I overcame with what I said above.

If you listen to me and do what I said, you will be free. I am speaking to you from the other side, where I now hardly ever get down, worried or mentally affected, I could count a few days only in the last 2 years when I have been somewhat down, the rest of the time, using the above principles I have been happier than ever in my life.

I focus on getting filled with God, not worry about the devil’s activity in my mind or life. My focus is on God and that makes all the difference.

Try it and you will thank me later. But you have to be committed to keep on doing it and persevere at it as the devil does not always give up easily, you have to be more persistent than he is and God can help you with that, and then you win.

Another important step – if you want to be free of mental struggles and be happy – is to set your heart in such a way that you intentionally make your source of happiness to be only God and eternal things, not things that are temporary and you can loose. Because when you loose them, you can be devastated and that is not wise to risk your entire happiness in the hands of a thing that you can loose.That is the equivalent of setting yourself up for failure.

My happiness now comes from relationship with God alone, and if anything else comes to add joy in my life, I treat that thing as a bonus, not as something I can’t live without. God is enough and He alone can make me happy, even if life circumstances are not ideal.

My joy does not depend on things and circumstances, it’s the joy IN THE LORD that gives us strength, not the joy in good and ideal circumstances – this kind of joy is flippant and unreliable. I choose to rejoice IN THE LORD, in who He is to me, even in the mist of painful circumstances, and that makes me strong, bright and happy.

My happiness is drawn from relationship with Him alone, and that is one stable, non-changing, always available source of happiness. Anything less than that will make you susceptible to unhappiness. If you are wise, you don’t set yourself up for failure.

Be thankful all the time for that relationship and what it brings into your life and also for the things that you have, instead of crying for the things you don’t have.

I intentionally set my happiness in what is eternal that I cannot loose. Do the same, and you will be as happy as I am, and I am happy most of the time.

If you want help with meditating on Scripture in a particular area of your life, we have prepared on this website a number of groups of Scripture based meditations on various subjects. Click here to go to that page.