Leverage Used At Our Expense
Proverbs 3:5-6
Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
6 in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.
What are the negative emotions that regularly leave you exposed to Satan’s attacks? Anxiety, fear, guilt, lust, or anger. If he can just find a foothold into your life, he will exploit it in every way possible and then heap guilt on you, so you beat yourself up. The enemy finds a weakness by using any leverage to cause us to trust our own understanding and then attempts to destroy our lives.
Colossians 2:8-10
See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ. 9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10 and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority.
Your mind and heart control your emotions, so ask the Holy Spirit to expose the thoughts that the enemy is encouraging you to focus on and replace them with God’s truth about your situation.
1 Timothy 1:18-19
18 Timothy, my son, I am giving you this command in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by recalling them you may fight the battle well, 19 holding on to faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and so have suffered shipwreck with regard to the faith.
What can cause us to feel shipwrecked in our faith? If We forget where God has been faithful in the past and start believing what we feel to be right. Emotions are real, but they are rarely right. Instead need to fill our minds with God’s Word if we want to fight temptation. If the enemy can control our thoughts, he can control our behavior, but if we hold onto God’s word, and remember His faithfulness, we will sail into calmer waters ahead.
What is the Holy Spirit saying to you through these scriptures?