Battlefield of the Mind: Winning the Battle of Your Mind

Product Information

This is actually my second time reading this book. It has helped me deal with issues of anxiety -- of worrying too much, particularly about things I can't control anyway. Thus, the battlefield of the mind. The book teaches me (I'm still working on this issue.) how to lean on God, how to, as folks say, let go and let God. The result is a peace that surpasses all understanding.

With the Holy Spirit as our guide, God’s positivity will inform how we see the world, and we’ll be able to interpret and contextualize His teachings and messages and apply them to our lives. Admittedly like many others here I not a big fan of televangelists, I appreciate their tremendous work in reaching to an audience that would never consider for themselves going face to face with people in a christian church. I do consider alot of their teaching as baby food in the scale of what should a believer should be eating. However coming at low point recently I began reading this book and fed upon every word. A lot of people know all the contemporary books and none of the classics. Jesus did not just begin building his church in the year 2000. He has been working in and through his body for two millennia, and you can save yourself a lot of time if you will avail yourself of the whole tradition. It is wise to learn from experience, but it is wiser to learn from the experiences of others. It is also easier! It saves a lot of time and saves us from making the mistakes of others. Read, Read, Read God revealed his acts. The children of Israel saw the miracles. They saw the Red Sea split. They saw the water at Marah. They saw the doves and the manna and much more. They saw the acts of God. But Moses knew the ways of God. He knew why God had done those things. They had knowledge, but Moses also had perspective. In knowledge, the goal is to know the Word of God; but in perspective, the goal is to have the mind of God as much as possible. So we want to develop for ourselves, and to help others develop, the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:14–16; Philippians 2:5–11). 3) ConvictionMy thanks to NetGalley and FaithWords/Center Street for an eARC copy of this book to read and review. Meyer’s idea that our thoughts have the power to shape our reality is well established in the field of psychology and our culture. Henry Ford’s famous quote, “whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right,” or versions of it, are commonly cited to remind us that thinking positively is the first step to success. Meyer sees Satan as the source of our difficulties, arguing that he creates our negative mindsets by keeping us apart from God, which he does by controlling our minds. In Part 1, we’ll explore Meyer’s ideas about how our mindset shapes our reality, her view of Satan as the source of our negative thoughts, and her imagery of our minds as a battlefield between God’s positivity and Satan’s negativity. Our Thoughts Shape Our Reality Out of pride proceeds prejudice—having your mind made up before you’ve heard the facts. It’s narrow. It’s arrogant. And it’s destructive.

When we begin to develop character and do good habitually — daily Bible reading, regular fasting, regular prayer, regular days of prayer, regular witnessing — when these become the habits of our lives, the more we do them, the better we will get at them. And so we come to the last level of learning: skill. I mentally skip the offensive punctuation, but it is really annoying to have to do it every few lines, sometimes multiple lines in a row. This was the book for our bible study session these past few months. I got a few things out of it, but a lot of it was just... ugh. I still can't completely put my finger on all of it. Maybe it'll come out as I type this out. I thought this book was okay. For me, there was nothing particularly mind-blowing about it. Much of the advice are mantras I've heard before ("this is the power of positive thinking!") or things I already have in practice (taking responsibility for one's actions, working hard, etc.). There was not much "new" information in this book for me.You would never invite somebody, “Why don’t you murder somebody right here in my living room?” But you do it every time you watch a TV show in which somebody murders. How do you guard your mind against garbage? How do you help others guard their minds against garbage? Some people are so open-minded that their brains fall out. They think they can allow anything into their mind, and they will be just fine. They’re kidding themselves. Two Ways to Guard Our Minds For Meyer, a close relationship with God is the driving force behind a positive mind and life. To reap the full benefits of our relationship with God, both our rational mind and our spirit must be attuned to and focused on His wisdom, teachings, and love. She explains that God invites Christians to share His love and wisdom through the power of the Holy Spirit, which provides a link between our own spirit and our mind. Since our rational mind is susceptible to becoming confused and discouraged, the Holy Spirit can help us feel the right thing to do. T” stands for test every thought. Psalm 139:23–24 says, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” Ask God to search and test your thoughts. Don’t believe everything you think. Test every thought.

And there is this great conviction: “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him” (Job 13:15 KJV). I don’t have to understand it, Job says, but I’m going to trust God no matter what.Interpretation without application is abortion. We may be teaching people to have big heads and little hands and little hearts and little feet. We must apply the Word of God. Jesus gave the how-tos; he taught people how to do it. Isaiah 26:3 says, “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.” Your mental state depends on what you think about. Keep your mind fixed on the Word of God, the mind of God, the convictions of God, the character of God, and the skills of God. 4) Let God Stretch Your Imagination It’s not enough just not to believe everything we think. It’s not enough just to guard our minds from the garbage. It’s not enough to keep on learning and developing character. We must also let God develop our imagination. Because we must outthink and out-dream and outsmart the world for the glory of God — not for our private good but for the glory of God and the good of others. We naturally feel that if we think something, it must be true because it comes from within us. But just because you think something does not make it true. As I said above, I have seen the face of mental illness. So many different suggestions can come into the mind. The world puts suggestions in our minds that are false, and we are bombarded with those false ideas all the time. And, of course, Satan makes suggestions all the time. But your problem is much deeper than Satan. Everybody has a mental illness. We are all mentally ill. The mental illness is called sin. And the Bible uses at least a dozen different phrases for the condition of our minds under sin. Our minds are:

Another weakness of the church today when it comes to learning is that often we pastors are not teaching our people to be self-feeders. We do all the feeding instead of teaching the sheep how to feed themselves. We each need to learn for ourselves the skills of doing a systematic Bible study, a thematic study, and a book synthesis. How do you analyze a chapter? What are the steps in doing a word study? What are the steps in how to do a biographical study? We preachers can do a lot of ought-to preaching without giving our people the how-to’s.

The helmet of hope

I had come to the end of my solutions, and one day a phrase in Isaiah 61:3 captured my attention: “The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness...”