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"For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled. (2Corinthians 10:4-6)

Jesus made us this promise in the book of John: "the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost. . . will bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you."

So we see that the Spirit of God is surely Christ's communication piece for prompting us in our thought processes to the obedience of Christ. Satan tempts using stored images (imaginations) but God directs using "prompted remembrances". These are the battle strategies between the powers of darkness and the Kingdom of His dear Son.

The devil doesn't mind if we do good, as long as we are not following the prompted directives of Christ as obedient followers of Him. The devils goal has always been to represent an "angel of light". An angel is a "heavenly messenger" and light refers to "spiritual enlightenment". Thus we see that an angel of light is a "make believe messenger for spiritual enlightenment". His job is to make you believe he represents the Spirit of God. It's not the Spirit of obedience, but the spirit of disobedience. It doesn't do what God wants. It does something similar to what God wants. Most often the leading of this angel is to do God's work, our way-usually in our own power.

When we allow our satanically stimulated thought processes to lead us to do the work of the Lord in our own power, we are not obeying the prompting of the Spirit of God. We are not in obedience to Him, we are in disobedience.

Paul taught us that we need to cast down imaginations that exalt themselves over our personal relationship (the knowledge of Christ) and to captivate every thought to the obedience of Christ. That's the formula, casting down and captivating. Notice how we have to cast down wrong thoughts and captivate the proper thoughts? Why is that so? It is because we have a tendency as Christians to embrace wrong thoughts, even while serving Him and others, and overlook the conviction that comes from wrong thoughts or to overlook the proper thoughts that God offers as alternatives to wrong thinking.

That's not obedience to Him that's obedience to sin! This is the devil's strategy. He will allow us to serve and to serve heartily. But his goal is to permeate our thoughts with negative, pessimistic, critical and competitive thoughts that drown out the clear promptings of the Spirit of God. With His voice stifled, we will carry on His work, our way and we will never "revenge all disobedience", for our obedience has yet to be fulfilled.

When we are told to fulfill His obedience, that we might revenge all of this disobedience, Paul is referring to this whole area of wrong thinking in the face of right living. It is God's goal that our minds be pure of wrong thoughts while serving Him and others, that He might lead us and guide us through remembrances of His Word. But we can't hear those promptings of remembrances, when we are struggling to forget all the imaginations we choose to dwell upon.

We need to change our mind set! That's for sure. We need to align our mind to that mind of Christ who "made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant and . . . humbled himself, and became obedient unto death. . ." Herein is our formula for obedience. Ditch our reputation, become an unselfish servant, humble ourselves and He will prompt us to become obedient to one thing: death.

Every prompting that comes from Him is the same. It's never anything different. It comes simultaneously "with" the devils temptations from our stored imaginations. That prompted thought of remembrance from Him is this always this . . . I die, He lives!

To "keep trying" or to "keep dying"; that is the battle IN the mind of man.

A PRAYER FOR TODAY: For today's prayer, let us do as we ought always to do: simply pause until weare promted in the way in which we should go. Listen carefully to the Shephard. Jesus said "my sheep hear my voice". That word hear means recognize. So, as wepray, make sure our pauses give way to His recognizable voice and then follow Him.