Strongholds: The Enemy (Heart)

This month, we are covering a seemingly simple concept that has powerful, revelatory, and wide ranging applications: Right-Right vs Right-Wrong...Right WHAT-Right HOW/WHY vs. Right WHAT-Wrong (or NO) HOW/WHY.

The overview for the rest of this Series is that God wants our brain to have Profitable Thought Processes. The enemy and our flesh wants our brain to have Unprofitable Thought Processes.

Throughout this Series we have seen the brain is the battlefield on which God and our mind participate in Spiritual Warfare against the enemy and our flesh. So, there are two participants attempting to access our strongholds: the enemy and our flesh. The previous post gave a brief overview of the enemy according to Jesus:

The enemy can hinder the profitability of God's Word.

1. The enemy can put things into the heart of people.
2. We have authority over all the power of the enemy.
3. Short-term victories over the enemy can turn into Long Term losses.
4. The enemy is able to snatch away God's Word if we don't understand it.
5. The enemy supplies the stimulus.

Today, we will begin a three part mini-series on HOW the enemy participates in Spiritual Warfare...


STRONGHOLDS: THE ENEMY (Heart)
It is finally time to cover HOW the enemy participates in Spiritual Warfare. Here is an overview of HOW Spiritual Warfare occurs:

The HOW of God's Spiritual Warfare Overview
1. The goal is to bring about God's Will
2. God supplies the power through the Holy Spirit with an influence upon our heart
3. We (Mind) choose to speak WORDS that are truth
4. These WORDS are spoken according to our understanding and experience...our imagination and memory.

The enemy and the flesh have a counterfeit of the same process.

The HOW of the flesh and the enemy's Spiritual Warfare Overview
1. The goal is to hinder God's Will
2. The enemy supplies an influence upon our heart...and leaves
3. The influence from the enemy is meant to encounter strongholds (sin) in our brain
4. The flesh attempts to weaken our understanding and experience...so that our imagination and memory serves the enemy.

Notice the concepts that are involved in Spiritual Warfare:
-God's Will
-Grace
-Truth
-Faith
-Sin (whatsoever is apart from faith)
-Thinking
-Importance of WORDS

If you were to reread the posts from last week, you would see these concepts are consistently mentioned in the Spiritual Warfare verses from the Bible. Now that you know how these concepts fit together, you may want to reread the scriptures in the previous two posts with this overview in mind.

The sequel to "Modeling God" deals with God's Will. So, I have written extensively about HOW #1 in "Modeling God's Wills".

In today's post, we will look HOW #2: THE HEART.

We have seen that the Spiritual Warfare battlefield is actually the brain. However, EVERYTHING concerning Spiritual Warfare begins in the heart. We have seen the Bible clearly states the enemy has access to a person's heart. According to the Bible, it appears EVERYONE has full access to the heart of the individual...and the best we can do is guard our heart.

The heart is the gateway to the battlefield of Spiritual Warfare.

We actually have covered all of this before in another Series. I could spend today and tomorrow reprinting everything in this post. Instead, I'm going to supply links and highly recommend you read these relatively short posts from this new Spiritual Warfare perspective.

The Seventh Stimulus
Our five senses make up the first five stimuli. Our ability to intentionally think (memory and imagination) serves as the sixth stimulus to begin The First Feedback Loop in the brain. An influence upon the heart by either God or the enemy is the seventh possible stimulus that can begin The First Feedback Loop in the brain. Check out the post titled, "The Seventh Stimulus" with the perspective that ALL Spiritual Warfare begins with an influence upon the heart.

Old Testament Heart
Throughout the Bible, God consistently stresses the importance of the heart. In this post, some of the critical Old Testament scriptures concerning the heart are presented. Take a moment to reread these scriptures from the perspective that the heart is the gateway to the battlefield of Spiritual Warfare. Here is one verse from the post:

"But Jehovah said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have rejected him: for Jehovah seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but Jehovah looketh on the heart." (I Samuel 16:7, ASV)

New Testament Heart
In this post, some of the critical New Testament scriptures concerning the heart are presented. Again, take a moment to reread these scriptures from the perspective that the heart is the gateway to being able to succeed at Spiritual Warfare or being able to be defeated at Spiritual Warfare. Here is one verse from the post:

"And he saith unto them, Are ye so without understanding also? Perceive ye not, that whatsoever from without goeth into the man, it cannot defile him; because it goeth not into his heart, but into his belly, and goeth out into the draught? This he said, making all meats clean. And he said, That which proceedeth out of the man, that defileth the man." (Mark 7:18-20, ASV)


SUMMARY
The heart is the gateway to the battlefield of Spiritual Warfare.

EVERYONE has access to the heart of the individual...

Tomorrow, we will look at HOW #3: The Mind.

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