Freedom from Mental Torment
It’s no secret - Satan always targets the minds of believers. It is now and has always been his primary point of attack. I’m sure a great portion of us are familiar with the term “The Battlefield of the Mind” – right? We’ve heard it here and there constantly over the past two decades especially. The reason it hasn’t faded with time is because people, both believers and non-believers alike, are becoming increasingly aware of the struggle 100% of the population has in their psyche’. There’s no getting around it! We are constantly bombarded with thoughts and images of every kind that are released through the world system – which is controlled by the devil. He is sometimes more aware than we are that if he has control of our minds, then of course, he can have control of our bodies. If he can control our thinking, he can control our decisions – with that, his agenda is being fulfilled all throughout the earth – through US! Think about it. When your mind is taken captive and controlled by Satan, how can you fulfill the plans and purposes of God for your life? God has plans for you and so does the enemy, who you yield your mind and all of your faculties to will determine whose plans are unfolded.
Dismantling Mental Torment
All throughout scripture we have examples of the targeted mind games and tricks of the enemy that have us up and down in our beliefs, our perceptions, our perspectives and our overall sense of well-being. We must start here because if we don’t find stability in our minds, there’s no possible way we will be able to get our flesh and our spirits under control. This spirit comes to exhaust us mentally and impair us physically, ultimately keeping us from fulfilling our assigned purpose for being here.
Mental torment is one of the biggest, if not, the biggest, most powerful weapons hell routinely launches against the body of believers at all times. Torment is defined as severe mental suffering, agony, distress or torture. It is designed to leave us emotionally unstable, incapable of making right decisions, fearful, anxious and spiritually paralyzed. There are countless men and woman of God bound by this spirit and don’t even know it! I know firsthand because I can remember a time in my own journey where this spirit gained undeniable access to my mind and I couldn’t figure out how to break free. During that time, what I discovered is that this spirit is highly oppressive and distinguishably overwhelming and it appears to only have one job -to harass you and bring you to a place where peace is unable to penetrate and inhabit. Simply put: where there is mental torment there is the absence of peace and where there is the absence of peace, there is the absence of the presence of God! I’m not speaking of the omnipresent existence of God here - I don’t want to confuse you. What I am specifically referring to is the feeling and sensing of His presence, the presence that affirms and assures us that He is with us. This is the presence that doesn’t require faith. See, where there is no peace, it is almost impossible to muster up the faith to continue in your journey towards victory.
Peace is a promise. It is a gift from God to the believers’ whose trust is in Him and whose minds are stayed on Him (Isaiah 26:3). The only way for any of us to gain access to and maintain the peace God promises to us, our minds must be submitted to Him at all times. Once our minds are submitted to and stayed on Him, we are able to rest safe and secure in the promise of Romans 16:20 “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.” This helps us to consistently pursue His presence totally convinced that He has us on His mind and that everything that concerns us concerns Him. The bible states “there is no peace for the wicked, says the Lord.” (Isaiah 48:22 & 57:21). As a believer, that does not include you! Therefore, peace is your portion and all it requires is that you make a decision that it is indeed something you want and God will not withhold it from you (Psalm 84:11). However, you have to be willing to apply the scriptures, in whole and not in part, to your mind.
James 4:7(NIV) tells us to “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” To submit means to yield or surrender to the power, will and/or authority of another. Some expositors even go as far as to define it as a personal resignation which signifies an individual’s willingness to remove themselves from any prior position of control or power as they employ and literally give themselves over to someone higher than them. I find that to be extremely powerful! This scripture is purely conditional and as such, it is extremely important for us as sons and daughters of God to not just understand, but to fully embrace just how powerful submission truly is and how impossible it is for us to win any war without it. Submission is a prerequisite for winning any victory as it is the very thing that gives us the power to resist the devil causing him to flee. When we fail to submit ourselves to God, the enemy is able to overpower us and to take advantage of us. When we submit to God, we’re actually stepping into the strength of God, we step into a total reliance upon God which gives us all of the power we need; then and only then does God become bigger than the enemy in our eyes. You see, he appears to be bigger than us only when we look at things from a natural perspective, because - in the natural - we have limited resources and limited access to the supernatural. A great many of us have not yet tapped into one of our most powerful resources, that is the massive army God has assigned to us to protect us. I want to encourage you – YOU HAVE HELP! Let’s look at the life of Daniel for a moment. Daniel 10:10-21 (NLT)
“Just then a hand touched me and lifted me, still trembling, to my hands and knees. And the man said to me, “Daniel, you are very precious to God, so listen carefully to what I have to say to you. Stand up, for I have been sent to you.” When he said this to me, I stood up, still trembling. Then he said, “Don’t be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day you began to pray for understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your request has been heard in heaven. I have come in answer to your prayer. But for twenty-one days the spirit prince of the kingdom of Persia blocked my way. Then Michael, one of the archangels, came to help me, and I left him there with the spirit prince of the kingdom of Persia. Now I am here to explain what will happen to your people in the future, for this vision concerns a time yet to come.
”While he was speaking to me, I looked down at the ground, unable to say a word. Then the one who looked like a man touched my lips, and I opened my mouth and began to speak. I said to the one standing in front of me, “I am filled with anguish because of the vision I have seen, my lord, and I am very weak. How can someone like me, your servant, talk to you, my lord? My strength is gone, and I can hardly breathe.”Then the one who looked like a man touched me again, and I felt my strength returning. “Don’t be afraid,” he said, “for you are very precious to God. Peace! Be encouraged! Be strong!”As he spoke these words to me, I suddenly felt stronger and said to him, “Please speak to me, my lord, for you have strengthened me.” He replied, “Do you know why I have come? Soon I must return to fight against the spirit prince of the kingdom of Persia, and after that the spirit prince of the kingdom of Greece will come. Meanwhile, I will tell you what is written in the Book of Truth. (No one helps me against these spirit princes except Michael, your spirit prince.” This is just a powerful example of what it means to pray and not see your answer right away. For twenty-one days, (which to many of us is an extensive amount of time!) It’s important that we understand this. Daniel’s prayers were heard, it was his answers that were being blocked. Many of us pray for the same things again and again worrying that God hasn’t heard us when there are times when what we’ve asked for is on its way, we just have to employ our angels to go to war on our behalf and get them to us. Daniel’s answer was being blocked by the Prince of Persia, that’s no small plight! But just like the angel said to Daniel, “do not be afraid”, we need not worry! God has given His angels a job and that is to assist His sons and daughters in battle. Hebrews 1:14 (AMP) makes it clear for us what their role in our lives is, “Are not all the angels ministering spirits sent out {by God] to serve (accompany, protect) those who will inherit salvation? [Of course they are!].” They are employed by God and sent out to serve us. When we don’t know this, the enemy has the power to intimidate us and scare us out of receiving our inheritance. Satan is a bully. His demonic spirits are bullies and they do have some level of power, however, they are not now, nor will they ever be, more powerful than the sons of God. We have the Holy Spirit living on the inside of us that gives us power over the enemy, all we need to do is access and exercise the authority given to us as the sons and daughters of God. Psalm 103:20-21 –“Praise the Lord, you angels, you mighty ones who carry out his plans, listening for each of his commands. Yes, praise the Lord, you armies of angels who serve him and do his will!” Again, I want to encourage you – you have help. God was mindful of you when He created these angelic armies that are able to aide us in war and protect us from the attempts of enemy to destroy us.I’d like to end with this thought. Whenever you are in a mental battle, there is a cause and it is important that you take the time to discover what it is. In most cases, wherever you find torment, you will find the spirit of fear. These spirits actually co-exist. When you think about it, fear is the absence of peace. It is uncertainty, doubt, the lack of trust and utter confusion. The enemy does not have a right to torment us unless we give it to him. Once we become aware of this, we can take back our power and the enemy has to release his hold, our freedom leaves him with no other choice. As sons and daughters of God, it is only when we are liberated from this bullying spirit of torture that our peace literally torments hell and shreds its agenda - not only for our lives, but also for the lives assigned to us. If you ever want to torture the enemy of your soul, FIND THE PEACE OF GOD AND WALK IN IT!