Winning the War in Your Mind: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life

by Craig Groeschel

In Philippians 4:8–9, the apostle Paul writes, “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”

thought (“think about such things”) to action (“put it into practice”) to experience (“the God of peace will be with you”).

Paul tells us that our thoughts shape our lives.

This breakthrough teaching reveals that many problems, from eating disorders to relational challenges, addictions, and even some forms of depression and anxiety, are rooted in faulty and negative patterns of thinking.1 Treating those problems begins with changing that thinking.

What we think will determine who we become tomorrow. And even crazier, we probably don’t even realize that’s happening! We don’t think about the power of our thoughts, which only makes them that much more powerful. But God made us this way. What science is demonstrating today is what God told us through Solomon almost three thousand years ago: “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he” (Prov. 23:7 NKJV).

With God’s help, you can transform your mind. You can stop believing the lies that hold you back. You can end the vicious cycle of thoughts that are destructive to you and others. You can allow God to renew your mind by saturating you with his unchanging truth. You can let his thoughts become your thoughts. With that opportunity, let’s circle back to our opening statement: Our lives are always moving in the direction of our strongest thoughts. What we think will shape who we become.

God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. —2 TIMOTHY 1:7 NKJV

Remove the lie. Replace it with truth.

Your mind is a war zone, and you are under attack. It’s critical that you become aware of the fight. You cannot change what you do not confront. If you ignore the battle, you lose the battle.

The apostle Paul made this truth clear: “We are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12 NLT).

Your adversary is not your boss, spouse, child, ex, or neighbor with the demonic dog that is always barking. You may not realize it, but the one you are fighting against is your spiritual enemy, the devil. Sound too extreme? That’s exactly what your enemy wants. There is an old saying that goes, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn’t exist.” Satan doesn’t want you to believe in him, so he works subtly. He knows that if you ignore him, he can invade your mind with impunity. He can plant seeds of doubt, confusion, worry, depression, and anxiety that will continue to grow.

Satan is your unseen enemy whose mission is to “steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10), stop you (1 Thess. 2:18), and devour you (1 Peter 5:8). Satan despises you with more hatred than you can imagine. He wants to keep you from God and from the life God has for you. He wants to keep you from intimate relationships with those you love most. He wants to rob you of inner joy and abiding peace. He wants to strip you of the fulfillment you could have in knowing you are making a difference with your life.

Jesus warned us, “There is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). I think it’s interesting that the only time Satan is called a creator, a father, is here in connection to lies.

I have power over my thoughts. I am not captive to them. With God’s help, I can make them captive to me.

The battle for your life is won or lost in your mind. Your thoughts will control you, so you have to control your thoughts.

Romans 7:15–24: I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am!

TO WIN THE BATTLE FOR OUR MINDS, WE MUST ENGAGE, BECAUSE THERE IS NO OTHER WAY FOR US TO DEFEAT EVIL.

My strongest thoughts were centered on my weakness, and I knew they were leading me to a place I did not want to go.

For about two years, my mind was my number one priority of prayer. I read so many books on the topic that I lost count. I also received counseling from a psychologist and confided in trusted friends and mentors.

The lies we believe and base our lives upon are strongholds. Paul said, “The weapons we fight with . . . have divine power to demolish strongholds” (2 Cor. 10:4). So we need to demolish those lies that harm us.

In times of war, if the city was attacked, the stronghold was often seen as unapproachable and impenetrable. Political leaders were hidden there so they wouldn’t be captured or killed. Paul compared the lies we believe to those fortresses. Like the walls of the strongholds, our lies have been reinforced over and over to become bigger and stronger.

Knowing those truths was not enough to penetrate the walls of my stronghold. My stronghold kept the truth unapproachable.

“One who is wise can go up against the city of the mighty and pull down the stronghold in which they trust” (Prov. 21:22).

If you are going to change your life, you have to change your thinking. Demolish your strongholds.

YOU CANNOT DEFEAT WHAT YOU CANNOT DEFINE.

If you want to truly change your life, you cannot just change your behavior. Even if you change your actions for a while, the origina...

Are you also a prisoner, missing out on the life you want but believe you can never have? You crave close relationships but are paralyzed by the fear of rejection. You want to try something new but assume you are destined to fail. You long to be debt free and give generously but feel certain that could never be you. You dream of losing weight and exercising but feel resigned to fail yet again. You want to change but think you never can.

You are constrained by a lie, something that doesn’t exist. The Enemy has arranged enough hurtful circumstances, in key places of your life, in which you got just enough jolt—a bit of a shock, a sting of pain to your heart—that you have decided trying even one more time is just not worth the risk. What makes it worse is that the number of places where you have stopped trying is growing ever larger.

the greatest weapon in Satan’s arsenal is the lie. Perhaps his on...

What Satan did in the garden back then is the exact same thing he will attempt to do in your life today.

In 2 Corinthians 11:3, our thoughtology professor Paul said, “I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.”

He schemes to twist your mind, because if he can, he then diverts you from your purpose, distracts you from God’s voice, destroys your potential.

If he can get you to believe a lie, your life will be affected as if that lie were true.

Part of the reason is that because of sin, we have a flawed internal lie detector. God warned us: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure” (Jer. 17:9). “There is a way that appears to be ...

If Satan’s primary weapon is lies, then our greatest counter-weapon is the truth of God’s Word.

the Word of God is called “the sword of the Spirit.” God’s Word was the first weapon I learned to use to remove lies and replace them with truth, changing both my thinking and my life. “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom. 12:2).

The good news is that God is ready to renew our minds by leading us to “a knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 2:25). Why? So we can “come to [our] senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken [us] captive to do his will” (v. 26). “Then,” as Jesus said, “[we] will know the truth, and the truth will set [us] free” (John 8:32).

Maybe your problem is that you worry constantly. You are always trying to plan out all the details of your future because you cannot stand not knowing the plan. Get alone, turn off the phone, pray for help in being honest with yourself, and ask probing questions, such as: When did this start? Why do I feel this way? Why do I insist on being in control when I know, deep down, I’m not? What is the real need I’m trying to meet with this wrong thinking?

You realize that rather than surrendering yourself to God, you are trying to manipulate him to serve your own purposes.

Remember, you are in a battle. The battle is for your mind. Your entire life, Satan has been trying to bait you so he can entice you with lies that will capture and imprison you. Now it’s time to go on the offensive. Time to get God’s help to capture the lie.

(Yes, Satan knows the Bible too.) He wanted to tempt Jesus to prove he was truly God’s Son by trying to force God to show evidence of his love and care.

We are going to “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5) by using our process to pinpoint the lie, and then we will replace that lie with the truth that sets us free.

See how this life-transforming tool works? Remove the lie. Replace with truth.

I realized that what was driving me wasn’t my work ethic but rather a desperate need to win the approval of other people. I wrongly believed my worth was based on what other people thought of me. I had to replace that lie with the truth. The truth, not just for me but for you, is that our value is based not on what we do but on who made us

The truth, again not just for me but for you, is that our value is based not on how we feel about ourselves but on what someone else will pay for us (1 Peter 1:18–19).

And if God paid the price of his only son for me, I have infinite value regardless of what other people think of me.

So now whenever I think I need to impress people, I take that thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. The verb tense of “take captive” in the original language of the Bible implies a repeated and continuous action.

A final encouragement: anything you change in your life can affect future generations and alter the course of your family line for Christ.

If we want to win the war in our minds, we have to be willing to rewire our thought patterns, rewire our brains.

“Those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit. So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace” (Rom. 8:5–6 NLT).