Every month I focus on one goal for myself personally. Whether it be organizing my space better, or eating better. Something, personally, is always worked on during each month of the year. For September, I want to focus on something that was brought to my attention from Blkcreatives: Thinking For Yourself.
With social media being so big right now and apart of everyone’s lives fully everyday of the week, every week of the month and every month of year, you can be easily influenced very fast on a regular basis and not even know it. We’ve all been there. This even goes for simple things like shopping. Social media influences have even gone so far as to use your own phone data, including text messages you may think are strictly confidential, to provide advertisements on their websites for you to see and be influenced by while you’re scrolling online, in hopes that you will spend your money with those particular companies. Is this right? No, because it violates your privacy for starters and yes because you may be influenced to purchase something that you truly need at a better deal while online. Either way it goes, sometimes those social influences can become a problem after a while. So much that sometimes it is best to protect yourself from them in order for you to think for yourself.
Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
-Ephesians 6:11 KJV
This particular Bible verse is very important during your process of thinking for yourself. Lets face it, everyone’s intentions are not good. No matter what your intentions may be, at the end of the day everyone does not think or act like you do. In order for you to protect yourself from these type of people and situations that could influence you to go down the wrong road or path, you must arm yourself. Now when I say arm yourself I’m pretty sure the first thing that came to mind for you while reading this is a weapon of some sort but that’s not the type of armor I am referring to here. When I speak on arming yourself I mean for you to arm yourself spiritually and mentally. Many don’t know it but we are at war spiritually which is something called Spiritual Warfare daily. You would be shocked if shown physically how many times during the day you were under attack mentally and spiritually and didn’t eve notice it. A spiritual war cannot be seen with the naked eye as it is based on spiritual matters and not any type of direct physical harm. An attack on your spirit and mind is very common, especially with so much negativity being displayed for us to learn from daily through television, movies, and the internet.
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
-Ephesians 6:12
Thankfully, our motivational topic for today lines up with one of my favorite websites and bloggers, Virtuous Vibes, who have been touching on this same topic daily for the past week or so, on how we are negatively being influenced by the devil himself daily to the point where it has led to us not being able to think for ourselves. As spoken by Virtuous Vibes, most people believe that if you do not speak on the devil and what he is doing daily, that he does not affect you in any way which is not true at all. The devil is always working. Please remember the devil never stops working. He never quits. He is always placing his negative influence on people daily, steady at war while using spiritual warfare. The enemy has no new tricks, just new folks who do his bidding. Once you recognize his tactics, you can spot him coming a mile away! -Virtuous Vibes
Here are five spiritual warfare tactics the enemy often uses from Virtuous Vibes that you must guard yourself from in order to arm yourself through spiritual wars.
- An Assault on The Truth – First step in spiritual warfare from the devil is to mix the truth. You know the ones who try and twist your words even when you know what you’re speaking on and have hard down, credible facts to back up your claims. The devil does not want you to gain knowledge on truthful things. He would rather play with your head when it comes to facts.
- Compromising With Sin – Second step in spiritual warfare is the justification of your sins. Or trying to make an exception for your own wrong doings. The devil loves when we look for reasons to continue to do bad things. He will often put things in your life to persuade you to continue sinning. For example, if you are trying to stop smoking or drinking, but every time you light up or pour a cup the main excuse you have for continuing to do those things is that you are simply stressed. Let go of all of those excuses as to why you can’t stop doing something that may be bringing harm to not only yourself but the other people around you as well.
- Another Gospel – This is something that is affecting me right now in my 20s heavy. I am personally going through that stage in life where I am literally trying to figure out life in general. Some things have went as planned and others have fell short in which I often try to look for advice on which can be a big no-no for me overall. Everyone’s advice is not good advice. Meaning all gospel is not really the real gospel. Be careful of the teachings and advice you are allowing to enter your mind spiritually.
- An Attack On Your Faith – This is a big game player with Christianity as a whole in our society right now. You may have experienced this yourself or have seen online where spiritual influences attempt to sway others from believing in the Christianity faith as a whole all together. Now I understand we don’t all believe in the same things, that’s what makes the world such a great place. No one is the same. No one does everything the same and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, there is something wrong with a person who tries to negatively influence you to either not believe all together in any type of religions, or they are forcing you to believe in something that was not your choice of believing in. The devil wants you to not believe in anything so his main goal here is to sway you to not believe in Christianity.
- Attacking Our Mind – It is highly important for you to guard your mind. Spiritual warfare is simply that, an invisible attack on your mind. This is where most of these negative influences come from by attacking what you are believing in and also thinking about. Don’t allow the devil to get into your head. One way Virtuous Vibes suggests that you counter this attack during the spiritual war, is by keeping your head in the word. The more you keep your head in the word, the more the word stays in you.