Insight for Today
A Daily Devotional by Pastor Chuck Swindoll

Mental Barriers to God’s Voice

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DO YOU REALIZE THE POWER OF humanistic reasoning to block the power of Scripture? Let me be specific.

Perhaps you’ve formed the habit of getting even rather than overlooking wrongs done against you. So, when you come across scriptural instruction that requires an alternative attitude, your inner reaction is “No way!” When God’s counsel encourages you to be generous, to release rather than to keep, you easily think of half a dozen reasons that approach won’t work. It’s like having a “Murphy’s Law” mentality that defaults in response to truth. That’s a mental barrier that keeps you from thinking favorably toward the things of God.

In Christ, you have no reason whatsoever to keep serving your secular mentality. You have been freed. Gloriously freed!

Before salvation we had no hope. We were victims of all those impulses and defenses within us. But at the Cross, our Savior and Lord defeated the enemy. He said, “It is finished,” and it was! Sin no longer reigns. Our old nature doesn’t want us to believe that. It resists all messages that would give us freedom. “All renewed-mind information is to be muffled,” commands the sinful nature within. And with every effort, it puts up a thick wall, stations frowning guards, erects towers, and positions thoughts to turn all such input away.

Here’s the better way:

I, Paul, appeal to you with the gentleness and kindness of Christ. . . . I am begging you now so that when I come I won’t have to be bold with those who think we act from human motives. We are human, but we don’t wage war as humans do. We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God. We capture their rebellious thoughts and teach them to obey Christ.

2 CORINTHIANS 10:1–5

When Jesus Christ truly takes charge of our minds, bringing our every thought captive to Him, we become spiritually invincible. We operate with supernatural power. We walk under God’s complete control. What a great way to live!