We are looking at a very important topic this week. It is what I call, “Madness of the mind.” Ecclesiastes 9: 3: “This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event unto all: yea, also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead.”
When the mind is sick, a lot of things go wrong. In fact, most things go wrong. This is why the writer of the book of Proverbs screamed out in Proverbs 4: 23, “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.” That means it involves taking action with all seriousness, and making sure that you barricade your mind so that you can keep it well, because out of it are the issues of life. Mark 12: 30: “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.”
DIFFERENT KINDS OF MADNESS
1. Low- level madness:
Examples of low-level madness:
When a so-called male prophet washes an adult woman by the river at night, it is madness but a low level one. So is somebody who loses his temper and suddenly begins to vibrate and fume in anger. Also, at times, you see some people roaming the street, ringing bells and sometimes they reel out a stereo-type message of “repent ye for the kingdom of God is at hand.” Among them are women who bleach their skin and insane looking men. What do you think is wrong with them. Madness, but low level. There are many mad people in our streets wearing clothes and looking normal but they are not normal.
2. Middle level madness: There is also the middle level madness. This is the stage before complete madness takes place.
3. Complete madness:
This is full-blown madness.
As madness of the mind is in the physical, so it is in the spirit. When somebody runs mad, it means the person has lost his inhibition. He is like a drunken man who doesn’t bother about what is going on around him.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN WHEN THE MIND RUNS MAD?
The mind is the battlefield of man. And once the mind is captured, the battle of life becomes very tough. That is why the greatest battlefield is the mind. A lot of people roaming around the hospitals would do a lot better if they could pray for the healing and deliverance of their minds. Many things could go wrong with the mind. Let us look at some of the symptoms of a mad mind.
MAJOR SYMPTOMS OF A MAD MIND
1. Worry: It is spiritual madness for a person who sings joyfully in a church service to get home only to become dejected and be saying, “God, are you sleeping about my plight.” It is spiritual madness. This contrast indicates that something is wrong with the person. Such a person has something removing his faith from the Lord, which he needs to address, otherwise the warfare will continue until he surrenders to the devil by confessing eventually that nothing is working. When faith goes out of the window of your heart it will invite doubt, and when doubt comes in, it will invite his elder brother which is fear, and when fear comes in it invites its younger brother worry. When worry comes in, all kinds of things will begin to move in too. So, if you are a worry bag who would confess that God is almighty, who is able to do all things, but immediately you get home from the church, the devil comes in and starts to remind you of some negative things in your life and you give in to him and as a result you break down, it is madness of the mind.
2. The feeling of uselessness: There are some people who feel worthless and useless. They complain of trying many things without success. They therefore contemplate suicide. So the devil will quickly capitalize on their thoughts of suicide to attack them. He may suggest that they jump from the top of the bridge into the lagoon. He may persuade them to hang themselves or use other means. This is nothing but madness of the mind. It is a normal thing with unbelievers, but for Christians, there is no basis for it. You either believe the Bible for what it is or you stick to other things.
3. Depression: The Bible has another name for depression. It is called the spirit of heaviness. A victim of this spirit feels as if there is a big load in the spirit pressing him down and making it difficult for him to move. The spirit of depression can make a person to lock up himself and refrain from talking to anybody. Whoever suffers from depression will also give room for other demons to attack him. And when they move in, the person’s case can result in serious mental problems. It originated from the mind.
4. High-mindedness: The victims of high mindedness don’t want to start from something low. They focus on high things. The devil is happy with people with high mind because he would make them to scatter the table of good things prepared for them by themselves. A high-minded person may be saying “I want to have my own wedding in the airplane so that when it is flying around, I will break record.” This is high-mindedness. It is madness of the mind. Some minds sometimes decide to run contrary to the peace of a person.
5. Sadness: This feeling of hopelessness comes when one’s situation is bad and the person does not know what to do. When somebody had asked God for forgiveness for a sin he committed and God had forgiven him, the person still nurses the feeling that he has not been forgiven and attributes every misfortune that befalls him to his past sins. God will look down from heaven to discover that he is the one accusing himself.
6. Dwelling on the past: Yesterday is gone. It is too late to worry about it since you cannot go back to it. It is madness of the mind to dwell on the past.
7. Unnecessary agitation: Getting perplexed and agitated and the inability to concentrate is a sign that there is madness in a mind. Inability to read the Bible with understanding and lack of prayer is part of madness of the mind.
8. Lack of confidence: This is also a sign of madness of the mind.
MINOR SYMPTOMS OF A MAD MIND
1. Anger.
2. Fear of death.
3. Loss of motivation.
4. Frequent desire to cry.
5. Feeling of isolation.
The human mind is the greatest vagabond in the universe. For example, as you are reading this message now, your mind may be somewhere else. If you don’t put this vagabond mind under control, it will eventually cause problem for you. Many minds have cobwebs forming in them. As God is willing to shine a new light into them, they are withdrawing from it. They want to continue in their former ways without knowing that it is only a change that can bring progress. This is because most people hate change. They prefer things to continue the same way. Many people who claim they have open minds don’t really have open minds, what they have is a blank space. Jesus did not have that kind of open mind. He pronounced woes to the scribes and the Pharisees without mincing words.
Jesus was the only person who spoke most about hell fire. He told the most truth we know about hell fire. He makes us to know that the place is not prepared for us but the devil. However, if we are prepared to go with the devil, we will get there. Therefore Christians don’t have the kind of liberality that people are claiming now.
When somebody’s mind is very little, little things would wound him in the heart. Great minds are not easily hurt. Somebody was addressed as a brother and he felt slighted and got angry and said, “Do you know what God has deposited in me? Why are you calling me a brother? Call me a pastor.” Things like this will definitely bother little minds, but great minds would remain unperturbed. Anyone who thinks constantly about himself alone will be discouraged. Note this truth. Another truth to be noted is that it takes a strong mind to control a wild tongue. If your mind is weak then your tongue will be loose. When your mind is not renewed with the word of God and there is no fire in it, it becomes a dumping ground for all kinds of rubbish. The devil will give you topics to be deliberating upon. It is a very dangerous thing to invite enemies into your mind. This is why anger is bad.
A strongman is the head of the demons in charge of a location. At the gate of his palace is the demon of anger, standing, looking cool and normally well dressed like an executive gateman. But when you get angry, he would open the gate and beckon to his colleagues like hypertension, diabetes, and other diseases to surround you. Thereafter, he locks his door and waits for your next moment of madness.
It is even more dangerous when one’s mind has been taken over without one knowing it. If your mind is not free from evil influences, you will become the property of the devil no matter how bright you look on the face and the Bible College you attended. That is why the Bible says; you should renew your mind with the word of God. When you get born again, it does not mean that your mind is completely cleared of all the rubbish of the world. But as you continue to renew your mind with the word of God, you pass it through the clearing process. It is a daily affair. It is certain that if you win a person’s mind, you will have him and when you capture his thoughts, you will control him, that is the trick of the devil. No wonder satan fights to gain control of the minds of men because he knows that once he gets it, all other things are easy. 2 Corinthians 11: 3: “But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.”
When the devil came to Eve, he manipulated her, and gave her the impression that God was telling them a lie. He fed her with wrong information which introduced doubt into her mind, and eventually he got her. I want you to lay your hands on your chest and pray seriously with holy anger like this: “My mind, go back to your resting place in the name of Jesus.”
WHY DO SOME PEOPLE’S MINDS WANDER DURING PRAYERS?
No matter how hot the prayer tempo is, some people’s minds still wander during prayers. You find that people who sincerely want to serve God cannot remember the information passed to them by the Lord in their dreams. They forget easily. The mind of man is like a tester and the extent to which you allow it to influence your thoughts is the extent to which it can control you. You may claim to be speaking in tongues, but the devil may be controlling you. In fact, the devil must work with the human minds or else he has nothing to work with. Even all the bodily afflictions originate from the human mind. The heart is the centre of serious warfare. The Bible makes us to understand that the devil has immediate and instant access to the human mind. He has a complete picture of your thoughts, imaginations, motives, intentions and secret ambitions and is familiar with your strength and weaknesses. And if you permit him either by carelessness or ignorance, he would plant evil ideas into your mind. He knows us better than we know ourselves. Many of us like to forget our mistakes or faults, but the devil does not forget at all. He starts every wrong feeling and passion. He gives appetizing suggestions which correspond with a person’s weakness. If he discovers that something is your weakness, he would use it against you. For example, if you were prone to crying, he would always bring things against you that would make you to cry. But the day you say, “No, I refuse to be a student in the school of crying,” he will not be able to use it against you again. If you were a worry bag, he would always cause you to be thinking. If you were the fighting type, there would be many people opposing you. But the day you said that you are not going to fight anybody no matter the provocation, he would lose the battle in that area and look for another area. If you were the gluttonous type, he would always put you in trouble through food. He makes wrong appearance as right and darkness as light. He is an expert at introducing deception into the hearts of careless people.
When the mind is not working according to God’s wish, mental and physical ailment, failure, defeat, poverty, family breakdown, oppression, suicide, profitless hardwork, chronic sicknesses and strife will follow. What we are saying is that your life is determined by the state of your mind and what you feed into it. What you think about is what will decide what happens. I would like you to close your eyes at this juncture and pray like this: “O Lord, shine your divine light into my mind and let all strangers fly away, in the name of Jesus.”
PARTS OF HUMAN MIND
The mind of man has two parts:
1. The conscious mind.
2. The subconscious mind.
The conscious mind is the tiny portion of the whole person, while the sub-conscious mind is the larger part of it. This means that if I speak to you and you respond by speaking back to me, then your subconscious mind is at work. But inside that sub-conscious mind, we find long forgotten memories, and experiences of childhood stocked there. When the subconscious mind is filled with dirt and you combine it with the physical environment that lacks Christ, the mind will run mad. Our subconscious mind must be renewed, changed, reprogrammed and be made to conform to Christ. Failure to do this will make the mind to fall under evil control. This is where Philippians 4: 8 becomes relevant. It says, “Finally brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” These are the things the Bible says we should be thinking about. It says our minds should not be dwelling on lies but on honest things. Anytime dishonesty comes into you, throw it out. Your mind should not welcome impure thoughts and the report of the enemy. Failure to do this will result in the mind falling under evil control.
THE MIND CAN BE ATTACKED IN SEVEN WAYS
1. The forces of Egypt:
This is a situation when satan and his cohorts come against one’s spiritual progress, advancement and understanding. This can result in frustration and confusion. Have you been born again for some years and you do not seem to be making a headway in life? Do not listen to the voice of the devil telling you to go back into the world. One of the greatest tragedies that can happen is for a person who was once born again to begin to use charms and patronize herbalists. It is like saying that the devil is more powerful than God. This is a big lie. Anyone who denies God for whatever reason would be in trouble. Such a person will never prosper. The intention of the spirit of Egypt is to cause a backward movement. It is good to prosper. In fact, a child of God is designed to prosper exceedingly, but if your prosperity is not balanced with holiness, you will go to hell fire.
2. The forces of suppression: These forces cause one’s spiritual life to be dominated by fear.
3. The forces of depression and heaviness: They discourage people and make them sad.
4. The forces of oppression: They weigh people down and keep them from using their authority. They cause physical and mental distress. Majority of churchgoers experience one form of oppression or the other.
5. The forces of obsession: These forces besiege the mind in an abnormal way. They can change the mind and force the victim to take unreasonable actions.
6. The forces of possession: When the forces of possession enter a person, they gain total control over the person and make it difficult for the person to reach God. Such a person will eventually run mad if care is not
taken.
HOW DO WE CURE THE MADNESS OF THE MIND?
i. Recognize that there is a problem. When you know that there is a problem, you have started addressing it.
ii. Accept the Lord Jesus Christ fully. Don’t be a part-time Christian.
iii. Surrender totally to Christ. Every unsurrendered area of your life will open the door to the enemy. When you are not surrendered to Jesus and you lack commitment to Him, you open the door of your life for the enemy to enter. Demons know whether you have surrendered or not. You can accept Jesus, but to surrender and to be committed is another thing.
iv. Commit yourself completely to Jesus.
v. Study the word of God.
vi. Pray all evil deposits out of your mind.
It is the devil that takes away people’s attention from Jesus. He engineers bad thoughts, evil imagi-nation and evil desires. All these take place in the mind and if they are purged from the mind, the person’s life will be affected. If the tree of poverty is planted in a person’s mind, it does not matter how much you give to him, he would still be poor because he would carry out all the suggestions that tend to poverty. Therefore, you need to pray the following prayer points aggressively:
PRAYER POINTS
1. Every power of familiar spirit and witchcraft working against my mind, release me now, in the name of Jesus.
2. I frustrate every demonic arrest over my mind, in the name of Jesus.
3. Holy Ghost fire; destroy every satanic plantation in my mind, in Jesus’ name.
4. I bind every spirit withstanding testimony in my life, in the name of Jesus.
5. Every river of backwardness flowing into my mind, dry up, in Jesus’ name.
6. Every evil association with un-friendly friends, break now, in Jesus’ name.
7. I destroy anything representing me in any demonic meeting, in Jesus’ name.
