Thoughts

Thoughts

Prepared by: H. Eric Routon

August 7, 2007

“For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. And we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ and we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete.” 2 Corinthians 10:3-6

This sermon is entitled Thoughts. I will begin by telling you a true story. One night a man drove his car off of a bridge and his car plunged into the water below. In his car with him was his wife and children. Sadly they died. He did not. This man had a good job was well respected and generally a good man-up until this point. When at the hospital the police wanted to know what happened if he was run out of the road or if he was under the influence of drugs and or alcohol and lost control of the vehicle. What he told the police during the questioning shocked them. For several days prior to the incident he said a thought entered his head. The thought was of suicide and murder. He said the thought consumed him, consumed his thinking, his rationale and the thought began to grow more and more and more until it manifested into reality, into an action and ultimately to a very tragic act of evil savagery.

Thoughts are real.

As we can see in this story an evil thought can lead to a tragic event. All of our actions are driven by our thoughts. Thoughts are real. Now you can have an evil thought and do evil things or you can have a good thought and accomplish a good deed. I am sure all of you know that thoughts are real.

Thoughts are powerful

Now, we know that thoughts are real but thoughts are also very powerful. Each thought that comes into our head is powerful. Let’s not take this lightly. You might say that this will never happen to me and true you may never entertain an evil thought of this nature or even carry it out but no one thought that this man would carry out an act of this nature either, but he did. And it all started with an evil thought. Regardless we are attacked by the enemy everyday through thoughts, thoughts, thoughts, and thoughts. The Devil attacks us and gets us to sin by deceitfully planting thoughts into our heads. See the Devil knows that thoughts are very powerful and very real.

I know how powerful and real thoughts are too because I used to be one of Satan’s number one followers. I was addicted to cocaine for 19 years and my thought process was screwed up by the Devil’s schemes. And a thought would come into my head that I needed to go get high and I would go to any extreme to accomplish the action of going and getting high. If I needed to lie, cheat and steal to get the drugs then I would lie, cheat and steal and go get it. The Devil kept me in bondage by bombarding me with a barrage of thoughts that were infected with deceit that created a desire in me to go get high. And even though I knew it was wrong to go get high, I got high anyway. If you do not think thoughts are powerful then think again.

The war

There is a constant war going on inside of us. Evil v. Good (in our thoughts).When we hear the word “war” we tend to think of traditional warfare fought with guns and weapons of mass destruction with all the blood and gore and missing limbs and maiming and acts of savagery, torture, rape and so forth. This war is not that kind of war! And this war is not on the battlefields we are used to fighting. 2 Corinthians 10:3 tells us “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does.” And our enemy is not a flesh and blood enemy. Our enemy is a powerful spiritual force of evil. Ephesians 6:12 states “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

Demons

The word demon comes from the Greek word diamonia and it never means “devil”. There is only one “devil” Satan and the Greek word for devil is diablos.

The scriptures talk a lot about the realness and the personality of demons: