Pathway to Victory

Guest (Male): Hey podcast listeners. Thanks for streaming today's podcast from Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory is a non-profit ministry featuring the Bible teaching of Dr. Robert Jeffress. Our mission is to pierce the darkness with the light of God's word through the most effective media available, like this podcast. To support Pathway to Victory, go to ptv.org/donate or follow the link in our show notes. Now, here's today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.

Dr. Robert Jeffress: Hi, this is Robert Jeffress, and I'm glad to study God's word with you every day on this Bible teaching program. On today's edition of Pathway to Victory, when we're talking about winning spiritual warfare, the first step, the first strategy has to do with controlling our thoughts. And that's what we're going to talk about today. If you have your Bibles, turn to Ephesians chapter 6 as we discover what to do when Satan comes knocking.

David J. Mullins: Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor Dr. Robert Jeffress. Most Christians understand that spiritual warfare is a real thing, but many don't realize where the battle is actually being fought. Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress helps us recognize the enemy's tactics for infiltrating our minds, and he shares how to defend ourselves against the attacks. But first, let's take a moment to hear some important ministry updates.

Dr. Robert Jeffress: Thanks, David, and welcome to a brand new week of Bible teaching on Pathway to Victory as we kick off a brand new study in Ephesians chapter 6. It's hard to miss the irony in Paul's letter to the Ephesians. He wrote this emotion-filled letter while chained to a Roman guard, yet it speaks of freedom. That is freedom from our captor, the devil.

When Paul gets to the sixth chapter of his letter, he delivers his quintessential message on defeating the enemy. It's a lesson on spiritual warfare that has protected Christians for generations as they learn to put on the full armor of God. That's the topic of my teaching series, and it's also the basis for my best-selling book called The Divine Defense: Six Simple Strategies for Winning Your Biggest Battles. I'll send you a copy when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory. And when you respond today, I'll also include the creative multi-folded brochure called Equipped for Battle. I'll say more about these resources near the end of today's program, but right now I'm eager to get started with another relevant study on the topic of spiritual warfare. I've titled today's message: When Satan Comes Knocking.

Your mind is the devil's playground. More accurately, your mind is the devil's battlefield on which he is warring against everything important to you. It is a battle that seeks to destroy your faith, your family, and your future. And that battle is played first of all in our minds. Wrong thoughts produce wrong actions, and wrong actions shape our destiny. And that's why when we're talking about winning spiritual warfare, the first step, the first strategy has to do with controlling our thoughts. And that's what we're going to talk about today. If you have your Bibles, turn to Ephesians chapter 6 as we discover what to do when Satan comes knocking on the door of your mind.

Now, this is the seminal passage on spiritual warfare, Ephesians chapter 6. But to understand what Paul is saying and why he's saying it, you need to understand a little bit about the background of Ephesians. Remember the Apostle Paul was imprisoned two different times. A lot of people get this mixed up. Now just think about it. If you were the Apostle Paul and you were chained to a Roman soldier for eight hours, what do you think they talked about? The weather? "Isn't it a nice day in Rome today?" I don't think so. Do you think they talked about the stock market or they talked about the latest chariot races? I don't believe so. In fact, I know so, because the Bible tells us that the gospel became known throughout the whole Praetorian Guard of the Roman soldiers.

It was Paul witnessing to a different Roman soldier every eight hours. Talk about a captive audience, he had one, and he took advantage of it for the gospel. But as Paul was chained to that Roman guard and looked at him every day, three of them a day, he noticed that that soldier had specific armor that was helpful to him in warfare. And he thought to himself, God has given every Christian the same kind of armor to fight our spiritual battles. And so that's why he writes these words in Ephesians 6:13 and 14: "Therefore take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm there, having girded your loins with truth."

Paul is going to discuss six weapons, six strategies if you will, to win Satan's war to destroy you. And he starts with what Paul later calls the belt of truth. That's what he's referring to, having girded your loins with truth. Fundamental to a soldier's armor was his belt. Now, that's hard for us to understand. Belts are nice to have. We treat them as fashion accessories, but it's really no big deal if you don't have a belt. I know you'll find this hard to believe, but occasionally I get in a hurry. And in the morning I'll forget to put my belt on. And I realize it when I get to the church and I've made a fashion faux pas, but I can quickly cover over it by buttoning my coat jacket.

But to a Roman soldier, a belt wasn't secondary, it was essential to success in battle. And here's why. The Romans had tunics. They wore those free-flowing tunics. They were very comfortable, but a free-flowing tunic could be lethal in battle. If you had those loose ends of your tunic flowing around and you got into hand-to-hand combat, your enemy could gain an unfair advantage by grabbing one of those loose sections of the garment. Or even worse, a soldier in hand-to-hand combat could trip over his own tunic. And that's why the first thing you did if you were going into battle is to tuck that tunic into a belt.

Paul calls it the belt of truth. He's saying that we all have loose thoughts that come in and out of our mind every second it seems like. Some of them are silly, some of them are harmless, some of them are lethal. And if we don't get our thoughts under control, especially the harmful thoughts, we lose the battle. To put on the belt of truth means to recognize Satan's thoughts and replace them with God's thoughts. That's what it means to put on the belt of truth. You say, well that sounds real good, but exactly how do I do that? I want to suggest today four action steps that will help you win the mind games by putting on the belt of truth.

Number one: refuse to feel guilty for wrong thoughts. Refuse to feel guilty for wrong thoughts. Did you know it's not a sin to have wrong thoughts? Wrong thoughts in and of themselves are not sinful. Did you know Jesus, the perfect Son of God, had to deal with wrong thoughts? Turn over to Luke chapter 4 where I'll show you where it says that. Luke chapter 4. Remember, this is immediately after Jesus was baptized. It was the high point in his spiritual life when he heard his father shout from heaven, "Behold my son, my beloved son in whom I am well pleased."

And immediately from that spiritual high, Jesus goes into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Look at Luke 4:1: "Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led around by the Spirit in the wilderness to be tempted by the devil." Now here's a good illustration of what we talked about in James about how a difficult situation can be both a test from God and a temptation from Satan. Who is it that tempted Jesus in the wilderness? We'll see in a moment, it was the devil. It was the devil. God doesn't tempt people with evil, the devil does. But who led Jesus into the wilderness in order to be tempted? It was the Holy Spirit of God.

You see this difficult situation Jesus was about to face, from God's point of view was a test to strengthen him. To strengthen him, to prove that he was the Messiah, the sinless Savior who was qualified to take away the sins of the world. That was God's intention for allowing this to happen. But Satan was trying to tempt Jesus, to entice him to evil, to get him to disqualify himself as the Savior. This was both a test and a temptation. And so for 40 days he was tempted by the devil, and during that time he ate nothing during those days, and when they had ended, he became hungry. Did having these wrong thoughts disqualify him from being a Savior? No, it's what he did with them. It's not the wrong thoughts that is the sin, it is what you do with those wrong thoughts.

And that leads to a second action point: resist allowing wrong thoughts to linger in your mind. Resist allowing wrong thoughts to linger in your mind. Martin Luther said it best. He said, "We can't keep the birds from flying over our heads, but we can keep them from building a nest in our hair." It's the same way with the wrong thoughts that come into your mind. You can't control them all the time, but you can control what you do to them. You can allow them to linger and stay at home there, or you can get rid of them.

And this leads to the third action step: recognize and replace wrong thoughts with God's thoughts. Recognize and replace wrong thoughts with God's thoughts. Now, if we're thinking a wrong thought, the enemy has already gained entrance into our life. So the enemy's already in. Nevertheless, even though the enemy is in our mind, in our body, we don't have to allow him to linger. We don't have to have an extended conversation with him. We don't have to have a long meal with him. We don't have to allow him to take up residence in a spare bedroom we have. No, we do everything we can to dismiss him. And that's where this step comes in: recognizing and replacing wrong thoughts with God's thoughts. Center around those two words: recognize and replace, recognize and replace.

The first thing we have to do with a wrong thought is recognize that it is wrong. How do we know if something's wrong? Remember those filters I gave you a few weeks ago to ask about any wrong thought that comes in your mind? Is it true? Number one, is it true? Is it motivating me to obey or disobey God? Or does it contradict God's word in any way? You can quickly determine whether a thought is a wrong idea that way. Look at 2 Corinthians 10 verse 5: "We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ." That burglar, that intruder may gain entrance into your mind, but we're going to take it captive. We're going to resist it and replace it.

How do you do that? How do you replace wrong thoughts? It's one thing to recognize, it's altogether different to actually replace it. Let me tell you how not to do it. Don't try to remove a wrong thought without replacing it with something else. You cannot keep yourself from thinking about wrong things. Let me illustrate that for you. Just imagine I were to say to you right now, for the next 30 seconds, you can think about anything you want to think about. Think about anything except a pink elephant. Whatever you do, don't think about a pink elephant for the next 30 seconds. You know what would happen at the end of that 30 seconds? We would have a congregation filled with pink elephants riding around in the air and making havoc.

You can't just say "I'm not going to think about this." Instead, you've got to replace one thought with another. You've got to replace wrong thoughts with God's thoughts. And that's exactly what Jesus did when he was being tempted. Remember what Satan said to him? He said first of all in Luke 4:4, "Jesus, you're hungry. I can't believe your Heavenly Father left you in this desert without anything to eat. He's not taking care of your basic needs. Turn these stones into bread." And what did Jesus do? He quoted from the Old Testament: "It is written, man shall not live on bread alone."

So Satan said, "All right, Jesus, you don't have to stay out here forever. In fact, if you will just bow down before me right now, all the kingdoms of the world will belong to you." Verse 8, Jesus answered him and said, "It is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and serve Him only." And then when Satan tempted Jesus to act independently from the Heavenly Father, he said, "You know what? That cross thing, that is going to be really bad. You can bypass the cross. You can go ahead and be acknowledged right now as the Son of God. All you have to do is throw yourself from the pinnacle of the temple, and the angels will come, just as the Bible promises in Psalm 91. The angels will come and will protect you."

And what did Jesus say? Again, quoting from the Old Testament: "It is said, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Do not test God." And you know what the Bible says at the end of Luke 4? The devil left Jesus at that point, searching for, waiting for a more opportune time. Now, why did Satan depart from Jesus? I'm almost embarrassed to tell you what I used to think. You remember those old TV commercials, cartoon commercials for the disinfectant Raid? Remember Raid? And these cartoon commercials would have a bunch of cockroaches in the middle of the night having a party in somebody's kitchen. And they were having a good old time when one of the cockroaches looks over his shoulder and sees this giant can of Raid.

And remember what the cockroach does? He yells, "Raid!" And those cockroaches get out of there as quickly as they can. They're scared to death of what Raid's going to do to them. Now, I used to picture Satan tempting Jesus and Jesus quoting scripture, using some spiritual Raid, and as soon as he started reciting Bible verses, Satan covered his little satanic ears and yelled, "The word of God! Oh no! Oh no!" and ran away from Jesus because he hated the word of God. Now, you might have thought that too, I bet. Satan hates the word of God, we think.

Let me tell you something. Satan is not afraid of the word of God. He knows the Bible better than most Christians. In fact, even in tempting Jesus, remember he quoted from Psalm 91 to make his point about why it was okay to test God. Listen to this. The power of the word of God is not what it does to Satan, it's what it does for us. The power of the word of God, reciting scripture by Jesus, the power there is not in what it did to Satan, it's what it did for Jesus. It gave Jesus the resolve, the encouragement to obey His Heavenly Father.

That's why he repeated scripture. Not for Satan's benefit, but for His benefit. And after three times of reminding Satan of scripture, Jesus resolved in His mind He was not going to disobey God. Then Satan said, "I give up today. Not forever, but I'm going to give up today." The most important way we can replace wrong thoughts is to replace them with God's thoughts. That's what it means to put on the belt of truth. To take those wrong thoughts and confront them with the word of God.

When you feel overwhelmed by fear, quote 2 Timothy 1:7: "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of love, power, and of a sound mind." Or maybe you're being tempted to obsess about money or focus on material things. 1 Timothy 6:8 and 9: "For if we have food and covering, with these things we should be content. For those who want to get rich fall into a snare and many foolish and harmful desires that lead men to ruin and destruction." Maybe you're being tempted into an extramarital relationship, an adulterous affair. Remind yourself of Proverbs 6:32: "But the person who commits adultery is lacking in sense. He who would destroy his life, does it."

The best way to resist wrong thoughts is to replace them with right thoughts. And may I insert an unscheduled commercial right here? Parents, there is no more valuable thing you can do for your child than get them to memorize scripture that they will hold on to for the rest of their lives. Remember what David asked? "How can a young person keep his way pure? By keeping it according to your word. God's word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against God." If I were a parent, I would do everything I could to make sure my children were enrolled in a scripture memory program.

You say, "Oh well, we do that at home, we do it on our own." No, you don't. You're not going to do it on your own. There's too many things going on. Have a disciplined, fun way like AWANA of training your kids in scripture. There's no scholastic class in school, there is no sports program, there is no social group that is going to do as much for them spiritually as learning the word of God. There is power in quoting the word of God, not for Satan's benefit, but for ours. Refuse to feel guilty about wrong thoughts, resist allowing wrong thoughts to linger, recognize and replace wrong thoughts with God's thoughts.

One more action point: remember that victory is possible. You know, Satan loves to lie to us. He's the father of all lies and one lie he'll always tell Christians repeatedly is, "You don't have any choice. I am your master. You can never have victory over your sin struggles, not until you get to heaven one day." That is a lie from the pit of hell. Did you know sin has no more power over your life than you choose to allow it to have? "Pastor, are you saying we don't have sinfulness?" No, we all have a sin nature.

But the back of our sin nature was broken at the cross of Jesus Christ. Sin has no more power over our life than we choose to allow it to have. And that's why Paul wrote in Romans 6 verses 6 and 7: "Knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is free from sin." Ladies and gentlemen, the same Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead on that Easter Sunday morning, that same person, that same power of the Holy Spirit is residing in your life right now, who will give you victory if only you will access the power He's already given you. That is the truth of God's word.

And Satan doesn't want you to understand it. Years ago, Neil Anderson wrote a book entitled The Bondage Breaker, and he illustrates the truth of our power over Satan by relating this experience from his childhood. He says, "When I was a boy on the farm, my dad, my brother, and I would visit our neighbor's farm to share produce and labor. The neighbor had a yappy little dog that scared the socks off me. When it came barking around the corner, my dad and brother stood their ground, but I ran. Guess whom the dog chased? I escaped to the top of our pickup truck while that little dog yapped at me from the ground.

Everyone except me could see that the little dog had no power over me except when I gave in. Furthermore, it had no inherent power to throw me up on the pickup. It was my fear that put me up there. Because I chose to believe a lie, I essentially allowed that dog to use my mind, my emotions, my will, and my muscles, all of which were motivated by fear. Finally, I gathered up my courage, jumped off the pickup, and kicked a small rock at the mutt. Lo and behold, it ran." Satan has no more power over your life than that yappy little mutt. Any claim he has that he's in charge of your life is based on a lie. The lie that he is in control. And when it comes to Satan, as Anderson says, you don't have to outshout him, you don't have to outrun him, you don't have to outmuscle him. You just have to out-truth him. Declare, believe, act on the power of the word of God. And you will thwart Satan's strategy to destroy your life. That's why the only way, the most important way to win the mind games is by confronting error with the truth of God's word. That's what to do when Satan comes knocking.

Dr. Robert Jeffress: I know someone is listening to this program right now, and for the very first time you're hearing the truth about Satan and God's plan for your personal victory. You don't need to be the victim of the devil's attacks. Truth, God's truth, is powerful. It's our greatest defense. And that's why we celebrate the truth of God's word every day on Pathway to Victory.

Today I'm asking you to join me in this mission to pierce the darkness with the light of God's word. When you give a generous gift, you're liberating people from the bondage they feel. And when you contact us with your generous gift today, I'm going to say thanks by providing my best-selling book called The Divine Defense: Six Simple Strategies for Winning Your Biggest Battles. We know of many churches that are using this book for their small group Bible studies, and it's also perfectly suited for your personal study time as well. Friend, thank you for your faithful partnership with Pathway to Victory. Your generous support makes it possible for us to pierce the darkness with God's word during this critical hour. There's a spiritual hunger rising across America, and Satan is aggressively attacking Christian families. But together we're answering God's call to bring hope through His truth. We simply cannot do this alone. Thank you for standing with us in this urgent mission. Here's David with all the details.

David J. Mullins: Today when you support the ministry of Pathway to Victory by giving a generous gift, we'll say thanks by sending you The Divine Defense. That's Dr. Jeffress' best-selling book on spiritual warfare. You'll get that along with the Equipped for Battle brochure. Call 866-999-2965 or visit online at ptv.org. You could also support this ministry by texting PTV to 78800. And when your gift is $100 or more, you're also going to get the new Divine Defense teaching series on audio and video disc, also the companion study guide and the children's book titled Suit Up for Kids.

Now, this book is a fun, interactive way to teach kids how to put on the armor of God and to stand strong against the enemy. To request the complete package of resources, call 866-999-2965 or visit ptv.org. You could write to PO Box 223609, Dallas, Texas, 75222. Again, that's PO Box 223609, Dallas, Texas, 75222.

I'm David J. Mullins. We all know the importance of taking care of our physical health, but what about your spiritual health? Discover how righteous living creates an environment in our hearts that sends Satan and his demons packing. That's Tuesday on Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. Alaska's pristine wilderness showcases God's glory like nowhere else on earth, and you're invited to experience it firsthand on the Pathway to Victory cruise to Alaska. Enjoy daily Bible teaching, worship led by Michael O'Brien, and laughter with Dennis Swanberg, all aboard Holland America's five-star Koningsdam. So reserve your cabin today. Call 888-280-6747 or visit ptv.org.

Guest (Male): You made it to the end of today's podcast from Pathway to Victory, and we're so glad you're here. Pathway to Victory relies on the generosity of loyal listeners like you to make this podcast possible. One of the most impactful ways you can give is by becoming a Pathway Partner. Your monthly gift will empower Pathway to Victory to share the gospel of Jesus Christ and help others become rooted more firmly in His word. To become a Pathway Partner, go to ptv.org/donate or you can follow the link in our show notes.

We hope you've been blessed by today's podcast from Pathway to Victory. Oh, and one last thing before we go. Have you reserved your spot yet for the 2026 Pathway to Victory cruise to Alaska? You've been hearing me and Dr. Jeffress mention it, so what are you waiting for? Just picture yourself on the deck of Holland America's elegant Koningsdam and stepping out on deck to witness nature's grandeur. It's beautiful. These moments in God's creation will deepen your faith in powerful ways. It really will. Experience five-star dining, luxurious staterooms, and visiting iconic ports like Juneau, Ketchikan, and Skagway. We're also bringing along our own Christian entertainment, you'll love it. Seats are filling up, so book your spot today at ptv.org.