The modern culture tells us that faith and intellect are two different things.

Either you have belief or you have brains. You can’t have both.

In the previous two articles on spiritual warfare I wrote about how most spiritual warfare happens. This week I promised to start fighting back. To do so requires unity between our mind and our faith.

In spiritual warfare, the evil enemy has hijacked our reason and rationality. He has been able to make science the final word and pitched it against the Bible. Many people, even those who profess to be Christians, defer to science to explain creation, the progress of life, and the world about and in us. People who chose to believe the Bible to be true and accurate are mocked and thought to be less intellectual. In effect, Christians don’t use their brains and are just wrong or misguided.

This elevation of science and rational thinking over faith and divine inspiration (man exalted over God) created an either-or atmosphere. Either you are a believer or you are smart. The predominant thinking is that you simply can not be objectively seeking the truth of science if you are tainted by faith.

The breakup of faith and reason was designed by the devil to divide and conquer. It is easier to dismiss faith by pushing it off into the corner as not relevant. This is spiritual warfare on the global scale.

Individually, it is easier to lose the battle for the mind when faith and intellect are seen as an either-or option. We need faith to help our minds understand God and the spiritual forces around and in us. We need our mind to help us make sense of our faith and to exercise our free will and to form our worldview. Together they help us make better decisions.

Imagine your mind is an island. It has been under the control of evil forces for a long time. Somewhere along the way, you manage to seek help to get out from under your evil master, Satan. He keeps you isolated so you cannot help yourselves. The rescuer, Jesus, seeks to give you life and is the only path with which we can enter heaven. We must use our free will to accept his help. This requires faith. This is an example of how our minds and our faith combine for our own good.

This is a process. It involves conviction when you realize what you are doing is wrong perhaps because it is hurtful to yourself and to others. At that point you look around for a better way.

But our mind has yet to connect to faith. So, we search for better ways to help us gain victory over our bad habits or addictions. Yet we still believe the lie that we are victims or that we can have victory if we just find what we are looking for. The problem is we don’t really know what we want. We just want the pain or the behaviour, or the destructive thinking to stop. We are seeking but doing so without faith. This is because we are still under Satan’s leadership.

Freedom means changing masters and that takes faith. New Age thinking, Meditation, Yoga, Wicca, and humanistic self-help all keep us from the truth because these are all parts of Satan’s world.

The first step to freedom is to recognize something is wrong. The second step is to find out what is wrong. The third step is to do something significant and meaningful about it.

We can use our minds to realize there is something not working in our lives. We can use our minds to discover what it is, like anger, or depression, or an empty feeling. We can even use our mind to start looking for solutions.

But we must combine our intellect with faith in Jesus Christ before we can do something meaningful and long-lasting about our situations. We must change masters

I challenge you to research who God is and who Jesus is. At the moment, you are either a child of God or an enemy of God. There is no middle ground (Matthew 12:30). The good news is that even if you are an enemy of God, He still loves you (Romans 5:6-11)

The first victory in the battle for the mind is the moment you receive Christ as your new master.

Next week, I write about what happens after Jesus sets you free and how to win every spiritual battle you face. I’m not kidding!

More in this Spiritual Warfare Series:

• Spiritual Warfare #1: Fear or Freedom
• Spiritual Warfare #2: Guerrilla Warfare
• Spiritual Warfare #3: Mind Meld
• Spiritual Warfare #4: Who am I?
• Spiritual Warfare #5: When Do I Win?

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Andy Becker is a retired counselor and author of The Travelers, a fictionalized account of spiritual warfare (available on Amazon) as is, Stupid Thyroid, a book he co-wrote with his wife, Stella. Andy and his wife, Stella, lead Lighthouse Ministry in North Central Regina, one of Canada’s poorest and roughest areas. He is a retired counselor, speaker, and writer. Andy Becker is working on his second book about spiritual warfare. His first book, The Travelers, is available at Amazon.com and Amazon.ca.