Kenneth Copeland - How to disciplined your flesh

How to Discipline Your Flesh

"We are more than conquerors."

That's what the Word of God says about us as believers.

But there was a time in my life when that victorious description just didn't seem to apply to me. I was born again; I had made Jesus Christ the Lord of my life, but something was still wrong.

Instead of living like a conqueror, I was getting conquered by everything from sickness to cigarettes to coconut pie. It's not that I didn't put up a fight against those things. I did! I triedand failedto whip them, over, and over... and over again.

You know exactly what I'm talking about, don't you? You've been there, and you're not alone.

There are believers everywhere who are caught right now in that kind of defeat, Most of them have "repented and rededicated" more times than they can remember. But every time they take a fresh stand against the devil, he just knocks them flat again.

It doesn't have to be that way.

That's what I found out more than 20 years ago and my life has never been the same since. I found out that I could live as "more than a conqueror. That I could fight the good fight of faith like a winner so that when the fight was done, the devil would be the one left sprawled on the mat.

You can do the same thing. No matter how many areas you may have failed in, no matter how many times those failures have been repeated, if you'll apply the truths I'm about to show you from the Word of God, you can turn those failures around. You can finally begin to live like the mighty and victorious conqueror you have been born again to be.

The Battlefield of the Mind

Before you can consistently enjoy that kind of victory, however, you must go to the Word and learn something about the strategies the devil is using against you. You must learn how he operates, so you can put a stop to those operations in your life.

You must find out, for example, exactly where he's going to attack you. After all, you can hardly expect to win the war if you can't even find your way to the battlefield.

Hebrews 12:1-3 will help turn you in the right direction. It says:

"Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him that endured such

contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds."

Read that last phrase again.

"Consider Jesus...lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds."

As long as you live in a mortal body, your mind is the place where your fight with Satan will be won or lost. Your mind is the battlefield.

Some people have made the mistake of thinking Satan's attacks come in the realm of the spirit, but they don't! Jesus defeated him once and for all where the spirit realm is concernedand when we made Jesus Lord of our lives, that victory became forever ours. The battle for your spirit is over. It has already been fought and won. As a believer, you've been spiritually reborn into the image of God, and there is absolutely nothing the devil can do to change that. He's been permanently kicked out of that domain.

Unless you understand the difference between the soul and the The Battlefield of the Mind spirit, that may be difficult for you to grasp. So let me give you an illustration that will help you see the distinction between the two.

Over the years, I've met a few people who, through supernatural visions, have had the privilege of actually seeing Jesus. In describing their visions, several of those people have told me the same thing. They've said that when Jesus appeared to them, almost all of the questions they'd always wanted to ask Him suddenly vanished from their minds. Then later, when the vision was gone, they'd think about that great opportunity they had and wonder how on earth they could have failed to ask Him those questions when they had the chance. Why didn't I ask Him about this? they'd think. Why didn't I ask Him about that?

I'll tell you why they didn't. It was because visions take place in the realm of the spirit; and when you're operating purely in the realm of the spirit, your mind (which is in the realm of the soul) is not in charge. The only questions those folks could think to ask were questions that had truly been in their spirits. All the othersthe ones they so quickly forgotwere simply questions they'd been entertaining in their minds.

When those folks were caught up in those visions, the devil wasn't even a factor. Because they had for that moment stepped totally into the spirit, he couldn't get in and mess things up. Even though he himself is a spirit, he's lost all his authority in the spiritual realm. He can't fight you there anymore.

Remember, 1 Corinthians 10:13 says, "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man." That means Satan has to operate in this natural, soulish realm. And even in this realm he has no authority, but he can try to deceive you. Deception is all that he has.

That doesn't mean, however, that he'll just pack up and go home.

He's still going to come after you.

He's still going to try to steal from you and kill you and destroy youand he's going to try to do it by gaining control of your mind. By bombarding you with destructive thoughts and putting pressure on your emotions.

You need to know that. You need to prepare yourself for it. You need to realize that if you're ever going to take a successful stand against him, you're going to have to do it on the battlefield of your mind.

Defeat by Deceit

Now that you know where the fight is going to take place, you need to know what kind of weapons the devil is going to use against you.

That's not really too tough to figure out. He only has one, and I can describe it to you in one word: deceit.

He has to use deceit because he doesn't have the power to defeat you any other way. He doesn't have the power to win outright. In fact, he doesn't have any power of his How to Discipline Your flesh own. Jesus stripped him of it all when He arose from the dead and took away from him the keys of hell and death.

He has to win the battle in your soul by tricking you into defeating yourself. He must somehow deceive you into setting aside the victorious life of righteousness and con you into stepping again into the slavery of sin.

"Well now, Brother Copeland," you may say, "I'm certainly not going to fail for that. I've been chairman of the deacons too long to get sucked back into a life of sin! "

There have been a great many believers who said that same thing and yet ended up totally shipwrecked, their lives torn apart by sins they never expected to fall into. Like you, those believers would never have jumped headlong into a life of hard-core sin. But somehow, without even realizing it, they kept inching toward it a little at a time until at last they slipped right over the edge.

You see, sin never starts out big.

It begins small and grows. The devil doesn't just come blaring up to you and say, Why don't you be a prostitute? Why don't you be a killer?

He starts by planting a little seed in your mind. He starts by causing you to wonder, for example, what would happen if you cursed just a little bit.

Let me tell you, I'm speaking from experience when I say that because that is exactly how the devil started with me. I was raised in a Christian home. I grew up knowing that it was wrong to curse. In fact, I figured, as a little boy, that for me it might well be downright dangerous. I didn't know but what God would just strike me dead if I ever said so much as one curse word.