The War Against the Self

“We make the mistake of assuming that the enemy is primarily in the outside world while there is already an enemy living within us as a parasite.”

war


Ephesians 6:11-12 “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

Deuteronomy 28:7 – “The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways”

Psalm 37: 12-16 – “The wicked plots against the righteous and gnashes his teeth at him, but the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he sees that his day is coming. The wicked draw the sword and bend their bows to bring down the poor and needy, to slay those whose way is upright; their sword shall enter their own heart, and their bows shall be broken. Better is the little that the righteous has than the abundance of many wicked.”

The self is one of our many enemies. We must fight daily against its weakness, insufficiency, and selfishness. The self must be brought under subjection.

The self is primarily manifested in the flesh, so when we war against ourselves, we fight mainly against our flesh.

Secondarily, we fight against the weakness of the mind. Because any glitch we have in the mind will manifest itself in the body. The body is merely a messenger for our thoughts and a vessel that represents the cumulative results of our mind’s work.

Therefore, even though we mainly wrestle against flesh and blood, the war must begin in the mind. Once the mind is under control, then the body can be brought under control.

We make the mistake of assuming that the enemy is primarily in the outside world while an enemy is already living within us as a parasite. Many temptations come from within our minds (James 1:14-15). The primary enemy is within.

We can never defeat an enemy outside the walls of our minds while simultaneously fighting treachery inside our minds. The internal war is won before the external war is won. We must focus on the enemy that is our own self, then we may conquer the world.

Application

The mind is odd in that it can be defeated by itself. Two opposing forces can collide in the recesses of our minds, originating from our thoughts. The victor is the one who is fed the most thoughts. The thought held the longest in the mind is the one that will win and take root in the mind.

Therefore, we must encourage the correct thoughts, because the thoughts that win will be the thoughts that become our life. It is even established in the scientific fields that we have extreme difficulty forcing throughs out of our minds and not allowing them to bubble up. But we also know that evil thoughts can be crowded out by consciously inserting good thoughts.

Practical tactic: Choose the thoughts you want to have in advance and when unwanted thoughts begin to bubble up, replace them with the thoughts you want. Force negativity out of your mind by filling it with positivity.

When the mind is won, war can be waged in the body. The body of man is primarily overrun with lusts of all kinds. Sex consumes the vast majority of man’s thoughts and personal cravings. He also lusts for power and money, but primarily because these tend to bring even more sex to the one who holds them.

Skills and status are also objects of lust.

The lust for sex is the primary driver of man.

All invention, creation, and construction are the results of sexual energy. This energy must be harnessed and controlled because there are very few ways to use it properly.

Men spill their seed using porn or prostitutes when they could instead use that energy to create. You should avoid confronting this lust head-on. Try instead to redirect it to other outlets.

If you war against the lust of the flesh to repress it, it will find a way to force an outlet because it is too powerful of an energy source to be contained.

Redirect the strength of the enemy into anything that will gain more power for yourself. This is how you defeat the flesh. Everything can be viewed in terms of sex, because as men, this is our greatest battle, and this battle pervades all other spiritual battles we face.

Few make it out alive because they try to war against their own biology. Men use dams to redirect the power of a river, you must use strategically placed dams to redirect your own sexual power into constructive and creative endeavors.

This requires leaving the house and building success using the power of the enemy against him. This can be done. If this war is won, all other wars can be won. Place armor on your mind. Gather your thoughts on the task at hand. Wage total war on yourself and unleash your raging fury upon your imperfections.

Mental Nutrition

“No man grew his character scrolling around in instagram”

nutrition

Philippians 4:8 – “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

Romans 12:2 – “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

Colossians 3:2 – “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.”

What you allow in your mind will define you in life. Everything you allow into your mind will develop the way you think. Whatever consumes your regular thoughts determines what you are.

The man who watches the news in the morning and evening and reads it throughout the day becomes an outrage addict and depressed about the state of the world. That man will almost never develop a positive mindset as a result of consuming politics.

He built that mentality through what he fed his mind.

The man who fills his thoughts with social media becomes a man who never lives his own life and who wallows in an inferiority complex. The man who fills his mind with “junk food” will develop the corresponding level of mental fitness. He will be fat and lazy in mind even if his flesh is in decent shape. (Which usually will not happen because an out of shape mind almost never produces a fit physical body).

Whatever we are thinking about is what we are becoming. It follows that the man who takes in positive mental nutrition is a man who becomes a more respectable, successful and mentally fit individual. The man who fills his mind with positive stories and anecdotes of success or motivational speeches about perseverance and work ethic is a man who will eventually embody those characteristics.

The mental nutrition accumulates in its effect just as physical nutrition accumulates over time.

No one instance of positive or negative mental nutrition will change you for better or worse, results are always gained over the long term. These results usually are not seen until they compile into a mass. No single donut results in morbid obesity. No single meal of grilled chicken and broccoli will transform you if you already are grossly out of shape. For this reason you must commit to a long term mental diet of positive thoughts. You cannot put the negativity of the world into your mind constantly and expect to be any better than the world. You are what you think, therefore control your thoughts, and control what goes into your mind, because that determines what you think about. This is the foundation for success.

Mantra

You are what you think.

Application

Start a habit of consuming a positive visual diet every day. Cut back on the visual garbage foods that you enjoy eating. Staying up to date with the state of the country is fine, but becoming increasingly depressed and negative as a result of watching the news for hours a day is not good.

Replace the time you would normally spend consuming rubbish with a positive diet of strong thoughts. The internet has put dozens of mentors, positive thinkers and motivational speakers at our fingertips. Do not waste the extremely valuable resources that we have been given.

You have free access to all the positive material you could ever consume in a lifetime and much more. You are certainly more likely to hear something that would change your thinking and therefore change your life through a positive speaker or mentor than you are to hear it through the local news station. Just type “motivational speech” into your search bar and you will have millions of results.

You need to listen to at least one of these a day. You also need to reduce your consumption of social media and other assorted mental feces. Men do not waste their lives away scrolling through the lives of other people. You must have the strength of mind to reject these common trappings of life.

Control what goes into your mind and you will have a much easier time controlling your thoughts.

Through the positive mental diet you control the soil of the mind from which the fruits of correct thinking will grow. No man improved himself through facebook. No man grew his character scrolling around on instagram. No great man was developed through the daily consumption of the local news.

Men improve from strong thinking and from learning from other men. You can improve your life or waste your life through what the internet has to offer. So learn and grow like a man. Improve yourself. Do not misapply the virtue of contentment to your character. Feed the mind with the thoughts of a champion. Conduct yourselves like men

Honesty

“Lying is the verbal manifestation of cowardice.”

“There is a difference between sugar coating the truth and delivering a hard truth in a soft manner”

Honesty

Proverbs 12:22 – “Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but those who act faithfully are his delight”

Proverbs 19:1 – “Better is a poor person who walks in his integrity than one who is crooked in speech and is a fool.”

Colossians 3:9 – “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices”

Honesty is missing in the Church because the truth is painful for both the man who speaks it and the man who hears it. Man is always looking to avoid or reduce his pain, so he sacrifices virtue for the sake of comfort. He throws away righteousness for the sake of safety. We must not do this. There is no growth in the comfort zone. No one ever improved himself through pleasure.

Character is not developed in ease of life.

The devil is a liar. The sons of the devil are liars. Lying is the verbal manifestation of cowardice. The liar is a worm of a man, the living embodiment of all that is despised by masculinity. There is no excuse for lying. There are not excuses for “white lies”.

No evil can be justified in a way in which the evil is removed. Even if evil is done for a “good reason”, it is still evil. Even if we are lying to “protect others”, we are still lying. In truth, we are likely only protecting ourselves when we lie. Therefore we must be completely honest at all times.

This is not to say we should embrace brute honesty, for that profits very little unless used on specific personality types that respond well to the blunt truth. We should be merciful and gentle when we administer the truth to an individual, just as a doctor is gentle when he administers an injection to a patient. The doctor does not ram the needle into the patient’s arm as hard as he can, there would be no profit in that. We ourselves must be strategic in the way we verbally package the truth: never diluting or sugar coating it, but never soaking it in vinegar either.

Christ was always honest with others, always prioritizing the truth over the emotions of the person who is hearing the truth.

He knew that a person offended by truth simply has too much ego to accept what He had to say in the moment in which He said it. We should evaluate the person we are speaking to: How big is his ego? How well can he accept the truth of a statement? The answers to these questions then give us an idea of how to package the truth. And it varies from circumstance to circumstance.

Perhaps this person needs to have his ego brought down a few notches, and so you decide to give him the full, blunt truth as Christ did with the Pharisees on many occasions. Perhaps the individual is hypersensitive to words and will completely shut down if he is given the truth in a blunt way, so you surround the truth he needs to hear with words of encouragement or complimentary statements to soften the pain. Whatever you decide to do, you must be strategic. But above all, you must be honest.

“Be completely Honest in all that you do” ~ Marine Boot Camp: Introductory Speech

The honest man also does not avoid situations in which he must confess to what he has done. He does not hide the truth or attempt to justify what he did, he merely confesses, accepts punishments and improves himself as a result. This is painful. Know that pain almost always equals growth. Do not hide or cover up the truth. This is for the weak.

Be completely honest in all that you do.

Application

To use honesty strategically is the primary idea. Assess the person you are speaking to and gauge how you should deliver honesty to him. You must always be honest no matter what. How direct, confrontational or “offensive” you are will vary from person to person. Some people need to be punched in the face with truth before they will ever make a change. Some people will never change if they are hit with a painful truth. There is a difference between sugar coating the truth and delivering a hard truth in a soft manner. You must use your knowledge of people to determine how you will act. No matter what, you must be honest.

If you are caught in a fault, confess it. Never be dishonest, you will damage your reputation and character. Those are invaluable pieces of your individuality, so do not lessen their worth. Never hide what you have done wrong, you are simply trying to remove pain from yourself by transferring it to others. Never lie. Never deceive. Be the bearer of truth and a beacon of honesty in a weak and dishonest world.

The Eulogy of Life

The Eulogy of Life

Eulogy

Romans 14:8 – “For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s”

Ecclesiastes 12:7 – “And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.”

Death is coming for us all. Therefore, we must behave in a way that gives men the opportunity to speak well of us after our passing. What are we doing today that will be on our eulogy?

What will men say about us?

Hebrews 11 is filled with the stories of men who did took great action during their life and that chapter of scripture lives on as an eternal eulogy to their lives. They left a legacy through their actions, that thought they are dead, they still speak.

Or are we living in such a way that men will struggle to find something good to say about us? The men will all huddle together and scramble to come up with something, anything of worth that you did with your life. Because even though you kept your 9-5 job, raised decent kids, was a decent guy and you checked all the boxes of a good life, you still did nothing worth remembering. You did nothing to stand out and make a difference.

You lived a simple life, which is to be admired in some, but all the while you did not excel in any endeavor. You are forgotten forever.

One day men will stand up to speak on our behalf after we can no longer speak for ourselves. They will give an overview of what we did with our lives. We have the opportunity now to live in such a way as to give them plenty of material to speak about, and to leave them with inspiration for life.

We can live so that others are still inspired by us days, weeks, even months and years after our passing.

If we live as Christians we can go to heaven, but if we live as excellent men on top of that, we can leave others a shining example to follow.

A pattern to model their lives after so they can stop being mediocre in their everyday lives. Most men are pathetic and do nothing, others do great deeds and are remembered for centuries. You have the opportunity today to live so that you are one of those excellent men, rather than the pathetic men that plague the Church today.

Very few men in the Church are admired. And if they are admired in the Church, they are likely not admired outside the Church. You can be both, but you have to live life to the extreme in your disciplines.

Through death we may live.

Application

There are not many high performance individuals in the Church. Most people need rest and recreation time. Most men need to get their minds off life and take the edge off, but not you. You can work hours on end with no rest because your mind is centered on being something great. Your mind is obsessed with being more than your predecessors. This is one of the primary ways to be remembered at the end of life and to make an impact.

You must gather many accomplishments, both inside the Church and outside the Church.

Weak men in the church berate people who succeed in the world, labeling them as “worldly men”.

No, they are just successful, unlike most men in the Church. The new generation will not respect a man who is successful in the Church but is a pauper at his work and whose life is a failure on every other front. You must be successful on all fronts. This begins by not wasting a single hour of the day. If you work 12 hours instead of your normal 8 each day, then will have over 1300 hours of extra work done by the end of the year.

You don’t need the extra rest, you do not need to relax, you need to get after the work.

This does not mean you have to hang at your job for another four hours a day, on the contrary I advise against that. Gather disciplines to yourself that you will focus on for those other hours of the day. If you write for an hour every day, you can write three 100,000 word books a year.

You must use your time wisely. You can waste it watching television or playing video games, or you can concentrate your time in endeavors that could possibly outlive you for hundreds of years. Gather accomplishments but never lose sight of the Lord. This is the mark of a truly great man. Master the use of your time. Control your thoughts. Outwork everyone around you.

Conduct yourselves like men.

Entanglement With the World

Tangled


Everywhere you look you see negativity and panic concerning politics and the state of the world. Christians start their day with whatever assorted negativity is on the local news and they take that negative energy into the workplace.

Christians are overtaken by a sense of fear about how the world is turning and about the fate of the next generation. These people are too entangled with the world.

As we have explored before, the Kingdom of God never dies, it simply relocates. Yet even while knowing this most Christians are fearful about the culture of America. These Christians are prioritizing their personal comfort over their faith. They know that moving to Africa or some island would cost them a lot of time and comfort and they do not want to leave.

These Christians are worldly.
They know more about current politics than they do about the Bible.

They can tell you who is currently in office, but they couldn’t list five of the fifteen judges of Israel.

They know dozens of laws and tax codes, but you can count on two hands the number of Bible verses they know.

You can count on one hand the number of Bible verses they have learned in the past year.

This is a problem of priority. We have begun to place too much emphasis on this physical world we find ourselves in.

People forget that we die at the end of life, and where we go next is forever. There are only two possible places to go after death. One of them is eternal life and one of them is infinite death. How can we forget this and become entrenched in the world and in its meaningless trifles?

We have forgotten what is important. We sit around ingesting Fox News or CNN or any other mainstream outlet and wonder why our faith isn’t growing. Because we haven’t put any time into our faith!

We start the day with two hours of news yet forget to read our Bible every day.

Pathetic.

We need to get our priorities in order. God should always be at the forefront of our life, but we have placed the world at the front. We think about the world and politics more in one day than we think about God over the course of a year.

We care too much about political parties and the state of the world.

We care too much about the meaningless affairs of the world.

We care too little about God and about faith.

Today is the day we get our priorities in order. Turn off the news, it does not profit you. Do you even remember what was on the news last week? Last Month? Last year? I doubt it. But you definitely remember how watching the news made you feel: unhappy, depressed, and anxious.

There is no need for this to be our way of life. If we are unhappy and anxious we can never hope to convert other people to Christianity. Who wants to be part of a group of unhappy, depressed, and anxious people?

Of course, none of this is to say that politics and the state of the world is unimportant. It is very important – but it isn’t everything.

I’m not telling you to be ignorant of the state of the world. I’m not telling you to be uninvolved with politics.

I’m telling you to keep those things where they should be – below God in priority.

You need to be able to watch the news, catch up on politics, be aware of current events without having it bother your emotional state. This is absolutely key.

I’ll give you an exercise I performed to acquire this skill. It is simple, and involves managing your physiology. Because if you can manage your physiology, you can manage your mind and emoitons much better.

Dial up whatever news source you listen to. Preferably you can do this with some form of media that you can pause and restart.

Next, start listening to it and start a timer. While you listen, hold awareness on your bdy and emotions. Once you feel those old negative emotions bubble up [fear, anger, worry, etc.] stop your timer and pause your news source.

Now you have to wait for those sensations to go away. Introduce positive thoughts and do some deep diaphragmatic breathing. Bring your heart rate back down to its resting level and be aware of how those hot emotions cool off and leave your body. Do not restart your news source until you are as calm and peaceful as you were before you started. Then you may restart, and repeat the exercise.

Also, use your timer to record how long it takes before you get emotionally worked up. And then time how long it takes to cool off. Record and keep track of these numbers so you monitor your progress over time. You will find that as you progress, you are able to last much longer without feeling negative emotions.

You will also be much more powerful because you will be able to maintain a calm, cool, collected emotional state in the midst of disturbing stimuli. That will make you infinitely powerful in a world of people ruled by their emotions.

You are the general with your perspective elevated above the battlefield. You can now see things more clearly than the men engaged in the battle who are overcome with fear and stress. you have calmed your mind and physiology and can command yourself.

That is something to be proud of, not many people can do that.

You can also repeat this exercise in other areas of your life.

Correct your mindsets and place God back at the highest priority where He belongs.

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