Evil thoughts come from Satan. His strategy is to place them in your mind in the hope that you will act on them. If he can get you to speak or act on an evil thought, he has accomplished his mission in getting you to fulfill his will and not God’s Word. The bottom line is this: Satan wants to be your god (2 Corinthians 4:4).
You may not always be able to keep a wrong thought from entering your mind. But you can certainly determine what you are going to do with it.
Take encouragement from what the Apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5, “We are human, but we don’t wage war as humans do. We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God. We capture their rebellious thoughts and teach them to obey Christ.” The way to be free from evil thoughts is to cast away the thoughts that oppose God, capturing rebellious thoughts and teaching them to obey Christ.
So, when you recognize an evil thought, cast it out of your mind immediately. Replace the evil thought with what Philippians 4:8 tells you to dwell on. You can only do this one way: by putting the Word of God in your heart. Meditate it, read it, study it, confess it. Confession of God’s Word is a very effective tool in controlling your thought life because you cannot think one thing and say another.
The amazing thing about resisting the devil is that when you do, there’s only one way he can respond—he must flee (James 4:7)! A Christian never has to put up with the torment of evil thoughts. Jesus broke Satan’s authority over mankind so we could put on the whole armor of God and stand against the forces of evil (Ephesians 6:10-18).
This means we’ve been given a choice. We can renew our minds with God’s Word and give the devil no place in our thoughts! Romans 12:2 says, “Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.”
Here’s the danger of continually putting up with wrong thoughts—eventually they will enter into our hearts and then come out of our mouths (Proverbs 4:20-23). Jesus said it is not what goes into the mouth of a man that defiles the man; but what comes out of the mouth from the heart (Matthew 15:11, 18-19). Keeping God’s Word in your mouth and in your heart will keep you totally free from wrong thoughts and the power of the enemy (Luke 10:19).