Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Daily Blade. The Word of God is described as the sword of the Spirit, the primary spiritual weapon in the Christian's armor against the forces of evil. Your hosts are Joby Martin and Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight. Let's sharpen up.

Speaker 2: 0:20

All right, guys. Over the last couple of weeks we've been talking about the ten elements of a godly man as we see in Scripture. So element one is a godly man has surrendered his life to Christ. Element two a godly man is selfless. Element three a godly man strives for holiness. Element four a godly man is repentant. Element five a godly man loves his wife as Christ loved the church. And element six a godly man is sexually pure. Today we're going to be talking about element seven of a godly man, and that's a godly man protects his mind.

Speaker 2: 0:47

And now, for most of us as guys, we are just natural protectors. It's just kind of this innate thing inside of us that we want to protect people. A lot of times we don't even decide, but when someone's being taken advantage of or someone weaker than us is being bullied or something like that, we naturally want to kind of get into the fray. And guys, over the years we've kind of seen guys really buy into this whole sheepdog mindset that was introduced to us by Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman and that we've seen in some you know modern novels and different, you know books and movies and things like that, because there are wolves in this world that want to take out the sheep and we need a sheepdog to protect the flock. And so we've got guys that are, you know, no-transcript. And then I get to do something and not get in trouble for it, right, I get to take someone down, double leg them, dump them on their head, pass their guard, mount them and just rain down elbows on their stupid criminal face. I get it. A lot of you guys have that in you, okay. It A lot of you guys have that in you, okay. But how much time and effort do we spend protecting our minds, preparing ourselves to protect what's going on between our ears? I mean, I've got news for you guys Protecting your mind is way harder than protecting yourself or someone else against an aggressive drunk guy at a bar, but it's way, way, way more valuable, okay. So for me, I'm just going to kind of get personal here. I've talked about this a lot on my own personal undaunted life podcast, but I used to, you know, over 15 years ago, 16 years ago now I used to have a porn and masturbation problem, which, again, most people in modernity are like no-transcript, niv, and I would highly recommend that y'all do the same. So here's second Corinthians 10, five in the new international version.

Speaker 2: 3:21

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. So let's break that down. We demolish arguments and every pretension. A pretension is just like a statement. So we demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. So this is pretty simple actually, if it goes against Scripture, the Word of God, then it's not of God. It's pretty simple.

Speaker 2: 3:47

There are a lot of arguments and statements publicly that go exactly in contravention to what God would tell us to do. So what are we to do to those arguments and statements? Do we push them away? No, do we just try and avoid them? No, we demolish them. We demolish those arguments, we demolish those statements. That's one of the reasons why I'm so big on Christian apologetics and studying philosophy and things like that, because a lot of you guys are flat-footed when somebody gives you any type of negative feedback to something that you're trying to say God is trying to tell you to do.

Speaker 2: 4:22

Okay, let's go to the second half of the scripture, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. So just think about this. Imagine trying to take a person captive. Okay, imagine what that would entail. Imagine what you would have to do to take someone captive. And now imagine that you've got the person in captivity. You've gotten them, but now you need to make them obedient to do something. I mean, I think of this in like a Brazilian j Brazilian jujitsu example. Right, so it's like I've taken you down, I've subdued you. Now it's like, okay, you're going to do what I say, because if you don't, I'm going to choke you out or I'm going to break your arm or I'm going to snap your leg or something like that. Right, so we can kind of get the idea to demolish arguments and we use it to take our thoughts captive and make them obedient to Christ.

Speaker 2: 5:13

So back to the pornography and masturbation example. After I memorized the scripture, there would be those times you're at home alone or you're bored or whatever, and that would be normally the time that you would look at porn and masturbate. You know what I would do? I would say 2 Corinthians 10.5, over and over and over, until the sensation to throw my hand in my pants went away. Right, that's how I would use it.

Speaker 2: 5:32

And guess what? I know guys that struggle so much with certain things, certain sinful behaviors, that you may need to memorize 2 Corinthians 10.5 in a bunch of different versions. You got it in the NASB, in the ESV, in the King James, the New King James, in the NIV. Maybe you need to memorize it in like Spanish or Yiddish or Russian or something like that, to where you're literally taxing your brain so that you can take the negative, sinful thought and bring it to Christ. You were literally grabbing that thought out of the ether as if it's tangible, as if you could hold it in your hand, and you're taking it to the foot of the cross. Guys, this is serious. I'm all for controlling our outside behaviors, the behaviors that happen outside of us, but, man, the war of our minds is a war that we need to wage and there just aren't enough guys waging it, and 2 Corinthians 10, five certainly helps. Element seven of a godly man a godly man protects his mind. Come back here tomorrow for element eight.

Speaker 1: 6:28

Thank you for listening to today's episode, a godly man protects his mind. Come back here tomorrow for Element 8. Thank you for listening to today's episode. Before you go, if you want to help equip other men for the fight, share this podcast around and leave us a five-star rating and review. Stay sharp.