What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?”
James 4:1 (NIV)
Every second of your life, there’s a battle in your brain. There’s a mental battle going on! It could be between right and wrong, between what’s easy and what’s hard, or what’s healthy and what’s unhealthy.
All your negative emotions—stress, depression, anxiety, loneliness, fear, jealousy—are a mental struggle. All of your internal conflicts start in your mind. In fact, so do all of your external conflicts.
James 4:1 says, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?” (NIV) That battle going on inside your mind between conflicting desires can continue even when you are sleeping, as you experience restless sleep and bad dreams. It’s a battle that rages 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
This battle in your brain is constant and intense because your mind is your greatest asset. You are your thoughts, your will, your emotions, your soul. Without your brain, you’re not you.
The Bible says in Romans 7:22-23, “I love to do God’s will so far as my new nature is concerned; but there is something else deep within me . . . that is at war with my mind and wins the fight and makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. In my mind I want to be God’s willing servant, but instead I find myself still enslaved to sin” (TLB).
If you follow Jesus, then God’s Spirit is in you. It’s part of your new nature. That means that Satan can’t control your mind, but he can make suggestions.
The only influence Satan has in the life of a Christian is that he can put thoughts in your mind. He can get your attention. Because whatever gets your attention gets you. Once he puts a thought in your mind, you have to decide if you’re going to accept or reject his suggestion.
Ask God to help you choose right over wrong, healthy over destructive, and his truth over Satan’s lies. He is ready to give you the power you need through the Holy Spirit!
Globalization and the attendant concerns about poverty and inequality have become a focus of discussion in a way that few other topics, except for international terrorism or global warming, have. Most people have a strong opinion on globalization, and all of them express an interest in the well-being of the world's poor. The financial press and influential international officials confidently assert that global free markets expand the horizons for the poor, whereas activist-protesters hold the opposite belief with equal intensity. Yet the strength of people's conviction is often in inverse proportion to the amount of robust factual evidence they have.As is common in contentious public debates, different people mean different things by the same word. Some interpret "globalization" to mean the global reach of communications technology and capital movements, some think of the outsourcing by domestic companies in rich countries, and others see globalization as a byword for
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