Turning Self Up and the Word Down: Joyce Meyer’s Approach to the Battlefield of the Mind

By Mark W. Christy, PhD

Joyce Meyer, Battlefield of the Mind: Winning the Battle in Your Mind (Tulsa, OK: Harrison, 1995).

According to Paul, it is clear that believers are to subject themselves to the renewal work of the Holy Spirit by honoring God with how they live their lives (Rom 12:1-2). In Ephesians, Paul demonstrates that Christians are to submit themselves to ministers with equipping gifts so as to be thoroughly trained in the knowledge of God’s Word and thereby reach maturity (4:11-16). Paul continues by stating that Gentiles have been “darkened in their understanding” as a result of sin in their lives (4:17-19). Christians, however, have been taught Christ, according to Paul, not by engaging in their former sinful acts, but by submitting themselves to the truth of Christ as written in Scripture, allowing their minds to be thereby renewed, and actively living according to their new self which is patterned after Christ (4:19-32).

In her work Battlefield of the Mind, Joyce Meyer claims that Satan “attempts to set up ‘strongholds’ in our mind[s]” where “we are held in bondage (prison) due to a certain way of thinking” (16). A careful study of Meyer’s discussion reveals that she sees sin as something that is foreign to the Christian. In other words, sin for her should no longer be active in the Christian’s old sin nature. With this in view, she posits Satan as the culprit who seeks to pollute the Christian from without by attaching the believer’s thought life.

According to James, believers submit themselves to Satan by engaging in sin (4:1-10). In response, he tells them to humble themselves before the Lord (4:10). Those who humble themselves before God, according to James, receive the truth of His Word, and put it into practice (1:21-27). Throughout the New Testament (and the Old), God’s people are called upon to actively submit themselves to the Lord by willfully humbling themselves in light of His Word. Conversely, God’s people are also shown to be disobedient to God at times and can even be charged with deliberately quenching the Spirit by failing to honor the Word of God in spirit and truth (1 Thess 5:12-22).

Both James and Paul make the believer responsible for his/her sinful choices, and both call upon believers to remain true to the teachings of Scriptures by receiving its instruction and applying it. Neither of them ever direct Christians to blame Satan for their own willfully disobedient acts. Believers who have given themselves over to sin from which spawns wrong thinking (cf. Rom 1:21) are directed to repent and humble themselves before God by submitting their minds and bodies to the Word of God.

Instead of seeing Satan’s work (i.e., the working of sin) in the mind of a believer as a direct result of a believer’s willful choice to reengage in sin after having come to the knowledge of the truth, Meyer seems to believe that believers are essentially open-doors for Satan despite their current state in regard to sin. To put this another way, a believer, Meyer seems to suggest, who is currently humbling themselves before God (to the extent that this humility is reflected in their ongoing submission to God is seen in their study of His Word and their application of it to their daily lives) is still a potential target for Satan’s inner work in the thoughts of the believer. To this, the prophet Isaiah says, “The steadfast of mind You will keep in perfect peace, because he trusts in You” (26:3). Here, the prophet proclaims that believers who are completely focused on God will be at perfect peace in their mind. In such a state, Satan would have no place.

Whereas Scripture directs believers to engage in their inner struggle against sin and its consequences (including those in the mind) by submitting their wills to the Lord, Meyer prefers to call believers to fight Satan with the Word of God, prayer, and praise. To a degree, believers, like Christ in His wilderness experience, do fight Satan with the Word. That being said, they do so by applying it to their lives and clinging to it in faithfulness at all times. In terms of prayer and praise, both of these should flow out of a faithful believer by default regardless of whatever Satan may be up to. Instead of seeing prayer and praise as a means for a believer to relate to God exclusively, Meyer casts both of them as weapons in the fight against Satan. Among these according to her, “Praise defeats the devil quicker than any other battle plan” (19). Of course, she provides no biblical support for her contention because there is none.

In 2 Corinthians 10:4, Paul makes it clear that the weapons he uses are not fleshly by nature. Throughout Paul’s writings, he continually models an obedient and penitent lifestyle that is lived in submission to the Lord. His life and teachings are patterned according to sound instruction in the Word of God, and prayer and praise are hallmark throughout his epistles. While he engages God through prayer and praise while learning to obey Him through the study of His Word, the weapon he himself thrusts against this world and its love of sin is the Word of God. According to Ephesians 6, the sword held by the believer in their struggle against sin is the Word of God (6:17). This weapon, according to him, is directed at the minds of his audience so as to teach the Word accurately, destroy false teachings, and bring people into obedience to Christ (2 Cor 10:5-6).

In his writings, Paul does portray the devil as a tempter of Christians (1 Cor 7:5; 2 Cor 2:11; 11:14). Satan is allowed to torment Paul in such a way that Paul is discomforted in his flesh. This, however, is not something that impacts Paul’s inner life of peace (2 Cor 12:7). According to Ephesians 4:26-27, Paul says that believers make themselves more susceptible to Satan’s work by remaining in anger. As anger impacts greatly one’s internal state and causes them to begin to focus away from God, it can quickly leave their minds more open to temptations.

In this battle with Satan, Meyer comforts her readers by telling them “God is on your side” (24). Instead of calling upon believers to align themselves with God, she appears to have them redirect God to themselves. While Christ most definitely intercedes for us, believers must remember to be vigilant in their struggle against Satan’s temptation by aligning themselves with God by submitting to His Word and applying it to their lives (Rom 8:34).

This kind of vigilance does not seem to be exactly in line with Meyer’s counsel to her readership. She would have believers work on their thinking by willfully “choosing [their] thoughts carefully” (29). One wonders how a believer is to “think good thoughts” unless they remain constantly in the study and application of God’s Word to their lives (29). Indeed, how could they even clearly discern what thoughts are truly good?

To discern the nature of one’s thoughts, Meyer proclaims that this can be known simply by looking at a “person’s attitude” (29). According to her, “[a] sweet, kind person does not have mean, vindictive thoughts” (29).  While it is true that a person who is wholly good like Christ would have nothing but proper thoughts, does this mean that one’s thoughts can be judged with certainty by assessing attitude? The Lord Himself looks beyond the surface and judges the heart, so it would seem that Meyer’s advice may be somewhat faulty (1 Sam 16:7).

At a later point, Meyer directs believers who are struggling with “discouragement or condemnation” to “examine [their] thought life” (41). While it is commendable to encourage the examination of thoughts in light of God’s Word, notably absent from Meyer’s directive is any discussion of sin as being a likely potential root cause. Apparently blind to the potential for sin and the need to counsel repentance, Meyer simply encourages her readers to employ positive thinking in their struggle with the effects of sin. While she does not object to the usefulness of Scripture when one is attempting to the think positively so as to fight against any perceived negative dispositions, she does not seem to suggest that her readers should train their minds in the Word of God by actively thinking through it, applying it to their lives, and repenting when necessary. Instead, the Bible for her seems to be a book of weaponized mantras to be used as spoken weapons in her fight to remain positive.

Given that her goal is positivity, Meyer argues against negativity and for positivity (45). Unfortunately, she fails to carefully explain her meaning of negativity from a biblical perspective. Nevertheless, she does seem to at least imply that the Bible does discuss reality in real terms even though reality is often anything but positive. Her discussion, however, ultimately seems to point her readers to a sort of denial whereby everything is looked at from a positive perspective irrespective of pervasive reality. This approach is not biblical. In Paul’s letters, he repeatedly chastised believers for their disobedience. Jesus Himself openly rebuked those is His hearing at times. He even spoke of the condemnation of those who failed to receive His message.

Up until Chapter 6, Meyer largely fails to call upon believers to return to careful and critical study of God’s Word as a means to engage in the battlefield of the mind. This de-elevation of Scripture seems to have coincided with an elevation of herself. In Chapter 6, she testifies to her way of resolving a previous struggle with unbelief.  Specifically, she heard the words “mind-binding spirits” in her prayers over a couple of days (57). After testifying to her knowledge that believers struggle in their minds, she believed that the “Holy Spirit was leading [her] to pray for the Body of Christ against a spirit called ‘Mind Binding’” (57). This prayer, according to her, led to her deliverance (57).

From the testimony aforementioned, notably absent is the humbling of oneself before God by carefully studying His Word. Instead of applying His Word to her situation, Meyer conjures up a word through her prayers that is no where to be found in the Word of God. Along with this problem, also absent is any sincere attempt to discern whether or not she had fallen into sin and needed to offer repentance while seeking God’s grace made available in Christ.

For her, fighting the battle of the mind requires that one “believe the rhema (the revealed Word) that God gave [her]” (59). This word is not a part of God’s Word revealed in Scripture; rather, it is a word presumed to be directly from God to the believer. Such words, however, can not be verified to be from God with certainty unless they correspond directly to the revealed Word in Scripture. By employing Meyer’s advice to believe any and all rhema, believers will surely provide Satan with a wide-open door to lead them astray.

On a positive note, Meyer does finally direct her readers to carefully think through the Word of God. Even so, she argues, based on a faulty interpretation of Mark 4:24, that “the amount of thought and study we devote to the Word will determine the amount of virtue and knowledge that come back to us” (63). If this were true, one must wonder how the Pharisees of Jesus’ day were so ill-prepared. Furthermore, one must also wonder how so many biblical scholars up until the present could spend such a large quantity of time in God’s Word and fail to understand its message.

When studying the Word, Meyer directs believers to avoid reasoning (80). Apparently, she would have those who study Scripture simply believe it upon receipt. Avoiding an active mind and remaining calm, according to her, allows a believer to receive more knowledge from the Holy Spirit (81).

In response to Meyer’s approach to understanding God’s Word, which seems to have more in common with Buddhist meditation, NT writers offer a teaching ministry that constantly challenges the thinking of people. God Himself even called upon the Israelites to reason together with Him (Isaiah 1:18). Given that God gave us a thinking mind, we should not neglect it in our pursuit of God.

Curiously, Meyers seems to fail to understand that reasoning is by default required if her readers are to properly ascertain her meaning and apply her teachings. Without reasoning, her readers would be able to read her statements, pray over her meaning, and then surrender to whatever whims come across their minds irrespective of whether those whims align with her counsel. Given that this seems to be Meyer’s method when reading Scripture, it may be that she is willing for her audience to do just that. Regardless, those who study God’s Word are expected to carefully consider its directives and actively obey them by applying them correctly to their lives.

Whereas Scripture directs believers to take the Berean approach of discerning all things through careful study of God’s Word (cf. Acts 17:11), Meyer seeks “revelation knowledge” so that she can “know in [her] spirit that what has been revealed to [her] mind is correct” (100). She adds, “I don’t want to reason, to figure and to be logical, rotating my mind around and around an issue until I am worn out and confused” (100-101). She, in her words, simply wants to know “nothing but Christ” (101). While Paul Himself makes a similar statement in 1 Corinthians 2:1-2, it is clear from Paul’s in-depth theology and broader knowledge of theologies that conflicted with sound theology that Paul never intended believers to become mentally lazy and resolve to know little more than the name of Christ. Instead, Paul understood that knowing Christ requires careful and ongoing study of His Revelation of Himself in His Word. One could never really develop their knowledge of Christ without strenuous study of His Word. Such study would certainly require one to do a lot of thinking and reasoning in a logical manner so as to correctly interpret and apply Christ’s Word.