Can the devil read your mind
QUESTION: Does the devil have the power to read the intents, thoughts and emotions just like God can do? What does the Bible teach on this?
ANSWER: Without a doubt Jesus Christ could read the minds of others.
4. But Jesus, perceiving their thoughts, said, "Why are you thinking evil in your hearts? (Matthew 9, see also Luke 9:47)
The word of God reads and judges our thoughts and attitudes. Everything we think can be clearly seen by him. In the book of Hebrews, the apostle Paul states that God's spirit can find out all of the thoughts and desires in our hearts. Absolutely nothing is hidden from the Great God (Hebrews 4:12 - 13)!
The devil knows HOW humans think because he thinks the same way. He knows the weaknesses of human beings and therefore knows how to tempt us. Jesus referred to this commonality of thinking when he rebuked Peter (who was not yet fully converted) at a moment when the devil was influencing him to think and say certain things. Peter, upon hearing Christ say he must be put to death in Jerusalem by the religious leaders, began to correct him! Jesus did not hesitate to answer what was being said.
'Get away from me, Satan! You are an obstacle in my way, because these thoughts of yours don’t come from God, but from human nature.' (Matthew 16:23)
The devil cannot and doesn't not know our innermost thoughts. He simply can't read our minds, otherwise, he would not have wasted his energy trying to tempt Job (Job 1:6-12), or even Jesus when he was a flesh and blood human (Matthew 4:1-11). The devil certainly does have the power to deceive those who do not follow God.
Understanding Satan’s Abilities! Can Satan Read YourMind?
(Ver 1.3) This will be an extremely complex Bible study today of a highly spiritual nature about the spiritual abilities of your enemy Satan. We will explore many difficult and different scriptures found in the Bible that help us to see the truth. In studying your enemy you should learn both his strengths and his weaknesses so that you can be better prepared when he comes to tempt, test or attack you. Satan is definitely this enemy that I am talking about if you are a Christian. God tells us that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood (people) but the principalities, powers and the rulers of the darkness of this world and the spiritual wicked in high places (Eph 6:12). The Bible clearly tells us that we are in a spiritual warfare with a spiritual enemy that we cannot see. Since we do not perceive Satan with our physical senses we must read the Bible and see what God tells us about this unseen spirit and how he operates. Today I am going to focus in on one aspect that many Christians have wondered about. I was asked this question recently by one of my readers so I thought it would be a good topic to share with all of my readers. Here was their question:
Can Satan Read Your Mind?
Let’s start by addressing the question “What is your mind”? Most people associate your mind with your physical brain, an internal organ in the head, but this is not technically true. While the physical brain has some vital functions within the natural realm, what happens to your mind when your body dies? Does it cease to exist? Absolutely not, the mind is just a part of your soul. Your soul is comprised of your intellect, will and emotions. You intellect is comprised of your ability to think and reason along with recall of memories that you have learned or experienced. Reading the story that Jesus teaches us of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16:20-31, you can see the actual account of two men who lived on the earth and then died and their bodies are buried. After they have died physically they are still able to speak verbally, think and reason mentally in this story without their bodies, so we know they had conscious awareness and the same mental capabilities that they possessed when they were here on the earthin their bodies. We are told that the rich man was nowin hell and he asks Abraham to send someone back to the earth so that his brothers would not come to this place of torment where he was. In this conversation Abraham tells the rich man to “remember”. This clearly tells us that you will take your past memories of this world into the next eternal realm. The rich man was able to recall thathe even had natural brothers andhe was further able to mentallyreason and come to the conclusion thathe made a mistake and thathe should have done something differently while he was living on the earth. This is a verypowerful lesson about the afterlife experience, the human spiritand the human mind. The rich man’s ability to think and remember was not tied to whether or not he had any brain cells. Get it?
The human mind is a very complex and powerful feature of God’s creation. We use it to create many things in our world. How do we do this? We take mental concepts and process them and make determinations and decisions based upon these ideas or thoughts. It is this reasoning ability that we have that makes us completely different than the animals on our planet. There are really only three basic states of thought, we can make up our mind, we can change our mind to the opposite perspective or we can attempt to be double minded and accept both realities simultaneously. Jesus actually warns us about doing this when He said “I would that you were either hot or cold, since you are lukewarm I will spew you out of my mouth (Rev 3:16). God is speaking of a man who is not committed either way. God actually teaches in James that this is called a “double minded” man:
Jas 1:8 A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.
God is warning us about being a man who is indecisive, uncommitted, trying to appease everyone and God says this man is unstable in all of his ways. This is what concerns me about our current president in the U.S. His attitude of an all-inclusive behavior as being permissible and normal is very troubling to me. The term translated as “double minded” in James 1:8, is the Greek word that can mean a man who has two spirits controlling him. So we see a definite connection from your mind to your spirit and that is very important to understand. We know that when Lazarus and the rich man died their souls, minds, memory, reasoning facilities and even emotions did not die with them. These were still intact with their spirits. Therefore your ability to think is tied to your spirit and not your body. A thought is a process that occurs and is associated with the human mind, but what is the source of a thought? Where does a thought take place and how does it work?
Gen 6:5 And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
Here is the first occurrence of the thought process of man being stated or described in the Bible directly by name. We of course realize that the thought process of Adam and Eve were involved in their decision making back in Genesis 3, but God never mentions it directly. Here in Genesis 6, God looks down on the men on the earth and sees that they only think evil things in their hearts. We can again see the connection of thoughts to the spirit of a man and not his physical brain. So a thought must come to rest in your spirit. I’m not sure if it originates there, but it is definitely connected as a resting place. Here in this verse in Genesis 6, God implies that the hearts of men could be one of three states, good, evil or both as I previously stated. We can understand this based upon the words “only” and “continually” used with evil. The opposite of these two states would be only good and never evil. We could further stipulate someone who is in the middle as being “occasionally evil or intermittently good”. I personally believe based upon this information that there are three sources of thoughts in the human mind and that these are as follows:
1. A Thought can originate from a man’s spirit (Self)
2. A Thought can originate from God’s Spirit (Good)
3. A Thought can originate from another spirit, either angel (good) or demon (Evil)
A thought is the birth ofa realm of influence expressed in the externalactions of a person. Having an evil thought does not make you an evil man, unless you act upon it and live it out. I believe that a person can be influenced to do good or evil according to what they entertain and allow to remainin their minds. There is a verse of scripture that occurs in the N.T. that says “Those who are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God” (Rom 8:14). This verse is a scripture that demonstrates the spiritual influence principle of how a spirit can encourage people to do the right things. To be led is the action of a guide who shows you the way to go. However, to be led means you have the opportunity to go the other way and not follow their directions. It further implies that there are other spirits that can also lead you to do the wrong things in life. This means that all spirits good or bad can give you thoughts and that they therefore know what they said to you. This does not mean they read your mind, it only means they provided the thought. They spoke something to your mind and your spirit and what you do with it is totally up to you. You can be led by it or you can be a person who ignores it. It really boils down to your ability to discern the origin of the voice (thought) being spoken internally. The good news is that you can know the difference between God and a demon and this is because God says this to you:
Joh 10:4 And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice.
Joh 10:5 And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers.
Joh 10:14 I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine.
We can clearly see Jesus speaking to us, we are calledHis sheep and He says we will be able to recognize His voice because we belong to Him. We know that this is a faith proposition being presented to us, but it is also an internal spiritual knowing that will be present. It is very difficult to explain this to people, if you have never experienced it. Some have called it an intuition, but you could call it a hunch or awareness or an instinct. You do not know how you know, you just know. This has happened to me repeatedly, I have a thought and just based upon the content of the thought I know it came from God. It is very hard to explain in natural terms because it is a spiritual experience.
2Co 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;
This is a fairly popular verse of scripture that you should already be aware of. But, since we are speaking about the realm of the mind and the origination of thoughts let’s examine what God is saying. We can see that God is speaking to us to do something. God tells us to “Cast Down” imaginations. Then God says to “Make Captive” every thought. Two aggressive actions that we are required to take based upon what? If you read the context of this verse you can see that God is again describing a spiritual warfare that is taking place. This means you must interpret this verse within the context of spiritual warfare and this is how you fight against your spiritual enemy Satan. Where do these thoughts and imaginations come from that you are to“make captive” and “cast down”? They must come from Satan, otherwise if they were from God we would not need to do anything but follow His leading. We can assume by indirect reference that the source of these things in our mind that are not supposed to be there are from Satan and it is our responsibility to police them out. It is also obvious to me that if Satan puts these thoughts in there then he knows what you are thinking at that instance. But, he is waiting to see what you do with the thought to see if it worked or not.
Mat 6:31 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
Here is a vital spiritual principle to understand. Jesus said that you can take a thought or rejectthe thought by reverse implied reference. This is also a demonstrated act of your freewill. God never says that He will control your thought in the Bible.A thoughtis like ifsomeone offered you some money, you could take it or you could walk away from it by your own choice. More than likely you will take it because it is desirable. However, if I handed you a poisonous snake and you took it from me, then you are just stupid. This is the nature of the spiritual battle fourd withinyour mind. Jesus is teaching us not to take every thought that we have and to speak them, act on them, accept them, etc. To take a thought means you accept it into your heart and then you begin to speak out what you were thinking. This is how Satan knows his trick has succeeded. As soon as you think something that is contrary to the Word of God you should immediately think what does the Bible say about that? When Satan tempted Jesus, Jesus would automatically say “It is written” and tell Satan what was written that was wrong with what Satan had just said to Him. This is what you need to do also, however, this assumes that you have studied and read the Bible in order to know what to say in response. Satan is not going to wait for you to get to your Bible and look up a scripture, he is going to find you alone in the wilderness without anyone there to help and then bring thoughts into your mind. It is at these times you better have something to say from your heart. Here in the context of this verse in Matthew 6, Jesus is speaking of how people can let worry consume them into saying and doing things that they should not. Worry is another negative mental process that is thinking on the wrong things and allowing them to control you. Jesus is giving us some important information to know about the mental and spiritual realm of reality. I hope you can see it.