Battle for the Mind:How You Can Think the ... - Destiny Image

IntroductIon
the street that leaDs
to success—truth From
the Book oF romans
In a.d. 386, a 32-year-old North African intellectual, now living in Milan,
Italy, was sitting in the garden of one of his friends, overwhelmed with
grief and sorrow. This man was one of the great scholars of his day, but he
was in a battle with his mind, seeking the meaning of life as he also struggled
with lust and immorality. His mother, Monica, whom he loved deeply,
was distressed with the fact that her young son was living with a mistress.
Great sorrow had a grip on his heart as he realized that he had no power to
break the hold of immorality on his life.
Sitting there in the garden, his attention was aroused by the voice of a
young man whose words rang in his ears, “Pick up and read! Pick up and
read!” At the same time, he noticed next to him a scroll that his friend had
been reading. As he picked it up and began to read, it appeared as though
the words of the apostle Paul to the Romans (13:13-14) leaped off the page:
“…not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and
envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh,
to fulfill its lusts.” It was at that moment that a spiritual power descended
upon him, and a faith was born within him.
In his autobiography, Confessions, he wrote these poignant words to
describe what happened that day:
I neither wished nor needed to read further. At once, with the
last words of this sentence, it was as if a light of relief from all
19