Painting and refinishing my bedside tables 🎨 Taking every thought captive

2 Corinthians 10:4-5

⁴for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. ⁵ We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, 

The other day my husband and I were speaking with a Christian that was burdened down and struggling with worry and regret… I found myself thinking about their situation throughout the day… and today’s verse came to mind.

Now I want you to picture this -- you come home from a long day of work…

You’re exhausted so you walk into your living room and lay down on the couch… it feels so nice to lay there and rest after a long day…

But then, in the corner of your eye you see something moving on the other side of the room… it's a rattlesnake!

Do you say to yourself, "Oh, I'm too tired to worry about that now, I'll deal with it later?"

Of course not! You jump up right away, you alert your family, you call 911 for help and start praying, because it's potentially a life-threatening situation! 

This is how we need to treat negative thoughts… I know this may sound extreme, but negative thoughts, which are lies… are opposed to God's truth and character, should be treated the same way when they enter our minds.

We ought to immediately sense their danger and rise to action;

We must take that thought captive and bring it under submission to the truth of God's word.

These thoughts are as poisonous to our minds and souls just like rattlesnake bites are to our bodies.

If we realize that danger, we'll be extremely vigilant to watch what we allow to creep into our minds and remain there.

Thoughts cannot be taken captive until we recognize them for what they are… 

Sometimes bad thoughts or thinking can be obvious and we can easily recognize them as sinful and evil or destructive.

But many times, destructive thoughts can be as subtle as snakes, quietly lying in the background…  And dangerous to our spiritual well being.

and this is why I used the illustration of a snake in today’s devotion…

we must learn to deal with them on the spot, just as if a snake had entered the house.

Remember, Life happens

Our mind is active and thinking during every waking hour, (and even during the night in our dreams).

We have a real enemy that desires to keep us from progressing in our faith, and desires to steal our joy.

We must develop the habit of watchfulness over our thinking.

I know this is a is a challenging discipline…  

However, this discipline will protect your spiritual walk with the Lord and be life changing.

Which is why it is important to know God’s Word… since the word contains God's thoughts.

So, continually examine your thoughts and ask yourself…  Is this true and good, does this help me or hurt me…

As Philippians 4: 8 tells us:

Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell [or ponder on these things].