Devotional Archives--Mind Makeover

August 30, 2004 —

Capturing Thoughts

“For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.” 2 Corinthians 10:3-4 (NIV)

“I look in the mirror and think, ‘you are so ugly.’”

“Thoughts like ‘I’m stupid’ or ‘I’ll never be good enough’ swirl around in my head.”

“I’ll be doing the dishes and suddenly I realize that I’ve spent the whole time worrying about how to handle a situation I’m afraid of. The situation hasn’t even happened yet, but I’ve wasted 30 minutes trying to come up with solutions to a problem that doesn’t even exist.”

“I find myself rehashing painful conversations over and over and trying to figure out what I could have said to have made it different.”

I’ve met a lot of people who’ve shared comments like those above. I, too, have struggled with my thought life. I’ve looked in the mirror and hated myself, not just the way I look on the outside, but the person on the inside, too.

I’ve felt like a failure, like I can never get it right, and have worried over frightening scenarios that never happen. I’ve thought about painful encounters over and over never coming to a place of peace, always wishing I could have stood up for myself or made the other person understand my position.

But I don’t live that way anymore.

I’m not saying I never struggle with this, but I am saying this negative way of living is no longer a habit. When it does slip in, I know what to do. I know I don’t have to live in the emotional turmoil that a bad thought life brings.

For example, fear ruled my life for many years: fear of people’s opinions, fear of failure, fear of relationships, fear of not being good enough, and crazy, wild fears that didn’t even make logical sense. I worried that something bad was going to happen to loved ones. Illogical and logical fears battered my mind and made it difficult to live in the peace God promised. I couldn’t focus on God because I focused on fear.

Then I heard a new application for a verse I memorized years ago, in college. It’s found in 2 Corinthians 10:5. “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (NIV)

Beth Moore writes in her book, “Breaking Free” that we are to take captive those thoughts that go against God’s word. Basically, she means that we are to reject the thought and stopping thinking about it. We shouldn’t allow it to roam free in our minds. It belongs in jail! She actually has a picture sketched into her text of the thought behind bars.*

My husband says it’s like trying to get rid of a computer virus. Our computer software catches viruses that come over the Internet and puts them in quarantine. Then we go into the program and delete the virus. Sometimes the virus can’t be deleted and it takes more serious measures to overcome it, but we don’t let it run free in our system. We put it in “jail” until we know how to address the problem.

Thoughts are like that. Some we can quickly reject and delete. Others can sit quarantined until God shows us how to address them, but in the meanwhile we don’t have to give ugly thoughts free roam of our mind!  

I know worry and fear are not God’s will for me. Throughout the Bible I read things like “fear not” and “be anxious for nothing” and “trust in the Lord”. So now when I start to be afraid, I stop, put that thought in “jail”, and replace it with truth from God’s word. My favorite verse for overcoming fear is “For God hath not given us a spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” (II Timothy 1:7 KJV)

There have been times I’ve felt such overpowering fear that I repeated the scripture over and over in a short period of time. Inevitably, the fear would return and I’d go through the process again, rejecting the fear and replacing it with God’s truth. There was a six-month to a year period when that particular verse was my constant companion. I have no idea how many times I said it to myself, but it was a bunch!

I don’t battle fear as much as I used to. I’ve spent the last four-years renewing my mind with the truth of God’s word. It’s not that I’m never afraid anymore. I just chose not to waste time feeling scared! To wallow in my fears is direct disobedience to God’s word and it doesn’t feel good either!

I believe fear was a stronghold of the enemy in my life. I don’t think any amount of positive thinking could bring victory in this area. But God’s word did. It’s like it says in 2 Corinthians 10:3-4, God’s weapons have divine power to demolish strongholds.

Fear is just one of many areas I’ve asked God to help me conquer in my thought life. I’d encourage you to ask God to show you what thoughts might go against our Lord. Then, ask Him to give you a special verse to use as a weapon in the battle for your mind.

“Father, help me to recognize thoughts that cause me to feel distant from You. Teach me to capture them and to replace them with truth from Your word.”

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September 6, 2004 —

I'm Not Mad, Are You?

I gasped at the ugly thought I’d just had about my husband. “Oh God!” I prayed. “Please don’t ever let me say that to him. I don’t what to hurt him.”

“Don’t ask me to control your tongue if you won’t control your thoughts.”

Amazed, I realized God was communicating with me. I don’t usually hear direct admonitions, but this one was clear. My loving Father went right to the source of my problem.

I had this experience years ago when I had very little understanding about how destructive a negative thought life could be. In those early years of marriage something would happen—maybe my husband would head downstairs to work without saying anything to me—and I would assume he was mad. I’d try to figure out why and spend the next hour stomping around the kitchen creating my speech of defense.

By the time I was done I was angry with him for misunderstanding me and for being petty enough to be angry over my small offense. Usually, before initiating a fight, I had the good sense to ask him a simple question. “Are you mad at me?”

Almost every time he’d look at me kind of funny and answer, “No. Why would I be?”

Then I would explain my supposed offense and he would shake his head and say, “Honey, why would that bother me?”

Then sometimes he’d look confused and say, “Are you mad at me?”

And I would have to answer, “No” because the only thing I was mad about was the fact that he was mad at me over something stupid—only he had never been mad at me, which meant I had no reason to be mad at him. (Whew! Did you catch that?)

I recount this story to show how easy it is to waste time on thoughts that have no validity. Maybe you’ve never done something as silly as I did, but I suspect most of us can get our feelings hurt and waste a lot of time being mad and creating invalid scenarios in our mind. As women we are good at reading between the lines, but we are just as good at assuming things that aren’t true.

I read a wonderful story some time back. Unfortunately I don’t remember the author or where I read it so I can’t give credit where it is due, but a lady wrote about her experiences traveling. She felt guilty when she traveled because she knew it put extra responsibility on her husband to care for their small children while she was gone.

She assumed he would be tired and resentful of her travels so she would arrive home braced for a fight. She was afraid to admit she enjoyed her time away because she thought it would only make her husband feel even more used. As you would expect, her return home was tense and unfulfilling.

Finally, she and her husband communicated and she came to understand that he willingly took on the extra burden of care because he loved her and wanted her time away to bless her. She learned to share the joy of her travels with her husband who then felt gratified that his sacrifice had been for something worthwhile. Her homecoming took on a sweetness and delight.

This story showed me, once again, how important it is not waste time thinking about how to handle situations based upon my assumptions of how another person is feeling. When thoughts that go against my marriage or other relationships pop into my head, I’m learning to stop, replace the assumptions with good communication, and renew my mind with truth.

“Lord, help me not to waste time thinking about things that are harmful to my relationships. Teach me to base my thought life on truth.”

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September 13, 2004 —

The Lie

About 14 years ago I sat at the turn into my neighborhood waiting for on-coming traffic. Out of the blue an ugly, debilitating thought hit me. “Just pull in front of that car. Get it over with. Why keep fighting?”

I kept my foot on the brake but pondered the idea. Weariness and melancholy threatened me as I let the thought roll through my mind.

After the car passed I made my turn. “Why did I think about killing myself, now?” I wondered. Suicidal thoughts weren’t new to me. There had been a time I’d plotted my own death, toward the end of my college years when I felt my life was falling apart. But now, I couldn’t figure out why I had the thought. There was nothing going wrong in my life. I liked my job, was happily married, and wasn’t experiencing any real stress.

At that moment, I KNEW. The thought wasn’t MY desire—it was a lie whispered to me by the enemy of my soul. I didn’t want to commit suicide. I didn’t want to die. So I stood up to the enemy, told him to go away in the name of Jesus, and decided to reject crazy thoughts like that. I haven’t been haunted by thoughts of suicide since.

My struggles with suicidal thoughts are just one example of how we can allow our minds to tell us things that tear us down. Once I recognized the truth—that I didn’t want to die—I had victory over that particular thought pattern.

It’s important to test every thought. Many things I think about are based on a lie. Some are straight from the enemy, like the thoughts I had telling me to take my own life.

A friend told me that she clings to a verse in Philippians 4:8 to help her with this struggle. She likes the part of the verse that says, “think on those things that are true.” When she has a bad thought she stops herself and asks, “is this true right now?” Usually it isn’t, so she takes it captive, refusing to allow it to roll around in her mind. She chooses not to dwell on lies.

The verse in Philippians says: “ . . . Fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.” (NLT)

I can’t help but think that if we took my friend’s advice—and followed the admonition of Paul in Philippians—that our lives would be much happier and our minds much healthier.

“Dear Jesus, you sent me the Holy Spirit with the promise He would lead me into all truth. Show me what thoughts I have that are false and give me the strength to reject them and replace them with thoughts that are lovely, true, admirable, and pure.”
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September 20, 2004 —

Good Enough

“My inadequacies aren’t all there is to me. Within me resides God’s very nature of love, compassion, boldness, and wisdom and this is actually more central to who I am than any of my shortcomings.”
                                                                    Dwight Edwards, Revolution Within

Reality crashed upon me. All the things I felt capable of at the Writer’s Conference seemed unreachable. I couldn’t write well enough. I couldn’t manage my time well enough. I didn’t have the spiritual insight I needed to finish the project of my heart. I was inadequate. The little voice began whispering its old adage, “You’re not good enough.”

I’d heard that voice most of my life. Sometimes it told me I was not good enough as a person. Sometimes it reminded me that I was inadequate for a task. Every time its sinister message picked at my ability to go forward and made me doubt my path in life.

Those thoughts still haunt me sometimes whispering that I am not doing a good enough job at home schooling or writing or simply being a person. Sometimes the thoughts are loud, banging around my mind like a crashing gong. Other times they slip in unawares, scurrying like nasty mice to steal what isn’t theirs and soil the mind God transformed.

I’m learning to overcome the “not good enoughs” with the reminder that I don’t have to be good enough! There is One who is always good enough. When I dwell on my inadequacies, allowing my mind to wallow in thoughts of my own worthlessness I’m going against several admonitions in God’s word.

His Word says I can do all things through Christ. (Philippians 4:13) His Word says I should keep my mind on things that are good and lovely. (Philippians 4:8) Over and over He tell me in scripture that He is able to do anything He wants through me.

When I wallow in self-doubt it’s because I’m looking at the wrong person—ME! I have a lot of good reasons to doubt myself; But, God has given me no reason to doubt Him. He promises all things will work for my good and that He’ll empower me for every good work.

The question isn’t whether I am adequate or not. The question is: Is HE? And the answer is always, YES.

I’m learning to take those negative, exhausting thoughts captive, to put them in a little box and throw it out the window of my mind. I’m asking God to replace thoughts of my insufficiencies with reminders of His sufficiency.

“Father God, please help me reject the negative thoughts of all I lack. Teach me to embrace the truth that in You I am equipped for every good work and I lack nothing.”
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September 27, 2004 —

Me? Beloved?

Do you agree with the writer who said one of the enemy’s main goals is to convince us that we are not really loved by the Father?

I do.

Sometimes it seems we are hit from behind and the very spot injured is a deep, old wound that never heals. In these moments it is easy to ask, “How can God really love me and allow this to happen?”

And instantly the gnarled whisperer speaks with ancient, distorted brilliance. “Of course He doesn’t love you. You didn’t really believe that garbage did you?”

Other times we fail and that voice shouts like a pointed finger jabbing our heart, “How could He love you when you do that?”

If the enemy can take away our trust in God’s love, He can cripple us. Then, like a dark, slow moving cloud, he covers us with his shadows of despair. And accusation roars like thunder, fear flashes like striking lightening, and the rain never waters our heart, instead flooding our souls with hopelessness.

For if we don’t understand God’s love, we get lost in the storm. We don’t see the coast guard trying to save us. We miss the lifeboat next to our home. We never hear the helicopter above, dangling a strong rope of hope. The lighthouse seems too far away.

Every bruised relationship seems hopeless. We feel unworthy of every dream. We are unloved. Even those who love us can’t be heard for our deepest need of love is from our Creator, and we don’t believe He cares.

It’s all lies, my friend. The deceiver of the ages, the one who comes to kill and destroy is cloaking your mind in his wrathful deception.

The truth is and has always been. God is love. God loves you. Always. Forever. No matter what you’ve done or will do. He never pulls away from you. He never hesitates to meet you. He always wants to hold you close. There are no strings attached.

Grab the robe. Climb into the boat. Let the strong arms of the coast guard lift you out of the storm and into a gentle refreshing rain. Let His love wash away the doubt. Dare to believe that it is really true.

You are loved. By the One Who matters most—the only one that can fill the empty, angry, lonely place inside.

Reject the enemy. Scripture says when you resist he flees.

Embrace the truth. Step into the Sonshine.

“Peace, be still.” (Mark 4:39b JKV)