Mind Wars

“Can a man scoop fire into his lap without his clothes being burned? Can a man walk on hot coals without his feet being scorched?” (Proverbs 6:27-28)

When you read the entire chapter you see the context it was written in was a warning to a son about keeping himself pure and avoiding temptation. The thought expressed was how we shouldn’t play around with temptation and sin and not expect to have trouble.

While in this passage the writer was talking mainly about adultery and sexual sins, it also applies in a broader sense to our thought life.

Most of our sin problems start in the mind, which is why tracking, monitoring and actively making changes in your thought life is so critical. It isn’t just about keeping a pure thought life, but intentionally setting up a God-centered thought life, purposefully establishing His word in our minds as the controller of our mind and soul. Paul tells us how we are to identify and respond to thoughts that need to be taken out:

“We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ. (2 Cor 10:5)

Paul isn’t writing about controlling or accommodating thoughts and opinions that are against the knowledge of God, but of DESTROYING them. If we are truly going to “take every thought captive to obey Christ” it starts with setting up your home defense properly. Paul knew that in the same way you remove weeds from a garden, if you don’t remove those thoughts they will grow back.

Like someone cleaning a house, picking up trash that needs to be thrown out, so it is with our minds – there are thoughts here and there laying around that need to be tossed out! For many of us, we have toxic thoughts that run through our minds – some of them can be deep seated patterns that established themselves in our childhood. They have been running around in our mind for so long they have burned deep grooves into our mind and it seems impossible to stop them. But you can either reinforce them by reliving those memories, events or circumstances that caused them, or make the decision to go after them to take them captive and destroy them so they no longer have the ability to control your thoughts, attitudes and and ultimately how you react to daily life.

As you identify toxic thoughts in your mind that need to be replaced with biblical thoughts it’s easy to let a thought enter in and to take time to play around with it – that is like scooping fire into your lap and thinking you won’t be burned! Those thoughts that you’ve already seen that need to be replaced can’t be entertained in the slightest!

If a thief were to break into your house and you caught them, would you invite them to sit down and have a cup of coffee so you can get to know each other better? NO – we’d ask them to leave and if they don’t call the police! I need to look at my mind in the same way, and make sure there are no unwanted guests trying to get in, or worse yet, trying to take space in the real estate of my mind.

When your mind is filled with the right things, there is no room for the wrong ones!

I know that my ability to respond as Christlike as possible means I need to make sure that the programming circuits in my mind are wired as much as possible with His thoughts, not mine.