Hope, Healing & Freedom Podcast: Episode 187
TRANSCRIPT
Did you know that you have between 6 and 10 thoughts per minute? Wow. During just one day, that is a lot of thoughts. The bible encourages us to take every thought captive and make them obedient to Christ. Just thinking about taking thousands of thoughts a day captive is exhausting. How are we to practically take every thought captive? That is where we are headed with this podcast. I hope to give you some ideas that will help you capture and focus your thoughts on the right things.
I’m Lee Whitman with Restoring the Foundations and I welcome you into this Hope Healing and Freedom podcast. Have you ever wondered why you finish other people’s sentences? Or why you begin thinking about something else in the middle of a conversation with a friend? Or why you have a hard time staying engaged when the pastor goes a little long about a subject during the Sunday morning sermon? It is because our minds can think faster than people can speak. People can process between 210-250 words a minute. The average person only speaks between 110-150 words a minute. Thus, there is a gap between our ability to listen and people’s ability to speak.
There is a similar thing that happens with the speed in which we think. We think between 6 to 10 thoughts a minute. Let’s say you sleep roughly 8 hours per night. That means that you are awake 16 hours a day. If you have 10 thoughts per minute during those 16 waking hours, you will have somewhere around 9600 thoughts a day. Wow. That is a lot of thoughts to take captive on a daily basis. And if you multiply that for the entire year, well I won’t even go there because it is overwhelming to think about. The verse for today is 2 Corinthians 10:5, which says, “casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.” This verse is written in the context of spiritual warfare, and it certainly is warfare. And because it is warfare, you don’t have to fight this battle alone. Verses 3-4 of this chapter add power to this verse. They say, “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. 4 For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds,” Our strength to fight this battle and take our thoughts captive is not found in our fleshly self-effort and discipline. It is only found by allowing the supernatural power of God to flow through us from the Holy Spirit.
I believe there are a couple of ways that we can approach this daunting task of taking our thoughts captive. The first way is to intentionally take every thought captive and make sure it is obedient to Christ.
Matthew 6:25 says, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes.” This verse has much to say in a few words. It says don’t be anxious about your life. How do you do that? By taking those anxious thoughts captive and making them become obedient to Christ. Anxiety usually comes from random thoughts coming into our minds, causing us to be anxious. When we recognize those thoughts, it is important to take them captive. How do we take thoughts captive? By literally grabbing them in our minds and saying NO to them. We can take one thought and replace it with another thought. We have that ability. This ability to grab thoughts and hold them hostage is like a muscle that needs to be exercised in order to get stronger. When we are accustomed to certain thoughts simply running rampant in our minds, it is tough at first to stop thinking those thoughts. But that is where you have power through the Holy Spirit that you might not even be aware of. You can face a certain thought and ask the Holy Spirit to help you take it captive. As you use that supernatural power to confront those thoughts, you will see that it will become easier and easier to make those thoughts stop. Isaiah 26:3 says, “You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You.” The more we recognize that it is God and me not just me all by myself, the easier it will be to fight the battle. Let’s use those anxious thoughts as an example. When that thought that causes you to be anxious comes into your mind, you can either accept it as truth, or you can aggressively take it captive, and say no, I am not going to let that thought remain in my mind causing me to be anxious. I am going to replace that thought with verses like Isaiah 26:3 and place my mind on Jesus and Father God. You are replacing the anxious thought with the truth.
That is one way to take every thought captive. I believe there is another way to accomplish keeping un-Christlike thoughts out of our minds. That is by filling your mind with the things of heaven. Instead of trying to fight each and every thought that comes into your mind, you can fight those thoughts by setting your mind on the things of God. Let me quote several scriptures and allow the Word of God to do the teaching.
The best verse to start this discussion with is Colossians 3:2. It says, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth.” I think many of us have been taught that our goal as Christians is to not think bad thoughts. So, we try our hardest to take any thought that is against God and grab it in our minds and kick it out. That is good to do as I have just explained, but as we looked at how many thoughts we have in any given day, that method could be exhausting. But what if we began our day by setting our minds on things above, filling our minds with the things of God? There would not be room for those evil thoughts. It is sort of like the old joke of telling someone, “Don’t think about the pink elephant.” Your mind automatically pictures a pink elephant. But if your mind is being filled up with thoughts of heaven and what our Heavenly Father is doing, the pink elephant might pop into your mind, but it will not be able to stay because of the wonderful thoughts of heaven.
Psalms 139:23-24 says, “Search me O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. See if there be in me any anxious thoughts, and lead me in the everlasting way.” I love Psalms 139. In it, David describes how intimately God knows him. Notice he starts by saying, “O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thoughts afar off.” David goes on in this chapter to describe how intimately God knows him, even to the point of knowing the words that David is about to speak. Pretty intimate, right? Then in verses 23-24 that I quoted, David seems to be asking God to search him and know him even more. What I think is happening here is that David is asking God to search David and let David know his thoughts because we don’t always know our own thoughts. God show me my heart. Show me my anxious thoughts. I need Your help to know the thoughts and intentions of my heart. That is exactly what we need as well. We need to open ourselves up to the judgment of the Holy Spirit so we can know the thoughts and motives of our hearts. When we focus our thoughts on things above, the anxious thoughts automatically get forced out. We need the Holy Spirit’s help because Mark 7:21-22 says, For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.” Wow, what a list. This is an area where we desperately need a ministry like Restoring the Foundations. RTF is about helping believers get rid of the kinds of thoughts that cause us to struggle. The more we apply the ministry of RTF to our lives, the less these kinds of thoughts have a right to remain. You knew I couldn’t go the whole podcast without talking about RTF.
Mark 12:30 says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” We are better able to love the Lord with our whole mind by filling ourselves up on the truth of God’s Word, and by allowing ourselves to become more and more intimate with Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
Another way to fill yourself up on the things of heaven is by memorizing God’s Word. Psalms 119:11 says, “Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You.” The Word of God can actually transform us from the inside out. Hebrews 4:12 says, “For the Word of God is living and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” As you take the Word of God into your life, it is so powerful that it will change you from the inside out. As you do your part of taking in the Word of God, the Word then does its powerful work of discerning your thoughts and intentions. Coming from my background, I would caution you not to just memorize the words found in scripture, but to meditate on what the scripture says. The church I grew up in was big on bible memorization. In fact, we often had bible quiz on Sunday nights. The pastor would either speak out the words of a scripture, and the first person to stand up would get to say where it was found in the bible, or he would say the reference, and we had to quote the verse. As a teenager, I had a pretty good memory, so I would actually do quite well on these quizzes. The problem was that I could quote many scriptures to you, but I did not know what they actually said. 1 Corinthians 2:11 says, “For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person which is in him? So also, no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.” The good news is we have the Spirit of God living in us to help us know God’s thoughts as well as our own thoughts. Again, in 1 Corinthians 2:16 it says, “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.”
I want to close this podcast by quoting Philippians 4:6-7. As you hear these words, think about how peaceful and full of life your mind would be when we are able to do this. “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
The words of the old Hymn are very true:
Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.
PRAYER
Father God, will You help us to take every thought captive, all 9600 of them a day, and make them come into alignment with Jesus. Would You give us Holy Spirit power to take them captive when they are out of order. Would you also remind us and help us to hide Your Word in our hearts so that we don’t sin against You. And most of all, I ask that You would help us to set our minds on things above and not on things on this earth. The things of Heaven are so much better and more peaceful than the things here on earth.