#renewedthinking

"We demolish strongholds and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." 2 Corinthians 10:5

I used to be under this pretense that I should just be able to pray my thoughts away and that God would simply remove the ungodly thoughts in my mind and I shouldn't have to worry about them again. I would do this time and time again and become frustrated with the fact that I would still think the same way even though I continually asked God to remove such thoughts. And then I learned that it doesn't necessarily work that way. I am in no way saying that God cannot completely deliver us from things that we are struggling with but this verse in Corinthians implies action - we are to take captive every single thought that is not completely obedient to Christ.

We all know the ever popular verse in Romans 12 that says,"Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will." Renewing our minds involves actively going to war on the thoughts that enter our mind. This means that when I am struggling with thoughts of unworthiness or insecurity, fear or anxiety, I get to choose what I am going to do with those thoughts. I can choose to come under this victim mentality and let those thoughts control my emotions, behaviours, self-esteem, and mindsets; OR I can choose to take the thoughts that are so obviously not in obedience to what God says about me, and actively fight them out of my mind.

It's easy to be a victim. We live in a culture that says, "Whatever you feel, do. Whatever you feel, that is what you are"; a culture where the diagnoses of depression and anxiety disorders are more prominent than ever before; a culture that sits back and suffers in the realities that life brings upon us; a culture that blames the well-being of our lives on outside forces that we have no control over. We need to be people who say, "Enough is enough. We will no longer let what happens to us, what people say about us, what thoughts go in and out of our minds define who we are and control how we live our lives." 

How do we go to war on our minds? It's not always just a simple pray-away solution; it is a war - an active war on the situations and circumstances that happen to us. An active war on the thoughts that come into our minds. An active war on the emotions we feel when things happen to us. What does that look like? When we feel insecure, are we going to continually compare ourselves to everyone else around us or are we going to look in the mirror every morning and choose to love what we see. Are we going to exercise and eat healthy and actually DO something about the things that we don't love about ourselves, and yet, STILL choosing to love what we see, even on the days we don't feel good enough. When we wake up in the morning feeling "depressed", are we going to succumb to those feelings of sadness and go to a dark place all day, waiting for something, or someone, to pull us out; or are we going to put on worship music and declare truth over ourselves before we leave the house?

War is active. War is doing something. War is fighting. Maybe it means writing out a list of all the things we love about ourselves. Maybe it means calling a friend to remind us of who we are on the days when we seem to have forgotten. Maybe it means reminding ourselves of the moments and seasons where we really felt loved and worthy and joyful and content with life. Maybe it means being super vulnerable to a friend or a mentor in the very moment we're feeling anxious or insecure. Maybe it means listening to a podcast on the very thing that we are struggling with in that moment.

We have the mind of Christ . . but we are also human. Our minds are one of the most powerful parts of our being and so much of what we think, feel, and do comes out of what we allow into our minds. It's okay to have thoughts come into your mind that are not obedient to Christ but it's what we choose to do with those thoughts that will determine the course of our days and, ultimately, the course of our lives.