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In 2 Corinthians 10:5 Paul says we are to “bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” We are in a daily battle as to who will control our thoughts. And when you practice this most important principle of bringing every individual thought into captivity—making certain our thoughts stay within biblical guidelines—it is absolutely transformational. Most of your problems begin with wrong thought patterns, and so often you don’t even know it because you don’t think about what you are thinking about.
Philippians 4:8 gives us some clear guidelines for our thoughts: “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”
The secret to controlling your thought life is to agree to these limits and to bring your thoughts into these parameters. Let me illustrate it this way. You may have skated on a frozen pond in wintertime. You could go anywhere on that frozen surface with freedom and pleasure.
But if you decided to skate further than the pond extends, that would be a little difficult. Once you leave the frozen surface, your skates will bog down, and you will lose all the freedom you’ve had on the pond. So of course you would decide to stay within the boundaries of the frozen pond, knowing that any other decision is foolhardy.
Do you get the picture? God has set boundaries for our thinking, and within those boundaries we have tremendous freedom. When we refuse to stay within those restrictions, we lose our freedom because we become victims of our own thinking.
[Mary has written a book on this topic, Think About What You Think About. And it is on special this month for $8. Click here for more information.]