Take Every Thought Captive
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Overthinking
Overthinking
We were driving to Nashville the Tuesday of Fall Break to fly out to North Dakota to visit some friends.
Before we left, I put some air in our back passenger tire that was a bit low.
It looked a bit more worn than when I had put air in before, but we were running a bit behind so there was not time to switch cars.
I told myself “It will be fine.”
Everything was fine until we got a few miles down the parkway and we hit a few bumps in the road.
All of a sudden my heart started racing and my mind went straight to the tire.
I just knew at any moment the tire was going to blow and we were going to miss our flights and ruin our trip to ND.
For the rest of the trip, my mind went in and out of panic mode, convinced that the tire would blow any second.
But we pulled into the airport, parked the van, and were off.
We actually drove all the way home on the tire and everything has be fine.
You’ve probably had similar experiences.
Psychologists call this “overthinking”, which means losing control of your thoughts and obsessing over stuff.
The more you worry, the more you feel anxious and discouraged.
Your brain doesn’t know the difference between reality and the stuff you are worried about.
Maybe for you it is what someone said or didn’t say.
You start thinking “What did they mean by that? Are they mad at me? Do they think I am weird or something? What did I say or do? Do other people think the same thing?”
And your mind spirals out of control
Or maybe when you are laying in bed trying to go to sleep, a thought pops into your mind that something really bad is going to happen when you go to sleep.
Your heart starts racing, your body gets tense, and you are afraid to close your eyes.
You know there isn’t anything to your thoughts, but you just can’t shake it and you start hearing things that must be your thoughts becoming reality.
These are horrible feelings aren’t they?
But the more we let our minds spiral into certain thoughts, the more we struggle with those thoughts and the harder it is to overcome the anxiousness that comes with them.
Take Your Thoughts Captive
Take Your Thoughts Captive
This is what is so cool about the Bible. It always seems to have a powerful answer to our struggles.
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.
“Take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
That is really strong language isn’t it?
It isn’t “shift your thoughts” “stop thinking like that”, but capture your thoughts, tie them up and lock them away, trap them and make them obey.
It is almost like a wild animal that you have to catch to prevent it from hurting anyone it might come into contact with.
I love watching wasp and bee removal companies videos on YouTube.
They find the hives in some of the most surprising places and have to capture them before they hurt someone.
That is the way we need to handle the thoughts that take over our minds.
That is the way we need to handle the thoughts that take over our minds.
Paul isn’t just telling us to stop thinking bad thoughts, he is telling us to REPLACE the bad thoughts with GOOD/GODLY thoughts.
To replace the LIES with TRUTH.
In another place Paul tells us.
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.
Whenever you get into a spiral of negative thoughts, figure out what lie you are telling yourself by looking into God’s Word for the truth and start to tell yourself that truth.
This is what is so important about reading the bible, memorizing passages of scripture, being a part of things like this and being an active part of a church.
All these things give us the truths that can help us fight against the overthinking that so often sends our minds in to destructive spirals.
Think of it like a backpack full of every tool you would need to meet whatever struggle you might face.
The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.
So the next time your thoughts begin to head down a road they don’t need to
trap them, capture them
And replace them with thoughts that you have stored up from God’s Word.