Take Every Thought Captive

Taking every thought captive is a daily battle. This should be one of our goals—taking every thought, every idea, every little thing captive to Christ. Today as you read the verses may they encourage you to become the man, the woman, the person that you are designed to be. Pause right now and pray before you read these verses. Pray that God would speak deep into your heart and help you to transform your mind.

When you go throughout the day, where does your mind travel when you’re in default mode? You know, when you’re not intentionally thinking about anything in particular, what does your mind go to? Is it your spouse? Your boyfriend/girlfriend? Does it begin thinking about food and your next meal? Does it wander off to the last video game you played or the one you hope to play as soon as you get home? Does your mind default to fear, thinking of all the problems awaiting your attention: The kids, your debt, your workload, the repairs that need to be done on the house, the fear of your parents splitting up, worry about whether or not someone is mad at you? Maybe it defaults to sins like lust, or worry, or revenge?

Finally, brothers, 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 — Philippians 4:8

Commitment to Excellence

Finish this sentence for me:

“If you don’t have anything nice to say…..”

As we keep thinking about reigning in our 30-50,000 daily thoughts, Paul now tells us to apply our thinking to things that are lovely.

What does “lovely” mean?

Lovely is an interesting word and has been translated as…

Beautiful

Winsome

Pleasing

Evoking love

Endearing

and more

Remember, Paul didn’t use words here that were particularly religious, he used words that would connect with the culture of his day and “lovely” was no exception.

This word lovely carries with it the idea of something beautiful, something that evokes love and joy — something that is pleasing to think about and promotes love (not lust!).  It’s more than just checking out a good looking man or woman, it’s about thoughts, people and ideas that have God’s values at the core of who/what they are.  It’s a sunrise in the morning.  A long walk on a rainy day.  It’ a child sleeping in his mother’s arms.  It’s a daughter with ice cream all over her face while on a date with dad.  It’s art.  It’s a picture that’s your screen saver or desktop image.  “Lovely” is seeing 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 lived out:  

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends — 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

 Love takes on so many forms…

Write a list of ten lovely things to think about today.  What kinds of thoughts evoke love in you?  What is pleasing and endearing to you?  What is beautiful to you?  Remember, lovely thoughts help us become who God wants us to be by thinking how God wants us to think.  Think lovely thoughts today!

A lot of Christians see the word “pure” or “purity” in Philippians 4:8 and our first response is to think Paul is talking about sexual things.  And certainly concepts of sexual chastity are encompassed in the word.

But Paul wasn’t just talking about sex.

Got thoughts?

Reigning in our thoughts is no easy talk but thankfully it’s one Scripture gives us much help with!  Many of us can be incredibly disciplined with our eating and/or our working out and/or our work schedule and/or our prayer time and/or our Bible reading time etc… etc… yet be totally UNdisciplined with our thoughts.

So discipline starts when we take each of our 30,000 daily thoughts and make them captive to Christ.  There’s no way we can tackle 30,000 thoughts at once though, so we start with one thought at a time by focusing on truth which we talked about yesterday.  Today we learn to intentionally think about those things that are noble.

It’s amazing how many thoughts we have in a day.  I’ve read several studies on this and have seen where scientists think that the average human being thinks over 30,000 thoughts a day!

30,000 thoughts!

The phrase, “A penny for your thoughts” takes on a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?

It’s amazing how many commands in Scripture boil down to one essential truth:  Your thought life will determine your obedience.  If my thoughts are God’s thoughts, if my mind is in the heavenly realms where Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father, then it should follow that my life will be in line with Christ.

And here’s the kicker about thoughts:  Each one is a choice.

As we move into part 5 of our 6 part series on dealing with worry, stress & anxiety the way God wants us to, we find ourselves reading verse eight of Philippians four:

Finally, brothers, 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.

In this fourth part of our six part series on how God wants us to overcome worry, we come to an amazing verse with an absolutely life changing promise in Philippians 4:7:

And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.