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Every Thought Captive to the Obedience of Christ

(Overcomer Wu)

“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.” -- 2 Corinthians 10:5

In our spiritual battle, the enemy's perpetual aim is to infiltrate and flood your thoughts with his thoughts and to promote his lie in the face of God's truth. If Satan can control your thoughts, he can control your behavior, because as I often said: our mind is the leading part of our soul and is the controlling center of central nervous system which controls the movements and functions of our body. What our mind is set on is the direction that our body will follow. He can introduce his thoughts, tempting you to act independently of God, as if they were your own thoughts or even God's thoughts, as he did with Eve (Gen 3:3-4), David (1 Chron 21:1), Judas (Jn 13:2) and Ananias (Acts 5:3). For this reason, it is crucial that we would have every thought captive to the obedience of Christ as we are exhorted to do in 2 Corinthians 10:5.

The following example shows how deceptive Satan's thoughts can be. Some people say that God constantly speaks to them through their dreams. So, one day a certain sister stood up and shared that God spoke to me in my dream that “sister So and So (let's call her Mindy for the sake of this illustration which is based on an actual example) needs to donate $3000 to the church this month.” And sister Mindy stood up and testified that she too had a dream: “God had asked me not to give at all for this month because of my high expenses from the various bills.” Quite obviously, both of them could not be right, but this shows how the enemy can play games on our mind sometime if we are not vigilant and discerning.

Some good honest Christians sincerely want to do God's will, but are lacking in discernment. Inadvertently, some Christians have passively been paying attention to a deceiving spirit (1 Tim 4:1) instead of "taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ" (2 Cor 10:5). We must assume our responsibility for choosing God's truth. We can't always tell whether the thought comes from something we've read, seen, or heard, from our memory bank, our imagination or a deceiving spirit. Regardless of where a thought originates, it is incumbent upon us to examine it in the light of God's Word and the Lord will give you the discernment, for the Word of God is like “a sharp two-edged sword... and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Heb 4:12). If we ignore God's written Word, the Bible, we open ourselves up to Satan's activity in our life to implant thoughts that are straight from the gates of Hades to sabotage our Christian life and our intimate relationship with the Lord. For this reason, the Psalmist says in Psalm 119:11, “Your Word I have hidden in my heart that I might not sin against You.” Sin is not just some outright negative act of lies, murder or covetousness, but sin in the original Greek word in which the Bible was written simply means “missing the mark.” Missing what mark you might ask? It's missing the mark of God's will and God's purpose. Thus, even if we were to give in to a thought and act out that thought that is not in accordance with God's will, that is sin!

Along the same line of the mind being the focal point of attack of the enemy, First Corinthians 10:13 stands as a towering lighthouse shining in the midst of our fears and concerns about temptation. The assuring words of the verse tells us, “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.” Yet one may ask: where is the escape hatch that Paul is talking about here? In the same place temptation is introduced: in your mind. Every temptation is first a thought introduced to your mind by your own carnality or by the tempter himself. If you ruminate on that thought and consider it an option, you will eventually act on it, and that's sin. The first step for escaping temptation is to apprehend every thought as soon as it steps through the doorway of your mind and “nip it in its bud” or halt it immediately. There is a good pertinent proverbs that behooves us to heed its warning:

“Sow a thought and you'll reap a action;

Sow an action, and you'll reap a habit;

Sow a habit and you'll reap a destiny.”

Once we have halted a penetrating thought, that may be a fiery dart of the enemy, the next step is to evaluate it on the basis of Paul's eight-fold criterion for what we should think about in Philippians 4:8. Ask yourself, "Does this thought line up with God's truth? Is it suggesting that I do something honorable? Righteous? Pure? If this thought becomes action, will the outcome be lovely and contribute to excellence in my life and others' lives? Does it express a virtue of Christ? Will other believers approve of my actions? Is it something for which I can praise God or ground for others to bring glory to God?" If the answer to any of those questions is no, dismiss that thought immediately and reject it as a piece of trash. If it keeps coming back, continue to reject it vehemently and turn in to prayers or to God's Word and the enemy will lose his ground. When you learn to respond to tempting thoughts by stopping them at the doorstep of your mind, examine them on the basis of God's Word, and dismissing those which fail the test, you have found the way of escape that God's Word promises.

In contrast, if a thought from the Lord enters your mind and it surely will pass the Philippians 4:8 test of truth, honor, righteousness, etc., "let your mind dwell on these things" (Phi 4:8) and "practice these things" (Phi 4:9). "And the God of peace shall be with you" (Phi 4:9), which is an infinitely better than the pain and turmoil which follows when we yield to tempting thoughts and become involved in sin or a faith failure. In fact, the verse quoted above in 2 Corinthians 10 is followed by verse 6 which says, “and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.” In other words, on the one hand, we need to reject the thoughts seek to exalt itself against God; on the other hand, we need to be obedient to carry out every thought that originates from God by putting it into action by the grace of Christ. Thus, we shall overcome the enemy not only by putting a stop to his fiery darts that he constantly bombard against our mind, but we will bring glory to God and shame the enemy by our obedience to God's will.