the battle of the mind

“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.” – 2 Cor. 10:5 (NIV)

it’s a good verse, right?  I’ve had different times during my journey through life where I tried to put this verse into practice.  take every thought captive.  ok.  killer.  sounds great.  go team.

now I’m trying to put this verse into practice, once again (because apparently, it hasn’t ever taken root in my brain where I do it consistently…ugh).  this time, it’s on a whole new level.  and it’s a battle.

have you ever made a list of all the lies you believe about yourself?  it sounds kinda weird.  and maybe you don’t have many lies you believe about yourself.  in which case, I would love to shake your hand and say, “well done, killa”.  but for the rest of you – have you ever done it?  Cristine suggested I do it a little while ago.  and at first I was like, “um…yeah, no, that’s ok.  I’m fine.” :)  I mean, who wants to sit down and do that?  it sounds like a recipe for disaster, if you ask me.

I kept putting it off that week, but by the middle of the week I couldn’t get the idea out of my head.  so I did it.  and I almost burnt the house down in the process.  no, really…I almost did.  I was sitting in a chair and had a lamp on and didn’t realize the lamp was leaned up against the wall and the bulb got hot and melted a hole through the lamp shade and I had no idea until Paul & Cristine came home and they smelled something burning.  oh, the tragic stories of a non-smelling person (I was born with no sense of smell).  if you feel sympathetic and feel so led, please feel free to send money.

oh – sorry.  ok back on track…

so I set aside some time to make this list.  um…it was quite long.  and while I was making that list, I decided to make a list of fears that I still had.  I thought I was doing really good at kicking fear in the butt.  apparently, that’s not the case because that list was quite long as well.  ugh.

as I was making the lists, at first I was starting to feel despair – and I kind of expected to be hurled down into the “pit” while doing this exercise.  however, something really cool happened – about 1/2 way through listing the lies and the fears out, God gave me almost like…righteous anger, I guess you could say.  I was ticked that these lies and fears had taken hold of me.  I wanted to MAKE WAR.

which sounds great, right?  yeah!  MAKE WAR!  no more believing these lies!  no more giving in to these fears!  go team!

…a lot easier said than done.  it is incredibly hard to re-train your thought patterns when you’ve believed the same lies and been held captive by the same fears for years.

so I’ve been battling, especially over the past couple weeks or so.  but I kept hitting this wall – this wall where I was like “yes, I know these are probably lies – but I don’t fully believe they’re lies…even though I know I should…”

through an unexpected turn of events, last week I hit this wall again and I hit it hard.  feeling powerless over this battle in my mind, I did something I don’t normally do.  I went for a drive.  haha ok j/k – I mean, no – I did go for a drive.  actually I didn’t drive.  Cristine did.  and I rode.  and we drank really bad lattes (don’t you love it when a coffee shop makes your drink with sugar free syrup when you never asked for sugar free?  yum…).  and we talked.  I talked.  I verbally spewed all over her.  which I don’t tend to do.  I tend to keep things bottled up inside and try to work through them on my own – which almost always is never a good thing.

let me just stop right here and suggest that if you need to verbally spew, I will loan Cristine out to you at a very decent monetary rate.  you guys will go for a drive (because going for a drive is so much less awkward than sitting across a table staring at one another).  and you will talk.  it’s inevitable.  she has a beautiful gift of pulling out the grunge inside of you and then talking through it with you.  :)  and if you’re a guy, you can go for a drive with Paul for the same very decent monetary rate (actually it’s a little higher, because he’s technically a pastor so I can charge more for that) because he also has this beautiful gift that you don’t really feel like is beautiful at the time but at the end of the talk, you feel so much better and then you realize it is, indeed, a beautiful gift.  and most likely you will at least have a glimpse at what God wants to teach you through whatever mess you’ve found yourself in.

wow, totally off track again… 

so what I realized was that quite a few of the lies and fears had been influenced by 1 person.  1 person.  why is it that we so easily believe the negative words/actions of 1 person?  if 1 person told me something encouraging about myself, and another person told me the opposite (something negative), I think I would tend to believe the negative.  why is that?  and if like, 5 people told me something positive about myself and this 1 person told me something negative, I would tend to believe the 1 negative thing over the 5 positive.  like really, why?

just realizing that 1 thing has blown my mind and is starting to shatter the lies that I have let infiltrate my mind for so long.  I have a long ways to go still.  but God is blowing my mind.  I feel like He’s beginning to restore me back into who He’s created me to be.  Rediscovering my true identity in Christ.  yesterday morning I was reading Ephesians 1 and I’ve never got this before while reading Eph. 1 but yesterday I just kept finding verse after verse that proclaimed who I am in Christ – and wow is it awesome to be a child of God.  Ephesians 1 – that’s a whole ‘nother post.  maybe tomorrow.

one more thing – and this has been crucial for me to learn.  I realized I can’t take every thought captive on my own.  I’m powerless.  I completely need the power of the Holy Spirit to do this.  and I fail.  like daily.  ok like multiple times daily right now.  but God is gracious.  and He has surrounded me with amazing people who love me and want to see victory over the lies and the fears.

“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.” – Phil. 4:8

oh the sweet, though sometimes painful, restoration that Jesus offers us when we fix our eyes on Him.