Think Control

One of the hardest things that I have ever tried to do is control my own thoughts. They rise up and seem to take control of me instead. Sometimes, I can’t imagine where they came from. They seem to be someone else’s thoughts that somehow got lost, perhaps drifted around, and for some reason ended up in my head. Those thoughts couldn’t be mine. I don’t think that way. They often crowd out all the thoughts I want to think, or should think. They burst in and take over the place.

But, even though they may be foreign to me, or are not the thoughts I would welcome in intentionally, somehow I tend to embrace them. Even though I can see them for what they are, and they are much despised, I reach out to them and latch on to their essence. I entertain them, serve them some tea, tell them they are welcome... and sometimes I invite them to spend the night... or a couple of days... or a month or two.

They have a sneaky way of wearing mask that make me think they are friendly and somehow they are there to do me some good. And if I am not careful I begin to think they are who their mask say they are.

They are always telling about my rights. The make statements like, “You have a right to entertain me!” And often I believe them. After all it is my mind and I can entertain anyone I would like. Right?

Maybe not.

When we choose to become Christians we are ask to do a couple of life impacting things. One, we repent and two, we surrender.

Repentance in it literal meaning is simply “to change one’s mind.” When Christ comes into our lives He brings a whole new way of thinking. In inviting Christ into our lives we are actually allowing Him to change the way we think. It doesn’t make a lot of sense that if someone slaps my right cheek, that I would in turn offer my left for the same beating. But that is the kind of thinking that Christ brings to us.

Why is this so foreign to us? Because we are used to drawing our answers from our old nature. The old nature was not able to accept the way that God saw things, or the way He would have us think. (see 1 Corinthians 2:14) Part of the task that God has is changing the way that we think. He begins a training regiment that enables us to understand a new way of processing information.

The old nature would have struck back when struck. It would be consumed with retribution or revenge. The new nature, that Christ brings, causes us to love when we are hated, to bless when we are cursed, to vanquish thoughts of “eye for eye” and “tooth for tooth” and substitute them “do unto others...” This process is not natural but is spiritual. At first it goes against the grain of who we are.

We are also ask to surrender. To surrender, in particular, our rights to who we are. God accepts us for who we are but He is not redeeming us only to let us remain stagnant in what we have become. He is about making us. An old chinese proverb says that it is more about the journey than the destination. Christianity is about what God wants to do to us through a journey. God moves into our lives and immediately begins remodeling. Usually the first wall He begins to tear down is our thoughts.

Our personal rights; to live like we want, to make decisions our way, to choose our own path for life; are diametrically opposed to surrender. When we choose to live the way, or think the way, we see fit, we are, in essence, saying to God that we trust our wisdom more than His. We are telling Him that we can handle this life better than He can. The Bible says that our lives are not our own. (see 1 Corinthians 6:19) When we surrender to God we must understand that we are entrusting God with the care and guidance of our lives. When we try to pick up our rights again, we are dismissing God from what are now His rights.

The wonderful thing about surrender, though, is that it removes the load of responsibility from my back. When God is in charge, I can allow Him to make the decisions for me. I can rest comfortably in the fact that He never has trouble deciding what is the next, best step for me. Before I had to live with the consequences of my decisions, but... when God makes the decisions for me, the consequences are living. (see Proverbs 4:20-23)

Many thoughts that come to us fight against repentance and surrender. They rattle off a rant of reasons why they need our attention. They can consume our being, and worse, they can describe who we are. (see Proverbs 23:7, Matthew 12:34-35)

A wise person once said, “You can’t stop a bird from flying over your head, but, you can stop it from building a nest in your hair.” Thoughts will come, some from our nature, some from evil sources. They may burst in without warning, but we have the responsibility to ask them to leave. Whether they take up residence or not is up to us. Arnold Bennett said, “Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission.”

In the tenth chapter of second Corinthians, the second part of verse five, Paul writes: “We capture every thought and make it give up and obey Christ.” Paul is talking about warfare here; more specifically a war for your mind. What is difficult in thought is capturing prisoners. By that, I mean it is difficult to not allow our thoughts to run around freely. It is very hard to make them obey Christ. Why is this difficult? Because it requires us fighting. It is so much easier to allow our thoughts free reign. They convince us that they have the right to occupy our minds. But Paul says the we are the controlling factor.

It is very satisfying, at times, to think wrong thoughts. Someone hurts you and it becomes very easy to allow thoughts of hatred or bitterness to take up residence in your mind. It somehow feels good, or even right, to think of ways of inflicting pain on someone who has done the same to us.

Those kind of thoughts can be birds, that fly over, or they can become roommates. The choice is ours. But remember, when thoughts become roommates, when they are allowed to stay for extended periods, they will then begin to require changes in who we are. (see again Proverbs 23:7) Thoughts cannot live in us without eventually working their out in the way we talk and walk.

Paul also says in this same context: “We destroy ... every proud thing that raises itself against the knowledge of God.” See thoughts, maybe I should say, a way of thinking, usually locks the door behind itself. It demands that all other ways of thinking be shut out and will settle for nothing less than your full attention. When this happens, it kicks all other reasonings out the door. So, the “knowledge of God,” the way God wants us to think, finds itself out on the streets.

So what do we need to do? I don’t know if you are fan of the character Barney Fife, of the Andy Griffith show, but I am sure many of us know who he is. One of his famous quotes was, “Nip it! Nip it in the bud!” This means to cut a bud off a plant before it has a chance to flower... more so, before it has a chance to seed. Our best defense to housing harmful thought is to “nip it!” See what it is when it comes to the door, no matter what mask it has on. Deny it entry. Refuse to listen to it’s bill of rights. Once we let it in, it can be nearly impossible to get out.

A good method of recognizing whether we are entertain a thought or not is seeing if it will replace the “knowledge of God.” Will this thought require me to displace the value of God’s word and His will? If I act on it, will it bring glory to God? If it comes in, will it cause my “knowledge” of God to grow and become more stable? If we answer these questions negatively, then perhaps we slam the back door and let it fly on overhead.

The battle is really not so much, us against the Devil, but us against ourselves. Though he may bring a thought our way, we decide the outcome by not placing ourselves in a situation where it is difficult to win. By the “nipping” process, we give ourselves a greater chance to win against thoughts that want to permeate who we are.

The Holy Spirit is given the job of helping us understand truth. He will often help us by raising the red flag when we are in doubt as to whether we should open the door or not. Still we hold the knob in our hands.

By allowing the “knowledge of God” to keep it’s place on the throne of our mind, we will become something that only God can make us. By controlling our thought process, we can determine who we are to be.

The flesh endures the storms of the present alone; the mind, those of the past and future as well as the present. - Epicurus