Keeping Our Mind Under the Rule of Truth
By HEATHER COFER
I hopped on my Instagram one morning a few months ago to reply to some messages and make a post. As I did, I inadvertently noticed a piece of information about my account that was rather surprising and discouraging. Huh. That’s strange, I thought to myself as I closed the app and moved on to getting ready for the day. But as I put on my makeup, my mind hadn’t, in fact, moved on. Rather, I’d taken this one random piece of information and before I was even fully aware of what I was doing, I’d concocted a whole scenario around it in my mind that was now bringing full-on waves of self-pity. It was startling to realize what I was doing, and I shook my head with some amused embarrassment. Here I was feeling sorry for myself over something I had absolutely no evidence was even true, all because I’d let my thoughts go rogue with one little fact I’d picked up on social media that really didn’t mean anything.
Now, I could talk here about the mind and heart pitfalls that come with social media, but that’s for another time. What I’m going to address this time was how this seemingly silly scenario opened my eyes to just how important it is to take Scripture seriously when it tells us to take our thoughts captive. I had no evidence for any of the conclusions I was coming up with, but they began to feel real enough to affect me. This is a dangerous — but all-too-common — way to live if we’re not keeping our thoughts under the control of the Holy Spirit. If we allow our minds to have free reign and go wherever they want to go, like I did here, they’ll end up warping our judgment and cause us to come to conclusions that can be way off base. Why? Because they aren’t being tethered to what is true.
At best this can cause unnecessary emotional turmoil, and at worst it can actually push us to act on those thoughts in a way that ends up causing us to sin against others due to our faulty conclusions. We can get angry at those who did no wrong, we can accuse others of wrong motives without actual proof, we can live in unnecessary fear of all the “what ifs,” and we can adopt dangerous ideas because we heard just enough to get us to buy into a potential lie without matching it up to Scripture to see if it was true. The possibilities are countless, and the enemy will seize upon any one of them due to the massive potential they have to cause harm to us and others. That’s why it’s vital that we’re continually submitting ourselves to the Scriptures before we think, speak, and act. God’s Word says,
Since the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but are powerful through God for the demolition of strongholds. We demolish arguments and every proud thing that is raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:4–5 CSB
These verses are often used in the context of apologetics as we come up against dangerous ideas “out there.” But this first and foremost has to start with us — practicing self-control over our own minds so that our thoughts align with what honors Christ. We have to remember that we’re finite, and there’s so much we don’t know (or often can’t know) in any given situation. So before we allow our notions to take us wherever they please, we need to grab hold of them and submit them to the Lord — the One who does know and see all things. And thankfully, He gives us abundant guidance in His Word for how we can bring our thoughts under the safety of truth.
Let’s take a look at three of these directives from Scripture:
Cast Your Cares On Him
Fears or worries are often a common culprit in causing our thoughts to deviate from truth. God so graciously provides these truths in 1 Peter 5:6–8 on the matter, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your cares on Him, because He cares about you. Be sober-minded, be alert. Your adversary the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for anyone he can devour” (CSB, emphasis added).
A root of fear is the sense that we have to be in control of all things. Then, when we begin to sense that we can actually control very little of what might happen to us, it can stir up burdens that we were not meant to carry. Acknowledging our lack of control requires humility because we are declaring that we are not, in fact, in control, and God is. Part of this humility is taking our cares and giving them to Him. This reminds us that even though we aren’t in control, we know the One who is and who loves us far more than we can comprehend. As the previous verse illustrates, this protects us from falling prey to the enemy’s schemes. Because when we allow fear to direct our steps rather than trust in Christ to do so, it will inevitably skew our judgment and cause us to veer off the path of truth. And that is exactly where the enemy wants us.
So when we feel that familiar sense of dread or fear that tries to settle thickly over our thoughts, let’s pause and give those burdens to the Lord. I often find it helpful to verbalize in prayer exactly what I’m feeling fearful over, and then say, “I’m giving this to You because I know You care for me.” He’s proven Himself faithful again and again to me as I seek to obey what He’s instructed us to do for our good. And I know He’ll be faithful to you, too.
Remember:
We Don’t Know Everything
In this age of the internet with so much information quite literally at our fingertips, it’s all too easy to take something we read or see and form opinions without pausing and giving thought to the bigger picture and all that we don’t know. This verse has been a helpful reminder often over the past few years in this regard:
The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him. Proverbs 18:17 ESV
There is almost always more to any given scenario than we know, especially when we first catch wind of some piece of information. It’s a rather humbling thing to admit to ourselves statements like this one in Proverbs 28:26, “Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool…” However, the second part of the verse is so freeing: “…but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered” (ESV).
Wisdom comes from living in reverence and awe of God — acknowledging that He alone knows all, and will give us wisdom in any given situation even when all the details aren’t fully known to us. Part of walking in wisdom is asking the Lord to help us process the details we do know through the broader lens of truth and to reign in our initial emotions over any given circumstance. It may indeed be that some of the conclusions we draw are correct. However, if we take the humble approach of waiting to act on our initial impulses for the sake of honoring Christ and seeking Him for discernment, it will always bring a greater degree of clarity, and often more context, that helps us think through a situation more accurately.
Slow Down
The words of James 1:19–20 are ones we should have on repeat throughout our day: “Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (ESV).
It’s so tempting — and feels so natural — to let our emotions over a hard scenario drive our words and actions. But these verses are clear that allowing our feelings to drive us won’t have a godly outcome. We have to slow ourselves down, rein in our emotions, and allow the Lord to give us His wisdom as we seek to handle hard circumstances in a Christ-honoring way.
In fact, these verses are ones that have been a lifeline of truth for me when I’m trying to discern multi-layered conflicts with my kids — with all of them trying to convince me of why they were right and the others were wrong all at the same time. The initial response that rises up in me due to the confusion and scattered facts is often anger. Sometimes it’s anger over the lack of control, sometimes over the injustice one seems to have enacted on another, and sometimes it’s because I’m selfishly really not wanting to untangle a quarrel between my kids. The Lord has graciously brought those verses back to mind countless times to guide and direct me when I want to simply jump to a quick (and possibly faulty) resolution rather than carefully working through it with discernment. Take a deep breath. Listen first. Don’t let your emotions rule — your frustration isn’t going to produce God’s righteousness. I’ve certainly not done this perfectly, but I’m thankful that the Lord is growing me and will do so until the day I die.
Likely we will all have to learn some of these things the hard way — we’ll get offended when we know only half the story, we’ll speak out of wrong conclusions, or we’ll make assumptions that aren’t true. These moments are humbling. But by God’s grace, He can use these hard mistakes and remind us that He is God, and we are not. It will drive us to be more dependent on Him and His wisdom rather than our own feeble reasoning.
I’ll finish with this well-known yet powerful reminder:
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths. Proverbs 3:5–6 ESV
He will be faithful to lead us in paths of righteousness when we turn our eyes off ourselves and onto Him.
This article was originally published in Issue 45.
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