“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)
Central Truth:
Feelings and emotions are strong and good at misleading us, but our thoughts are what truly drive our emotions. When we allow our feelings to take over, we’ve lost the battle. Take every thought captive!
TURN OFF THE SOAPS!
In all honesty, I’m not one for watching much TV. But there was a time, when I was pregnant and extremely sick, where I watched television almost all day while laying on the couch. I didn’t really care what I watched. I just had it on when I was sick of being in bed. During the time from 12:30-2:00 there is really nothing on except soap operas. So, I watched them. Then, I started having these little thoughts about what my husband was doing at work.
Who did he work with anyway?
Why did he have to stay late?
Was he just saying that so he could cheat on me?
Okay, the thoughts started really going haywire. I began to panic about where he was and what time he was supposed to be home. If he was just a couple minutes late, I was thinking, "Yeah, I bet he stayed late to talk to so and so." It was so out of control!
I asked him what was going on and who he was seeing.
That’s when he said it. “Heather, you need to stop watching those soap operas.”
“What!? What are you talking about?”
When we started to evaluate what had been happening, we could trace it back to when I started watching the soaps. See, everyone on a soap opera is cheating and lying to someone they “love.” I was filling my mind with garbage about other people’s fake lives and infusing the thoughts into my own life. The feelings of fear and panic were very real. The problem was that they stemmed from my inaccurate and fictional thoughts. I had created the intense feelings from just the thoughts in my own head that I let run wild and uncontrolled. So while the feelings were real, the situation was entirely fantasy.
Paul knew this way before I did and even gave us the way to deal with it. He said, “we take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ.” What we put into our minds, whether it is good or bad, will affect our feelings and emotions. If we allow our thoughts to run amuck, our emotions will be out of control as well. And that can be a very dangerous thing.
This is true in all areas of thought. Think of how you speak to yourself. Do you say things to yourself that you would never dare say to someone else out loud? Do you get caught up in living out fantasies of how life would be different if you just would have taken that job or married someone else? Do you allow yourself to create sexual fantasies between you and someone other than your spouse? What about how "so and so" really made you mad, and if you just got the chance you would say just the right things to put them in their place and make them feel like you did? All these toxic thoughts have the potential to control your emotions, and then you may have the power of unchecked emotions ruining your day, witness, and possibly relationships. Feelings and emotions are strong and good at misleading us, but our thoughts are what truly drive our emotions. When we allow our feelings to take over we’ve lost the battle. Take every thought captive! And you may want to turn off the TV.
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