Take Every Thought Captive

If you're joining us for the first time, or maybe you've been the last few weeks, or maybe it's been a long time since you've been with us. We're in a series entitled A Beautiful Mind, a series on mental health issues that we kicked off just a couple of weeks ago. And we're drawing a lot of information from a book that we've made available in our bookstore. It's a book by a pastor named Craig Groeschel. And the title of the book is Winning the War in youn Mind.

It looks like this. It's an incredible book. We have the book in the workbook that's available week one. After the first service, we sold out. We ordered more, so there are copies that are available after the service in the bookstore if you want to pick up a copy there.

But this is a very important series, and I would venture to say maybe one of the more important series that I've preached in 21 years here at the refuge. And I want to say a couple of things. First of all, God's desire is that you have a beautiful mind. Every single person here, every person watching online, all of those who are watching us in prisons all over America. God's desire is that you have a beautiful mind.

And I want to tell you today it's possible for you to have that. The second thing I want to say is that today is a day of freedom and a day of healing in Jesus name. And. And I believe God's going to do that. God's going to expose the lies of the enemy and God is going to set you on a pathway and a journey towards freedom that you've never known before.

The reason this is so important? A couple of reasons. Number one is because the battle for your life is won and lost in your mind. The battle for your life is won and lost. And listen, what we think today is who we will become tomorrow.

And the Apostle Paul has some really pertinent and important things to say in Romans, chapter eight, beginning in verse five. And I'm going to ask you, if you will to stand to honor the word of God. This morning as we read a few verses. I want you to prepare your heart. I want you to be ready for what God's about to do.

Because again, today's a day of freedom. Today is a day of healing. And God brought you here for a reason. And there may be some of you, you had to fight really hard to get here today. Maybe the enemy was bombarding you with every reason to not show up with every Reason to not come with every reason to not tune in and watch online.

I don't believe the enemy is omniscient. But maybe somehow the enemy knew that today was gonna be a turning point for you. Today was gonna be a day that God set you on a journey of freedom and a journey of healing. And I'm just telling you, I'm so glad you showed up, because God's about to do some miracles in the place the Apostle Paul says in Romans, chapter eight, beginning in verse five, those who are dominated by the sinful nature watch, think about sinful things. But those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit.

So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to what, Church? Leads to death. But letting the Spirit, capital S referring to the Holy Spirit, control your mind leads to life and peace. Life and peace. Well, some of you today need life and peace.

And God wants to give it to you. God wants to deliver that to you. Verse 7. For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God's laws and it never will.

That's why those who are still under the control of their sinful nature can never please God. But let me tell you something. Some of you today are gonna go from that domain of being controlled by your sinful nature to the domain of being controlled by the Holy Spirit. Life and peace is gonna come to you. Freedom is gonna come to you.

Healing is gonna come to you. In the name of Jesus and anybody who believes that. Come on, say Amen. Praise God. Praise God.

Come on, let's make some declarations today. All of you together. Come on. Declare it nice and strong. Even those of you watching online.

Come on. All of my friends that are incarcerated today, I want you to declare this with us today. Everybody ready? Go. I will hide this word in my heart that I might not sin against God.

This word is life to my body and health to my bones. I will be a doer of the word. And I am confident of this. Come on. That he who has begun a good work in me, in Jesus name.

Come on. Do you believe that? Come on. Do me a favor. Put your hand on your head right now.

Father, in the name of Jesus. We take authority over every lie of the enemy, every accusing voice, every accusing thought of the enemy. We declare today that you will rule Holy Spirit in our minds, and we will have freedom. We will have healing in the name of Jesus. Come on.

If you agree, say amen. Amen. You can be seated. Church. Listen to me.

A lie. That's Believed as truth will affect your life as if it were truth. A lie that is believed as truth will affect your life as if it were truth. I said in week one of this series that many of us grew up being told a lie, and it was innocent. I believe, in most cases.

But we were told this practice makes perfect, and that's a lie. That's not true. Practice, however, does make permanent. And the goal of the enemy is to cause you to practice a lie over and over until it becomes your reality, until it becomes permanent in your life. Our brains are amazing.

Computers are capable of a lot of things. And scientific research has shown that in any given day, our brains are bombarded by some 500 unintentional and uninvited thoughts, and that every thought, those unintentional thoughts, those intrusive thoughts every day will remain in our minds for some 14 seconds. So do the math. That means that some two hours a day are committed in our thought life to battling these unintentional and intrusive thoughts of the enemy. What do we do about that?

Well, the apostle Paul tells us in Second Corinthians, chapter 10, verse 5, that we're to take captive those thoughts. He says this. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. Listen to me. The enemy wants to bombard your mind with thoughts that are contrary to the word of God every day.

The enemy's goal is to bombard your mind and to get you to practice that thought over and over, to the point that that thought that is contrary to the word of God actually sets itself above the authority of the word of God in your mind, and it then becomes your reality. That is the goal of the enemy with each one of us. So the apostle Paul tells us, there in that verse, we take captive every thought. That phrase take captive in the original language means that it is a repeated and a continuous action. It's not something we do one time.

Obviously, if your mind is bombarded 500 times a day with these uninvited thoughts, with these unintentional thoughts, with these intrusive thoughts, then that's something that we have to do over and over. That's what Paul's saying. You take captive those thoughts. It's a repeated action. It's a continuous action throughout the day.

And listen to me, the danger is those thoughts that are left unchecked in our minds begin to form neural pathways in our brains called ruts. Probably many of you have driven on a dirt road, maybe where through time, because of the repeated travel of vehicles, or maybe because of erosion, there are these deep ruts that are formed. Here's a picture on the screen of maybe what you've seen and what happens is. And the danger is that if you're driving on one of those, your car will be pulled into those ruts and you can get stuck. And some of you, because of unchecked thoughts in your mind, are stuck in some ways that are counterproductive to the abundant life that Jesus wants you to live.

Maybe you've seen a yard, a fenced in yard where a dog is there in the yard, and it runs the same pathway over and over and wears the grass down. Even though the dog has access to the entire yard, it just keeps running that same path over and over. And that's a picture of what happens in our minds. These unchecked thoughts that we have in our brains, if we don't take them captive, they begin to form these neural pathways. And these thoughts then make it easier to think and to act on those same messages.

These brain ruts become deeper because of the nerves at the base of our brain that are known as the ras, the reticular activating system. If you do the same thing enough over and over, then you will fall into that rut automatically. Now, let me just clear something up for you. Those neural pathways are not all negative. There are some that are positive.

Let me give you an example. Maybe when you were learning how to drive. How many of you remember that day? For some of you, it was like centuries ago.

Do you remember when you first started driving, like it didn't feel natural? You'd slam the brakes, giving everybody in the car whiplash because you didn't know how much pressure to apply. Or you'd stomp the gas, sending everybody flying into the back seat. Or every time you put it in reverse, you would turn the wrong way. But the more you did it, the more natural it became, to the point that you didn't even have to think about it anymore.

That's why nowadays, if you're driving, you can drive miles. You can go five or ten minutes. And then all of a sudden you're like. You realize your brain was in a whole different place. And you're like, well, man, I don't even remember the last 10 minutes.

I don't remember the last 20 miles that we just rode. Why? Because there's a positive neural pathway that your brain has created where you don't have to think about driving. But they can also be very negative. Let me give you an example.

Maybe Growing up, maybe your mom's solution for every crisis was food. Maybe when you as a child skinned your knee, she put a bandage on it, but she also gave you ice cream to kind of soothe the emotional pain. And maybe when you were in middle school or high school and you had a breakup, she fixed a pan of brownies to help you feel better. Or maybe as an adult, when you lost a job, she fixed some beautiful gourmet meal just to maybe help you deal with the disappointment of losing the job. And now as an adult, whenever you're hurt, whenever you're disappointed, whenever you're angry, you turn to food as a built in response.

You don't mean to. You don't even think about it. It's just a neural path way that over time has just been carved in your brain. And each time that you turn to food, or maybe it's not food, maybe for you it's alcohol. And you think, one more glass of wine is all that I need to kind of get through the crisis.

Or maybe for you it's not alcohol, maybe it's porn. And you think if I just this one time, if I just look at porn, I'm gonna feel better. Or maybe it's not any of those things. Maybe for you it's shopping. You just want to go out and shop and you'll spend hours.

If I can just buy another outfit or buy a new pair of shoes or whatever, I know that I'll feel better. And the reason is because every time you do that, there's a dopamine release in your brain that causes you to feel pleasure. And the more you do it, the easier it becomes. And that rut goes deeper and deeper in your brain. Now, I've said many times to you in this series and for years that when we invite Jesus into our hearts, that like that, in an instant our spirit is transformed, our spirit is made new.

We go from dark to light, we go from corrupt to forgiven, clean, just washed by the blood of Jesus. But our minds are not renewed instantly. That's why the battle is in your mind. And that's why the scripture talks about so many things, about renewing our minds, allowing the washing of the water of the Word, allowing our brains to be transformed. Romans 2.

Have this mind in you that's also in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4, 8. Think on things that are true and honest and just and pure and lovely and of good report. Because every single day there's a battle going on for your mind. And we have to learn to allow the Holy Spirit to control our minds and to transform our thinking.

But here's the reality of the battle that takes place in our minds. You cannot defeat what you're not willing to define. And unless you decide to break the pattern, our lives will continue to move in the direction of our strongest thoughts.

Listen, so many people think, well, I just need to change the way I act. I just need more willpower. I just need more discipline. If I just had more discipline, I could quit smoking weed. If I just had more willpower, I wouldn't drink as much.

And the world has convinced so many people that behavior modification is all that you need. And let me just remind you, let me tell you, behavior modification is not the solution. It's not going to fix anything, because behavior modification never attacks the root. It only goes after the symptoms. And if we want real change, we have to go after the source of what's going on in our lives.

There's a heart issue there. There's a belief system there that's affecting the way that we act and behave because our thoughts eventually will always come out in our actions. And so many people think, well, it would be like if there's a tree in your yard and you want to get rid of it, and you say, well, I think I could get rid of the tree if I just chop off one branch. That's what behavior modification is like. No, you got to go after the root.

You got to go after the source. That's why we said in week one, there's this thing called the replacement principle. The replacement principle. The replacement principle simply means this. Number one, we remove the lie at the root of the behavior.

And number two, we replace the neural pathway. We remove the lie, and then we replace that rut, that neural pathway that has been formed. How do we do that? How do we replace negative neural pathways? Listen, the only antidote for lies is truth.

So we have to utilize the word of God to create a new, listen to me, trench of truth. There's a difference between ruts and trenches. Ruts are usually formed in mud and become a nuisance or a danger. It's unintentional, has no purpose. Trenches, however, are created with intentionality, dug to deliver a necessary resource.

So the second tool, it's not just the replacement principle, it's also the rewiring principle. We've got to replace the lie for sure, but we've got to allow the holy spirit to rewire our thinking, and we've got to replace the lies of the enemy with the truth of the word of God. How many of you are still with me. Listen, you cannot, you cannot conquer, you cannot change what you're not willing to confront. And Satan is always looking to take ground in your thought life.

He's always looking to take territory from you in your thought life. He wants to oppose the truth of the Word of God. The truth that sets you free with lies that will steal, kill and destroy. He's a deceiver and his strategy is to defeat you and to persuade you to believe his lies as if they were truth. So we have to replace the lie with a declaration of truth.

Listen to me. The Word of God has supernatural power and a supernatural ability to rewire your brain, to rewire your thinking. But let me be straight up honest with you. As a pastor who loves you, you will not reshape your thinking by being in the Word one day a week.

Not gonna happen. You show up on Sundays. Well, I got the Word on Sunday. I'm good for the week. No, you're not.

Listen. There are so many things daily bombarding your mind and trying to reshape the way that you think that you've got to be intentional about spending time in the Word of God every single day of your life. And it's never been easier, my friends, because you have the entire Bible in the palm of your hand on your phone. You can access the Word of God anytime that you want. Let me tell you something.

If you can watch the latest episode of Dancing with the Stars, if you can watch binge watch your favorite series on Netflix, you can't find time and make time to be in the Word of God every single day. That's the only way that your mind is going to be transformed. So the only way that you're going to rewire and re dig a trench of truth that'll get the power, the supernatural power of the Word of God from here to here into your spirit, that will then translate into your actions. And those of you that are frustrated with yourself because you keep repeating cycles of sin over and over, going back to the same things because of that dopamine release or because of that temporary freedom and fix that you feel like it brings to you. Those of you that are frustrated by that, you need to understand the power of the Word of God to transform your life.

You need to get into the Word of God on a regular basis. We make these declarations over our life that begin to rewire our thinking. That's why that just a few months ago we re released again some declarations, 10 daily declarations that I wrote in 2010, 2010 we started doing this that we handed these out to everybody. We made a kids version, kids declarations that we gave out. They're available on our website.

Go to quick links on our website. You can access those. And all it is is the word of God. But I've had countless families that have said every day we do this with our kids. I used to do it with my children every morning on the way to school.

Before we could even get out of the driveway, my kids were starting to declare these 10 daily declarations. We didn't have a kids version back then. They just did the adult version over and over. Memorize those because I wanted to help them create a trench of truth that would counter the lies of the enemy that they were dealing with as children and as teenagers. Listen.

A beautiful mind is one that's transformed by the truth of God's word. We have to decide. You have to decide today. I'm calling you to a place and a point of decision today to decide. Do you want a mind that's transformed by the word of God or do you want a mind that conforms to the patterns of the world?

Let me just tell you. Conforming to the patterns of the world is deformity. It will deform your mind. But if you allow yourself, if you practice the word of God, it'll become a permanent part of your life. If you're in the Word of God on a daily basis, then a beautiful mind will be formed inside of you.

It's a mind that's at peace. It's a mind that's full of joy. It's a mind that's focused on eternal things and not just the here and now. It's a mind that's confident. It's a mind that's secure.

It's a mind that is full of faith and not of fear. Listen. The law of exposure says that the mind absorbs and reflects what it is exposed to the most. What we put into our minds is what will come out in our lives. It's what will come out in our actions.

The law of exposure. What are you exposing yourself to? Are you exposing yourself to the woke mentality of the culture in which we live today? Are you exposing yourself to an Antichrist spirit that's so prevalent in our entertainment today? Are you exposing yourself to the things of God?

The things of God? You decide. Do I want a mind that's transformed by the power of the Word of God? Or do I want a mind that conforms to the patterns of this world? Here's the plan.

You ready? Number one, you gotta identify the rut. Identify the rut. Number two, you gotta create a trench of truth with the word of God, with God's truth. Create a trench of truth.

Listen, there's some people that are so afraid of being healed. They're so afraid of freedom. It's like some of our inmate friends that are watching today that are in prisons all over America. Some of them that have served in prison for decades, 20, 30 years are so afraid of getting out of prison because they don't know how to operate or function outside of the regimented life that they've known for all these years. And spiritually speaking, some people are the same way.

They're so afraid of what freedom would look like for them because all they've known is the lie that they have lived in for decades, the rut that they've traveled in for decades. And they don't know what it would be like to be set free. Listen, it takes courage to identify the rut. It takes courage to dig a new trench of truth through the power of the word of God. Here's the third thing.

You got to write a declaration. Think it, confess it until you believe it. That's why these daily declarations are so important. Just declaring the word of God over your life, declaring the word of God over your family, over your kids, is so vitally important.

Listen, I did what I'm telling you to do. There are many lies that the enemy has told me for years. But there's one that I want to share with you. I'm going to be very vulnerable in sharing the lie that I just asked the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit exposed the lies that the enemy has told me, and I wrote down the lie.

Then I wrote down truth. And then I made my own declaration. Here's the lie that the enemy has tried to get me to practice and rehearse for years. Because I'm not as gifted or as smart or as talented as others. I'll always be overlooked and underappreciated.

I'm good enough to make it to the minor leagues, but never to the major leagues. That's a lie the enemy has told me for basically my entire life. But here's the truth that I wrote down. In his eyes, I'm more than enough. I have what it takes to fulfill his purpose and to make a difference in people's lives and for his kingdom.

And here's the declaration that I wrote to dig a new trench of truth. I have everything I need given to me by my Father concerning life and godliness. I can do all things through Him. My value is determined by Him. I am his and he is mine.

Today and every day, I will make a difference and I will bring a smile to his face. That's the declaration I'm declaring over my life to counter the attack of the enemy, to counter the lie of the enemy.

And I want to encourage you to do the same thing. Because you'll never conquer what you don't confront. You'll never defeat what you don't define.

Just a few days ago, Monday, matter of fact of this week, Pastor Melanie and I were in Jerusalem. And on Monday, before we left, we visited a place inside of Jerusalem called the pool of Bethesda. Some of you recognize that there's a beautiful story in John, chapter five, where Jesus visits that pool. The story goes like this, that every now and then, without rhyme or reason, without some clock, without a schedule, the waters would be stirred by an angel. And whoever got into the water first was healed.

So all of these sick people were laying around the pool of Bethesda where we were just a few days ago. And Jesus decides to visit there. And there's a man laying there who had been an invalid for 38 years. Think about that, 38 years. Some of you can relate because you've dealt with addiction for decades.

Some of you can relate because you've battled depression for decades, 38 years. Jesus asked him a question, a simple question. He said to that man, do you want to be well?

That's a no brainer. You would think that the man would say, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I want to be well.

It's not what he did. The man began listing all of the excuses, all of the reasons why he wasn't well. Well, when the water stirred. Nobody's here to help me get into the water. I can't.

I don't have anybody that's fighting for me.

You know, I believe today the Lord would say to many of us, do you want to be well? Do you want to overcome the lies, the vain imaginations, the thoughts that set themselves up above the knowledge of God? Do you want to be free from that stuff? Do you want to be free from anxiety or fear or depression or addiction or lust or whatever it might be? Do you want to be well?

And the obvious answer would be, yes, Lord, I want to be well. But so many times we just begin to list all of the excuses.

Well, Lord, I've battled this my entire life. We start talking about our grandfather, our great grandmother. It's been in my family for generations. We start listing all the reasons why we're not free. That's not what the Lord asked today.

He's asking, do you want to be well? Do you want to be free? What I love is that he doesn't leave it up to you to figure out how to do it.

He's just asking, do you want to be well? And I believe today that God's going to start some of you on a journey to freedom. It may happen like that. He may break something off of you in an instant. I believe he can do that.

Or he may just set you on a pathway that will involve some other things. And let me tell you something. We are not opposed to Christian counseling. In fact, we have a list here. And next week, I'm gonna introduce you to some amazing Christian counselors, and we're gonna put into your hand resources.

Cause I believe that Holy Ghost Christian counselors are a great gift to the body of Christ. And I believe God can use them as a part of your healing journey. We're not opposed to that. I just believe that today, for those of you that have the courage to be healed, for those of you that will eliminate the excuses, Jesus is going to do something supernatural in you.