Battling Stinking Thinking

       Author Max Lucado once said, “We are what we think” (Tame Your Thoughts, 4). Our thoughts are powerful. The great escape artist Houdini was famous for showing up in a town to put on a show of amazing escapes.  He would get positive media attention by having the local sheriff lock him in a jail cell and then escape in front of reporters.  However, one sheriff only pretended to lock the cell door but actually left it unlocked.  Houdini was fooled and kept locking himself in when originally, he could have just walked out through the unlocked door (Winning The War In Your Mind, Craig Groeshel, 18).  Houdini, like so many others, was kept imprisoned by a lie.    
      Stinking thinking can show up in so many ways, most often we believe some kind of lie.  Sometimes that falsehood burrows into our minds early in life and even becomes a powerful stronghold that affects our whole perspective unless it is identified and removed.  Think of a little girl whose father cheats on her mother and abandons the family.  The lie that “all men cheat” could embed itself in her tender, young heart.  That lie, that stronghold, will affect every dating relationship she has. And if somehow she does get married she and her husband are in for a difficult relationship. 
      I have read that we typically have 30,000 thoughts a day (Every Thought Captive, Kyle Idleman, 15).  Each of those thoughts has the power to send us in a direction.  The Apostle Paul tells us to handle our thoughts in the following way:  “do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind (Romans 12:2 a). 
      Our culture is powerful, and it shapes our thinking even at an early age.  One example is that our culture tends to be anti-authority.  I see it already in our adorable 2-year-old granddaughter Rena.  Recently her mother told her “no.”  Rena replied, “Momma, you do not need to manage me, I’m a big girl.”  Funny comment, bad philosophy. 
      We are not to conform to the world.  We must be diligent students of the Word of God so that we can challenge the cultural messages that bombard us daily. We are to renew our minds.  Scripture is the trustworthy grid through which we must assess life. Only God’s truth sends our lives in the correct trajectory.  We are told to “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5 b).  When we find secular lies in our thinking, we must uproot them and plant the seeds of God’s truth.  We must replace the troubled thinking of the world with the trustworthy truth of Scripture.  We do this by studying, memorizing and listening to God’s word.  As we marinate our mind in Scripture, we take advantage of what  scientists call neuroplasticity and create new pathways in our brain, training ourselves to think Biblically.
      Think carefully and think Biblically because who you are five years from now will strongly reflect the thoughts and direction you put in effect today. Drop stinking thinking and exchange it for God’s transformative truth!            
 
Pastor Derek Dickinson
Journey Christian Church