Think AgainSample

Which lie knows your name?

Do you have an untrue thought that you think a lot? I do. When I'm preaching about 75% of Sundays, I think, “Mike, you are terrible at this. Look at all those empty chairs. Look at all those bored faces. This sermon is terrible. You should just shut up and sit down.” That thought is so common that I have a name for it—the Sunday blues. I know it isn’t entirely true, but it doesn’t stop me from thinking it all too often.

Do you have a thought like that? Some stubborn lie that shows up and hunkers down in your head week after week? Maybe it’s that your pain is pointless or that you won’t make it to heaven, have no spiritual gifts, or are too damaged for God to delight in you. Whatever lie knows your name, listen to Paul’s words: “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 Corinthians 10:5).

We take thoughts captive. That’s Paul’s way of saying, “We think again. We don’t trust everything in our heads. We open our Bibles and preach to ourselves, telling our thoughts what to think.”

That’s what I’ve been doing these days. I printed a sheet of Bible passages that I keep next to my Bible in church. When that old lie shows up in my head, I fight back. I demolish that argument. I tell myself about Jesus. May God help you do the same!