The Captivity of Thought

UV 790/10,000 The Captivity of Thought “We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” 2 Corinthins 10 v 5 The equivalent of fortresses are built up like mental strongholds in our minds over a period of time due to the lofty thoughts, our feelings of pride and lust, our wild imagination and vain desires. Over a lifetime the equivalent of the Great Wall of China is built in our minds acting as a barrier to our personal relationship with the Lord. It is almost as if we fear God coming into our lives as the ancient Chinese emperors feared the invading Mongols. These are speculative thoughts about ourselves and the world with which we get obsessed. We imagine ourselves to be strong and great, not needing to depend on anyone outside ourselves like our Creator God. We replace the place that we should give to the Lord in our hearts and minds to such speculation. The Word commands us to “cast aside all such speculations.” We are to destroy the strongholds of vain thoughts, baseless imagination, assumptions about God that militate against our faith in the Lord. By our faith and our obedience we shall scale these walls. After we become believers, the ramparts of the ancient strongholds or old beliefs will continue for some time to exert an influence on our lives unless we take effective action to identify and pull them down. The book “ Secret” for instance is being widely recommended by well known authors like Jack Canfield. It is an example of a lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God. It is based on new age philosophy that deifies man and states that whatever success one dreams of, he or she will attract that by what is known as the law of attraction. My daughter tells me of a bright classmate who became deluded and mentally ill as he put his faith in such a book. Many other cults that have developed and flourish in different parts of the world are based on such philosophic speculations. It replaces God control with human control, freedom with fear, joy and peace of a good conscience with guilt, righteousness with vice, integrity with duplicity. We should keep the links of our fencing close together so that no subtle fox of speculation and delusion of false doctrine or teaching could enter and deceive us. We do so by taking every thought captive to Christ. We pattern our thinking on the Word of God. To take every thought and emotion captive to Christ means that we focus on Jesus and think often of what He taught and what He did. When we do so, we are released from the captivity of falsehoods, illusions, delusions and deception. The Lord knows well that the enemy ensnares us through such booby traps. Our thought pattern needs to imitate the stormy winds and waves of the Sea of Galilee that obeyed Jesus as He said, “ Peace, be still.” When we surrender every thought to the lordship and scrutiny of Christ, it becomes liberated from all chains and shackles. Our minds and our lives become free and unshackled. We shall know Christ and He shall set us free. Prateep V Philip