Gracie Tignor is a student at Liberty University pursuing a degree in Christian Leadership and Church Ministries with a cognate in Women’s Leadership. She has served as a Women’s Ministry Intern and a Student Ministry Intern at London Bridge Baptist Church in Virginia Beach, VA. She has a passion for seeing her generation and the next generation know Christ deeper and make Him known.
One of the devil’s schemes against believers is to attack our thought life. Believers, however, have been given the power and authority in Christ Jesus to overcome every scheme of the devil, including the attacks on our minds.
2 Corinthians 10:4b-5 says, “We demolish every argument, and every proud thing that is raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ.”
This is the devil’s playbook. He attempts to raise up false arguments “against the knowledge of God.” He does this to make believers ineffective for God’s Kingdom purposes and to prevent us from flourishing as God designed. The enemy’s goal is to get believers to doubt who God is, who they are in Christ, and how we are supposed to live and think in response to that.
Growing up in Virginia Beach meant most of my summers were spent surfing with friends. Our parents would sit on the sand while we kids charged into the ocean. Even if there were no waves, we’d just lay on our surfboards in the water. Periodically we’d look at the shoreline and realize our parents were no longer in sight. The currents often pushed us down the beach without us even noticing. Unless we were actively paddling against the current, we would naturally drift.
The same principle applies when it comes to our thought life. Unless we are actively fighting the false arguments “against the knowledge of God” in our mind, then we will drift into ungodly thinking without even noticing it. We don’t naturally drift towards godly thinking; we have to fight for godly thinking by taking “every thought captive to obey Christ.” How do we do that?
When our parents realized that we were having trouble finding them after drifting with the current, they put up a giant flag in the sand where they sat. This flag helped us quickly and easily identify when we were drifting with the current, and it helped us to then realign ourselves with our parents.
In the same way, we overcome false arguments in our minds by first identifying if a thought is false and realigning that thought with the truth. Just like the flag told us if we were aligned with our parents, Scripture tells us if we are aligned with God. This is what Scripture says about godly thinking:
“Finally brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable – if there is any moral excellence and if there is anything praiseworthy – dwell on these things” (Philippians 4:8).
A key word in this passage is “dwell.” The idea here is deeper than just having a thought about whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, morally excellent, or praiseworthy. To dwell on something means to continually put that thing in your mind. It means to meditate on it, to fill your mind with it, to linger on it, and to repeatedly rehearse it in your mind. A godly thought and ungodly thought cannot coexist in your mind at the same time. We take our thoughts captive by dwelling on godly things. When we choose to dwell on godly things, there is no room for false arguments “against the knowledge of God” in our mind.
