Did you know that you can capture bad ideas before they grow into stinking thinking?
“take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.“
Shout out to my beloved 56 people year old incontinent boxer. She led me to understanding of Febreze. It’s an innovative product that truly does more than mask odors with fragrance. It gobbles up the stink.
How does frebreze work? Febreze is an odor reducer by P&G based on a cyclodextrin molecule that sort of resembles a donut. When you spray Febreze, the water in the product partially dissolves the odor, allowing it to form a complex inside the 'hole' of the cyclodextrin donut shape. The stink molecule is still there, but it can't bind to your odor receptors, so you can't smell it.
If only there was an invention to dissolve our stinking thinking. You know, thoughts like,
They don’t like me;
I can’t do it;
I will never get that_____;
I am too________;
I am not ______ enough;
Hoe hum, is it raining again?
Such thoughts can be crippling. These thoughts can hold a person captive in a place well beneath one’s privilege, potential and purpose.
So a man thinks, so he is. Thoughts are the embryos of actions, achievements and outcomes. Everything that comes to pass in our lives was conceived as a thought that was fertilized be intention, and birthed into our reality. Some thoughts get planted in our minds through good mental horticulture, and other times the seeds of weeds, thorns and thistles blow in an take root in our fields of contemplation.
What is some of the stinking thinking that you allow to circulate in you mind when nobody is listening?
A good farmer or gardener clears out the weeds and turns the soil over in order to give good seed the best chance to grow in fresh soil. How can we till the fields of our minds?
Romans 12:2
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is —his good, pleasing and perfect will.
The pattern of this world is bad news is the normal. We begin at bad or just OK, and hope for a good day. We begin most days pursuing fleeting moments of happiness. We go up and down like the business cycle from feast to famine. Some even get stuck in chronic or clinical depression. It’s a common disease. I never heard of a person stuck in perpetual happiness or joy. Even the best of us have down times. Since we are in the world though not of the world, we cannot cannot escape the influences of the environment in which we live. While not of the world we are led to emotional states by the circumstances, weather and other environmental conditions.
Can recall a time (or perhaps right now) when negative or poor decisions premeditated until you birthed them into a bad outcome?
What do you do when having a down day, when you are discouraged, disappointed, hurt our let down by someone.
The Lord promises that our joy is renewed each morning. Joy is better than happiness. Again, happinesses is fleeting. It comes from how we choose to feel about what’s going on. It’s sources are external. Joy, however is given to us and is internal. It lodges in our hearts and emanates outwardly. It comes with the knowledge of God. It may look like happiness, but joy is a feeling that we that we can hold on to, linger in, and keep even in the face of bad circumstances. Joy comes with a security system. Since the world did not give it, the world can’t take it away.
Thoughts that we allow to enter can we rounded up, locked up and cast into the sea of forgetfulness. They can be disolved and captured like the cyclodextrin molecule encapsulates stink.
2 Corinthians 10:5
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.
This knowledge of God, too gives us the knowledge of who we are in Him. We are joint heirs with the Son of God! It doesn't matter how many likes we get on “the ‘gram”, nor so-called friends on Facebook. Our esteem is in the knowledge of an ever present, all powerful Father who knows us because He created us and promised never to leave nor forsake us.
Any other thoughts must be captured like stink in a Febreze spray. It’s hard to be down when we think on Him. My “woe is me” is apprehended by “my delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” and all things work together for my good since I love Him and I am called to his purposes.
So till your mind by taking those ungodly thoughts captive. Break up the fallow ground in your mind, capture the down thought seeds and replace with the knowledge of and his opinion of you.
He says, "son/daughter, I love you and there is nothing you can do about it."
image from https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/optimizing-brain-fitness.html
