Bringing Thoughts Into Captivity

      -In 2 Corinthians, chapter 10 verse
5, we are admonished,more or less, to bring our thoughts captive to Christ.
That is our job. He is not going to control our thoughts. Because of all the
time I have to think, I find it quite a challenge to keep my thoughts where
they should be.

The first area that I struggle with are thoughts of doubt and unbelief. I
don't struggle with believing I will be healed. That was taken care of on
the day that I felt it go from my head down into my heart. But what I do
struggle with is the timing. Because I have been like this for so long, it is
hard for me to believe that a change could be imminent. I do believe that
God has already healed me and everybody will see it someday. However, I have
trouble believing that it could be now and I am not sure that's faith.

I do have to try and fight off thoughts of self-pity too often. These seem
stronger when I am  around other people and hear all the fun things they are
doing. Not that I don't have bouts of self-pity when I am by myself but it
is a little easier. Thankfully, not too often do these self-pitying thoughts
turn into a full blown pity-party, though it has happened.

Then there are thoughts of being sick. Let's face it. I live in an
environment where the main concern is how one is feeling. When one
constantly has symptoms of one ailment or another, it is sometimes hard not
to complain to the nurse. Lately, though, I have come up with a trick that
seems to help to fight thoughts of being sick. I imagine that I have a
"symptom"box and , everytime that I get a symptom of some minor ailment, I
pretend to throw it in my "symptom" box and ignore it. My box must be pretty
full by now but, at least so far, the symptoms have never turned into
anything else.

One thing that I really struggle with is the thought that I don't belong with
other people in the church. It doesn't seem to matter how many times I am
told that I do belong. There are simply too many church activities that I
can't take part in and my day-to-day life is so very different from that of
other people. A similar thought to combat is that I am just a nuisance. I know these thoughts don't come from God so I need to subdue them.

I often struggle with thoughts of condemnation. Even though I do know that the Bible says that there is no condemnation to those in Christ, everytime I do or say something that I know isn't proper for a Christian, I do battle with all kinds of condemning thoughts.

I have too many impatient thoughts. Thoughts like, "Will this nightmare ever end" or "How much longer?". We live in such a fast-paced society that we don't like to wait for 30 minutes, much less 30 years. But God works on His own timetable so we are really wasting our time when we ask questions like that.

These are some of the thoughts that I fight with to "take captive" day after day after day... The best way for me to do this is for me to replace the "yucky" thoughts with God thoughts, scripture, from the Bible. That is why I need to keep reading the Bible. So I will always have ammunition to shoot down negative thoughts. When negative thoughts come, I can also DELIBERATELY choose to start praising the Lord. With negative thoughts come negative feelings so I often have to force myself to start praising. I would like to say that I am always successful at taking negative thoughts "into captivity" but that would be a lie.