Waves

Sometimes faith feels like a battle upon the sea. I can succumb to really negative thinking patterns. These are definitely waves to me. If I don’t get into a more positive thinking rhythm I can quickly start to sink like a stone as hope fades. Joy soon follows.

Scripture tells us to take our thoughts captive. This is important. If we don’t we can veer off course as we choose to plot our own way through life. I don’t want to live my life outside of God’s will. The goal then is to choose discipline and obedience.

God makes our paths straight, so taking our thoughts captive means that we need to evaluate things in a spiritual light. If you know your Bible quite well this is doable. If you never pick it up, then you’re essentially trying to navigate without the map or the chart. Yikes. I don’t think this is a good thing. 

Scripture tells us not to lean on our own understanding, to acknowledge God and to put our trust in Him: relinquish the controls. This means praying and seeking Him. While sometimes He may come to us, He also tells us to come to Him—ask, seek, knock and the door will be open. Stumbling around for the key is silly when all we have to do is knock, right? 

Nevertheless, I can be stubborn. I can dwell in those waves far too long. It has a lot to do with what I want as opposed to what God wants, but we must surrender our course to God. It’s always in our best interest to do so. Next stop (or step) is to evaluate and process surrender. My friend and sister in Christ, Manu, posted a wonderful eye opening piece called “Be Still -Profound and Purposeful Action.” I found what she shared about surrendering to God very comforting. I’ve never looked at surrender in quite that light before. 

I do have my own piece as well, but after reading hers I think it may require a bit of a re-think or review. So, one day, hopefully, surrender will make an appearance on my blog. Until then the plot thickens. 

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Making our thoughts obedient to Christ

“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

Lean Not on Your Own Understanding

“The great troublers of this church of Corinth were the heathen philosophers, and such as had sucked in their principles; with whose notions, which were conclusions drawn from reason not sanctified and subdued to the will of God, divers doctrines of faith would not agree. St. Paul tells them, that the gospel, (which was the great weapon of his warfare), through the power of God, was mighty to pull down the strong holds which unbelief had in the carnal understanding of men, to overthrow their reasonings, the heights of them, which exalted themselves against the doctrine of faith; and to bring pan nohma, every thought, or counsel into a captivity to the obedience of Christ: so as whatsoever was revealed by the apostles from the Spirit of God, men readily agreed and yielded obedience to…

Matthew Poole’s Commentary

This is a really nice version of the song “Spirit Lead Me”

(Photo credit goes to Pixabay.com user dimitrisvetsikas1969.)