What does it mean to take thoughts captive? And why is it in the passage about the weapons of our warfare? (2 Cor 3-6)

When I was younger I spoke like a child and thought like a child. And in my youth I heard a lot of voices in my head. I heard demons. I heard the Lord. I heard the voices of my parts. I heard the entities through the frequencies I had been attached to. I heard light. I heard creation. And I was confused. My brain had a low grade fear running in the background all the time. My brain knew no rest.

It wasn’t until my thirties that the Lord brought the tools I would need for my recovery. I remember the portion of verse he spoke in kindness to me one day, shortly after I had started recovering blocked memories from my childhood. He promised that when it was something he was saying, he would follow it with that portion of verse. I was not to say it out loud, lest the enemy try and steal the peace of that promise. It was just between him and me. This brought a foreign idea of safety in being able to recognize the voice of the Lord. A short time later, he gave me a butterfly net. He encouraged me to capture my thoughts. He told me to capture them with the net, and hold them up high. He would examine them. if they were eternal they would remain. If they were not, they would burn into ash and blow away. it was mercy for me to learn to parse thought. If I had tried to sort my thoughts by what felt familiar or even ‘right’, I would have been using a database that had been trained by darkness for darkness. There was much defilement and corruption in my heart and soul and flesh. Even my spiritual gifts had mixture. I ended up laying those on an alter before him once I met him as love. I had no desire, and a lot of fear, that I would use my gifts in unclean ways, and I would rather not have them than do that. He held them for several years, then returned them to convince me that the gifts themselves were good. And that using them, the right ways, brought him pleasure and glory.

Recently I have begun thinking of those days, and am comparing those ways with how I capture my thoughts these days. I think it will be fun to explore over the next set of blogs. Maybe it will inspire you to find your own language.

What is vain imagination? What do I do with thoughts that circle but don’t solve? How do I follow the trail to rest? I think we all need to know. I am interested to hear how it works for you, too!

More, on a different day.

Blessings