Taking Your Thoughts Captive

• Your subconscious mind is the part of your mind that notices and remembers information when you are not actively trying to do so and influences your behavior even though you do not realize it.

• Subconsciousness allows us to do things we don't have to think about, but we can alter them if we choose to. A good example of subconscious behavior is breathing. We don't have to think to breathe at all, but we can change how we control our breath and its pattern.

So, I recently learned that our subconscious mind, the part of our minds that we don’t necessarily actively control, is responsible for 95% of our brain activity. Meaning, that most of the decisions we make, things we do, our emotions and behaviors, depend on that 95% of brain activity that lies beyond our conscious awareness. That also means that our “actively thinking” brain is only responsible for the other 5%, which isn’t very much.

Our subconscious mind is also primal. Primal means “first in importance; essential; basic”. That means our subconscious mind controls our initial, or first, reactions to things. It reacts and communicates based on feelings, rather than logic or reason or what we know to be true. Essentially, it’s intrinsic. Meaning that it “belongs to the essential nature” of us.

As human beings, God’s word says that our very nature is sinful. Romans 5:12 says, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.” We were born into it. There’s no way around it. Thankfully Jesus came and redeemed us from our sin. John 3:16 tells us this plainly. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life.” If we accept God’s free gift of salvation, we become a new creation in Him! 2 Corinthians 5:17 says “If anyone is in Christ (meaning if they know Him as their Lord and Savior and accept His gift of salvation), he is a new creation. The old has passed away (meaning our sin and sin nature); behold the new has come.”

Of course, that doesn’t mean we’re perfect. Far from it. Even as Christians, our subconscious mind often takes over. Our initial, or first, reactions to things is still not going to be perfect every time. If someone is annoying you, you might think or even say something unkind about them or to them. We still are going to respond with irritation or anger to things that annoy us. We still are going to respond with anger when someone is unkind to us. We still are going to get our feelings hurt and maybe want to seek revenge, even if we know the Lord! I know I do it all the time, and I’ve known Him for about 16 years now.

2 Corinthians 10:3-6 addresses this. Paul is talking to the church at Corinth and speaks on how we, as Christians, still must wage war against our flesh. But, there’s hope in that because even though our flesh is so weak and we still sin, we don’t fight against our flesh on our own! Verses 3-6 say, “For though we walk in flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds (meaning the stronghold our sin has on us). We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take EVERY THOUGHT CAPTIVE to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete.”

Did you guys catch that? We are to take our thoughts captive and make them obedient to Jesus! When those urges to react poorly to something pop up, take those thoughts captive! If you know the Lord and have accepted Him, Jesus Himself promises that you have His Spirit literally living inside of you! The role of the Holy Spirit is to comfort you, show you your sin, and guide you to follow Jesus.

If you have His Spirit inside you, you can call on Him to help you when you’re struggling to react kindly and in a Christlike way to something. Take that thought captive, turn it over to Jesus, and He can and will empower you to respond with grace and kindness!