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Renovating Your Thought Life

By Lisa Clay

One summer about eight years ago, a desperate and now very unpopular crop farmer imported a new breed of ladybugs into Michigan. Those little bugs were prolific! They were cute at first, until they swept into our home en masse. We’ve been battling those stinky bugs ever since, crunching them underfoot, sweeping them into dustpans and sucking them into the vacuum.

Our struggle with the ladybug plague mirrors the battle you undergo day after day in your thought life. A little thought drops into your head. You toy with it, because it doesn’t appear overly dangerous. It flies around inside your mind at will, finally nesting and making a home there. Before long, that little thought multiplies, creating other, more harmful thoughts. Suddenly you have a full-blown infestation in your mind. And be assured, those thoughts won’t leave without a fight.

I experienced just such a mind-war some time ago. After a series of disappointing setbacks on our pastoral team, I began to question God’s promise to “work things together for good.” My thoughts focused on what was lacking in our situation instead of the ability of the Lord to meet our great need. When my husband and I discussed ways to handle the burdens, the same negative thoughts would flood my mind. I allowed those destructive thoughts to dwell there unopposed, and began to question the plan of the Lord. My spiritual life suffered. I complained to God more than I prayed. My own thoughts had single-handedly defeated me.

At the lowest moment, the Holy Spirit came to my aid, giving me encouragement and battle strategies to combat my stinky thought infestation. His desire was that Satan might not outwit me by using my own thoughts against me. Here are two of those Holy Spirit-birthed battle strategies:

Renovate Your Mind

If you’ve ever renovated a home, this strategy will be familiar. God’s Word identifies a process called renewing your mind. The word renew comes from the Latin word renovate, which means “to make young, fresh, and strong; to bring back into good condition.” Wrong or harmful thoughts actually deteriorate your mind, slowly bringing rottenness and blight to your whole life, eventually weakening you and causing you to cave in to temptation.

If you want to experience daily strength, peace and contentment, focus your energies on renovating your mind. Bring it back into healthy condition. Tear down fearful, strife-filled and angry thoughts, replacing them with patient, kind and forgiving thoughts. Firmly keep your mind on stable and upright principles from the Word of God.

Renovating a house takes a great deal of work. It’s not for the lazy. In the same way, renovating your mind requires perseverance, diligence and determination. Bringing your mind back into good condition will take constant attention, but God has promised you a sound mind, which can also be translated a spirit of self-discipline (2 Timothy 1:7). Apply that promise to your thought life. Cooperate with the Holy Spirit as He instructs, convicts and changes your mind to be conformed to Christlikeness.

Refuse to Think Unwanted Thoughts

Imagine yourself in a local grocery store, innocently wheeling your cart along. A foreboding-looking man suddenly appears at your side, and begins grabbing unhealthy food products and shoving them into your cart. Aggressive and unyielding, he races you and your cart through the store, loading it with items you don’t want. Despite your pleas to stop, he pushes you into the checkout line and demands you purchase the unwanted food.

What would you do if this happened to you? I’m sure you would call for store security and refuse to purchase the items he’d jammed in your cart. Then you would leave that grocery store and never return.

Imagine the same scenario happening in your mind. Your enemy the devil casts thoughts into your mind, then demands that you dwell on, entertain and buy into those unhealthy, unwanted thoughts. Before you realize what’s happened, your thought life is sick and weighed down. Don’t put up with it!

Reject the enemy’s attempt to control your mind. Refuse to think unwanted, unproductive and unhealthy thoughts. Submit your mind to the Holy Spirit daily, and welcome only His thoughts, which are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy (Philippians 4:8).

This article originally appeared in the November/December 2004 issue of Woman’s Touch magazine. Reprinted with permission.

REV. LISA CLAY and her husband, Rev. Rich Clay, are senior pastors at Bethany AG in Adrian, Michigan. She is the author of Rescued from Darkness, a book for new believers.

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