Captive Thoughts

It has been quite awhile since I've posted a blog. There has been so much going on for our family and me personally but nothing that I have really desired to dig into through writing.

However, as I was laying in bed this evening, thinking through some big decisions we have recently been making, I had a bit of a moment where a number of thoughts connected and came together with a passage of Scripture like two sides of a jacket zipper being connected together into one tight track by a fervent tug of a pulley. I was thinking through how I felt about two sides of a particular decision. Often when I think on how I feel about something, I end up getting a mental picture. As I thought through one side of the decision, I pictured myself on a thin metal railing above a deep gorge. I was alone on the railing trying to slide myself gingerly across the sharp metal rail, all the while realizing how alone I was and what a dangerous situation I was finding myself in. As I thought about the second outcome of this particular decision, I pictured the Kudzu that grows all over Atlanta in the Spring and Summer. Kudzu looks like a combination of ivy and moss in that it has large leaves and grows over absolutely everything in a kind of green blanket. It is absolutely beautiful and also totally engrossing. The feeling I was resonating with was that of being completely surrounded and enveloped. As I let these two images sink in a bit more, I realized that there are other images that I have associated with feelings all of my life without being fully aware that they have been such a part of my unconscious and, now, conscious life. As well, there have been memories and pictures from my childhood that have often flashed so quickly across the screen of my mind that I don't even realize they are there. In the last few years, I have been able to catch some of these memories, feelings and pictures either by the grace of God or simply because of years of repetition. When I am able to "catch" them, it's as if I am pulling them out of the clouds of my mind and investigating them, really looking at them, for the first time. I am able to analyze the feelings, emotions and weight of them. Sometimes, when I'm able to do this, I have real breakthroughs. Sometimes they merit nothing more than a smile or giggle attached to a precious time from my earlier life.

As I was thinking about this tonight, I was reminded of 2 Corinthians 10:5 which says,
"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".

Now, I know this is proof-texting quite a bit, but as I thought of that verse, a light went on for me on a personal level. It seems that as I have grown in my relationship with Christ, there have been more of those moments when I have been able to actually capture a thought that has been with me for years but had never become a part of my conscious mind. In light of this verse, it seems that as I have grown in truth and prayed against the "arguments and pretensions that (set themselves) up against the knowledge of God" in my life, God has allowed me to take my thoughts captive and deal with them, which has allowed me to be free and, therefore, more obedient to Christ. All I can say in response to that discovery is Praise be to God who rules and reigns in our hearts and minds to set us free from our own mental jails and barriers. What an amazing God to truly indwell us to the point that He reveals our own selves to us more fully so that we can live more freely in His truth. What a loving God I serve!