Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Spiral of Toxic Thoughts

by Jennie Allen

We have bought the lie that we are victims of our thoughts rather than warriors equipped to fight on the front lines of the greatest battle of our generation: the battle for our minds.

“take every thought captive to obey Christ.”1

Learning to capture our thoughts matters. Because how we think shapes how we live.2

taking control of our minds could be the key to finding peace in the other parts of our lives.

Our emotions were leading us to thoughts, and those thoughts were dictating our decisions, and our decisions were determining behaviors, and then the behaviors were shaping our relationships, all of which would take us back to either healthy or unhealthy thoughts.

The reality is that our emotions are a by-product of something else. Our emotions are a by-product of the way we think.

“Do not be conformed to this world,” one verse says, “but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”5

“according to researchers, the vast majority of the illnesses that plague us today are a direct result of a toxic thought life.”7

The greatest spiritual battle of our generation is being fought between our ears. What we believe and what we think about matters, and the enemy knows it. And he is determined to get in your head to distract you from doing good and to sink you so deep that you feel helpless, overwhelmed, shut down, and incapable of rising to make a difference for the kingdom of God.

Every lie we buy into about ourselves is rooted in what we believe about God.

No human is ever meant to be the person who fills our souls or holds in place our worth. Only God can do that. But until I throw off the lie that God’s love isn’t for me, my emotions, decisions, behaviors, and relationships will remain twisted up in the mistaken belief that I’m worthless.

A. W. Tozer that says, if God is “exalted…a thousand minor problems will be solved at once.”

Doubt steals hope. And with no hope, everything that matters doesn’t feel as important anymore.

The danger of toxic thinking is it produces an alternate reality, one in which distorted reasoning actually seems to make sense.

Because alone in the dark the devil can tell you whatever the hell he wants.

if our thought lives are the deepest, darkest places of stronghold within us, all hell will try to stop us from being free.

The people who stand out to me are the ones who have chosen to trust Jesus more than trusting their ability to make everything work out fine.

We are not made to think more good thoughts about ourselves. We are made to experience life and peace as we begin to think less about ourselves and more about our Creator and about others.

How we think shapes our lives.

if we are believing things that are not true about us, then we are believing what the devil wants us to believe instead of what God wants us to believe.

Taking every thought captive is not about what happens to us. It’s about choosing to believe that God is with us, is for us, and loves us even when all hell comes against us.

Every toxic thought, spiraling emotional cycle, and trap of the enemy we fall for somehow deep down involves a wrong belief about God.

The truth is that the God who is creator and sovereign over the universe and the God who conquered sin and death is the same God who wants to be with you in your pain, doubt, shame, and other circumstances.

When we listen to lies about our worth, we naturally back away from others. In many cases, our distancing behavior succeeds in pushing people away, reinforcing our fear of rejection. This is a classic mind trap, a self-fulfilling thought pattern in which our insecurity feeds our isolation, which in turn feeds the lie that we are worthless and nobody really gets us or cares to. We feel unseen and unloved, and to protect ourselves from further rejection, we won’t let anyone close enough to change our perception.

Be the friend you wish others would be for you.17

If we want to be free of the chaos, friend, we cannot stay alone in the dark with the devil.

“97 percent of what you worry over is not much more than a fearful mind punishing you with exaggerations and misperceptions.”7

I can’t rely on my thoughts or feelings to hold my faith in place. God holds my faith in place.

Cynicism is always driven by fear of the future or by anger regarding the past. Either we’re afraid of something that might not ever occur, or we project something that has occurred onto all the days that are to come. We buy into the lie that it’s too risky to be vulnerable or hope for good things.

The enemy’s strategy is to flood our thoughts with visions of all that is wrong in this broken, fallen world to the point we don’t even think to look for the positive anymore. Cynicism just becomes the way we think, and we don’t even notice.

Cynicism erodes our ability to see God rightly.

Cynicism at its root is a refusal to believe that God is in control and God is good. Cynicism is interpreting the world and God based on hurt you’ve experienced and the wounds that still lie gaping open. It forces you to look horizontally at people rather than vertically to God.

Cynicism puts our minds on things of this earth, and we lose hope. Beauty points our gaze toward the heavens and reminds us of hope. Cynicism crumbles in the presence of beauty.

When we are in awe of something, we become less self-centered, more others-centered, and more connected to others around us.11

Joy comes when we lay aside our power and rest in God’s. Joy comes when we put the emphasis where it belongs: on God’s awesomeness, not our own.

Victimhood is yet another enemy of our minds that keeps us fixated on something other than the God of the universe, believing the lie that we are at the mercy of circumstances.

But to see God’s good purposes, we have to focus our gaze beyond our immediate situations.

We don’t have to like our circumstances, but we can choose to look for the unexpected gifts they may bring.

Endurance and character and Spirit-enabled hope—these are marks of ones who choose gratitude.

When we reject passivity and lean into the needs around us, we see our minds set on the things of God. God is never passive. God is always working for our good and His glory.

People who live with purpose sleep better and live longer.9

We interrupt the spiral of self and the pattern of complacency when we lift our gaze off of ourselves, fix our eyes on Jesus, and run the race set before us.

when you start taking risks for the kingdom of God and running your guts out, Satan will do everything in his power to discourage you.

If we think on Christ, if we zoom in and are consumed with Him, then everything else grows strangely dim. But the enemy wants you to focus on anything but Jesus.

our thoughts dictate our beliefs, which dictate our actions, which form our habits, which compose the sum of our lives. As we think, so we live. When we think on Christ, we live on the foundation of Christ, our gaze fixed immovably on Him.

When we take every thought captive and reclaim our thinking patterns from the lies of the enemy, we are set free to set others free. May we steward our freedom well.