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.

The apostle Paul understood the war that takes place in our thoughts, how our circumstances and imaginations can become weapons that undermine our faith and hope.

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

It’s all in our heads.

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.

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 inc...

The thing is, I have always believed lies. And not just believed them but built entire chapters of my life around them.

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

Even if I don’t overtly deny the validity of that premise, I still doubt it is true for me.

And the spiral of my thoughts has now invaded my relationships and robbed me of joy and peace.

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.

Not that we would wrestle each and every fear, but that we would allow God to take up so much space in our thinking that our fears will shrink in comparison.

But please know that the enemy of our souls has no intention of releasing his grip on our minds without a fight. And let me tell you, he doesn’t play fair.

it is well worth the effort to face the recesses of our thoughts, believing that God can bring about life and peace.

The enemy wasn’t mysterious to Jesus. To Him, spiritual warfare was matter of fact. Jesus cast out demons regularly—that’s what the Bible says.

But while I believe that there is a real devil and that he has real demons working for him and that a battle for our hearts and souls and minds is playing out all around us all the time,

I doubted the existence of God. Lying awake in my silent, too-dark bedroom each night, I doubted whether God was real.

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.

“Jennie, this is the enemy,” she said. “None of this is from God. This awfulness you’ve been experiencing…this isn’t who you are.”

Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol [the grave], you are there! If I take the wings of the morning

and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.1

try though we might, there is in fact no way to escape the presence of God.

This wasn’t who I was. I loved God. I was a believer. I trusted Jesus and prized my faith. And God was not going to let go of me.

He is real.

I had an enemy, and I’d let him beat me up for too long.

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

Now I wasn’t alone. I was fighting, and in Christ I was given the authority and power to win.

There are seasons when we need help in the form of counseling and medicine. But I hope to show you in the coming pages that in every season there is help that we can access for ourselves.

You can, in fact, change in an instant.

Science proves we can. Our brains are full of neural pathways, some shallow and moldable and some grooves dug deep from a lifetime of toxic thoughts. In both cases, God is mighty to save. In both cases He’s mighty to heal.

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

Day by day we fight to be the captors of our thoughts rather than the ones taken captive.

Though we walk in the 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. 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.2

You and I have been equipped with power from God to tear down the strongholds in our minds, to destroy the lies that dominate our thought patterns. We have the power and authority to do this!

yet we have allowed our minds to have outright meltdowns with zero correction.

I have a choice.

If you have trusted in Jesus as your Savior, you have the power of God in you to choose! You are no longer a slave to passions, to lusts, to strongholds, to

sin of any kind. You have a God-given, God-empowered, God-redeemed ability to choose what you think about. You have a choice regarding where you focus your energy. You have a choice regarding what you live for.

We are not subject to our behaviors, genes, or circumstances. We are not subject to our passions, lusts, or emotions. W...

To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who

does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.7

In the same way, you may find that some thoughts, once interrupted, will simply lose their power. God can do this.

When we think thoughts that lead to life and peace, we don’t just get better thoughts, we get more of God.

We may still wake in the wee hours of the morning when all around us is dark. But rather than squirming and stewing

and letting evil scenarios run haywire through our minds, we can meet with God, be reminded of His kindness, and pray. The battle for our minds is won as we focus ...