SSMT: Verse 2

Y'all, I can't believe it. I memorized my verse.

I, the girl who cannot memorize to save her ever loving life...memorized Isaiah 43:18-19 in the first two weeks of January. I'm still amazed. Part of the success is from the pop quizzes I received from Kari and Ronda throughout these past few days. When Kari quizzed me yesterday, that verse just rolled out of my fingers into the email. It's a miracle.

So, according to the SSMT instructions, it's time to learn a new verse!

I've known since the beginning of the year that this was going to be my second verse. Ronda shared it with me over Christmas break, during a particularly difficult day. And I cannot even count the number of times God has reminded me of it in the days since. So I figured that was my cue to learn it and study it. Here it is:

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ. - 2 Corinthians 10:5

"Take captive every thought" is the particular phrase that God uses in His nudges to me, but it's cheating to only memorize four words of a verse, so I'm going to learn the whole thing.

According to my word study, the word arguments means reckonings, considerations, reflections, reasoning, and thoughts. I spend a lot of time considering things about my life...my future...my past. I reflect, I think, I reason, I overanalyze...you get the picture. But now, I need to demolish those things. When something comes in and takes over my mind in a way that pulls me further from the Lord, my job is to demolish it.

And did you notice the use of the word every? Demolish every pretension and take captive every thought. Not just the ones I have the energy to contend with or the ones that convict me the most. All of them.

This is the part I love. The word obedient means the unquestioning obedience demanded by Christ...the faith which obeys God's will in a special sense.

So when those thoughts come in, I need to capture them. I need to say, "Abba, You take this thought. You show me how You want me to reframe my thinking and obey You today. I might not understand what You're doing, but I don't have to know. I'm choosing to obey You and to let You replace this thought that consumes my mind - with whatever You want me to focus on right now."

It does work. This I've learned in the past few days. When I ache over what I have lost from my life, I stop, offer those thoughts to the Lord, and ask Him to show me what He has ahead for me so I can dwell on that instead of on what used to be...or will never be. When Satan dumps a lie in my mind, I stop, offer it to the Lord and ask Him to help me focus on HIS truth about my life. When someone else says something hurtful that I might be inclined to mentally replay, I offer that to the Lord and ask Him to send an encourager to me to say uplifting words.

So now...my focus is to take captive these thoughts and offer my unquestioning obedience to my Abba!