Digging Deeper LIVE with Andi and Brian Hale

LIVE with Andi and Brian Hale!

We Have a Choice

How we think directly affects how we live. This may sound terrifying, but, in fact, it’s exciting. Because while we may not be able to take every thought captive in every situation we face every day, we can learn to take one thought captive and, in doing so, affect every other thought to come. So what is the one thought that can successfully interrupt every negative thought pattern? It’s this: I have a choice.

When we’re spiraling in noise or distractedness, we have a choice to shift our minds back to God through stillness.

When we’re spiraling in isolation, we have a choice to shift our minds back to God through community.

When we’re spiraling in anxiety, we have a choice to shift our minds back to God through trust in His good and sovereign purposes.

When we’re spiraling in cynicism, we have a choice to shift our minds back to God through worship.

When we’re spiraling in self-importance, we have a choice to shift our minds back to God through humility.

When we’re spiraling into victimhood, we have a choice to shift our minds back to God through gratitude.

When we’re spiraling in complacency, we have a choice to shift our minds back to God through serving Him and others.

If you have trusted in Jesus as your Savior, 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. You are not subject to your behaviors, genes, or circumstances. You are not subject to your passions, lusts, or emotions. You are not subject to your thoughts.

No fixation exists outside God’s long-armed reach. Because we are a “new creation,” we have a choice.When we think new thoughts, we physically alter our brains.

When we think new thoughts, we make healthier neural connections.

When we think new thoughts, we blaze new trails.

When we think new thoughts, everything changes.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

2 Cor. 5:17
For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.

2 Tim. 1:7 NIV
Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

Matt. 19:26 NIV
God, I choose today to take every thought captive because I know You are more powerful than my thoughts, my circumstances, and my fears. Thank You for making me a new creation so that I can choose You! Amen.

If our toddler is throwing a fit in the grocery store, we correct him, redirect him—yet we have allowed our minds to have outright meltdowns with zero correction. We walk around acting as if we have no power over what we think about.

Paul tells us that when we take captive our thoughts, we can wield our power for good and for God, slaying strongholds left and right. What incredible power is available to us every moment of every day!

In Romans 8:5, Paul said that “those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh” and that “those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit” (ESV).

I have read and reread this passage in the past few months, mulling over how life would be if I could truly have a mind that dwells on the Spirit. A mind that is full of life and peace. A mind that consistently thinks about God—who He is and what He wants for me. I so desperately want the “perfect peace” God promises when my mind is fixed on Him.

As I’ve been practicing taking every thought captive, shifting my thoughts has become more disciplined. This is a daily battle! I may not be doing it perfectly, but I have seen significant improvement.

Based on Paul’s writings long ago to the church in Rome, you and I can learn to mind our minds to the point that controlling our thoughts becomes reflexive—an automatic, intuitive response.

I want to be so well versed in the patterns of thinking in line with the Spirit that my default is not to rely on the flesh but on the Spirit in everything. This is the goal of our deliberate interruptions: we abruptly stop the crazy spirals of our minds. As we practice the art of interruption, we’re shifting to a whole new mindset, and with each shift we will find ourselves growing more and more into the mind of Christ.

Father, I set my mind on the things of the Spirit. I set my mind on your peace. I pray to grow more and more into the mind of Christ! Amen.

Thinking About Thinking

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

Lies such as I’m helpless, I’m worthless, I’m unlovable, shape our thinking, our emotions, and the way we respond to the world around us. They trap us in their cycle of distraction and distortion and pain, preventing us from recognizing the truth we should believe. Most detrimentally, they change how we view God. Every lie we buy into about ourselves is rooted in what we believe about God.

Let’s say I tend to feel worthless and invisible. And let’s say I read Ephesians 1 and learn that God because He deeply loves me, chooses me and adopts me. Even if I don’t overtly deny the validity of that premise, I still doubt it is true for me. I nod at the truth, but I never fully absorb it and let it shape my identity.

Then let’s say I am married to a spouse who is typically distracted with work. I don’t feel seen in our marriage, which confirms my deep-seated fear that I am indeed worthless and invisible. So even in the most inconsequential of arguments with my husband, I feel anxious and start to spin every time he’s short with me.

I can’t see all that he has on his shoulders, I can’t empathize with his stresses, and my needs exceed his ability to ever meet them.

Before long we are fighting constantly, and we don’t even know why. My husband now has become the enemy in my mind and can’t ever seem to say what I need to hear or be whom I need him to be.

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

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.

When we begin to think about our thoughts, perhaps for the first time, we can stop the downward spiral. We can reset and redirect them. That’s our hope. 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.

Lord, I want You and Your truths to reign in my mind! Amen.

One Thing

It’s incredible, if you think about it: How can something we can’t see control so much of who we are, determine what we feel and what we do and what we say or don’t, dictate how we move or sleep, and inform what we want, what we hate, and what we love?

Capturing all our thoughts may seem an impossible task, especially when we consider our potential number of thoughts per minute. Researchers tell us that we have over 30,000 thoughts a day. That means we might think about thirty-one thoughts per waking minute. But what if one thought held the power to interrupt our spirals and bring peace to our mental chaos?

The apostle Paul’s own life was a picture of interruption. After the scales fell from his eyes, his mind centered on an entirely new reality. There was no other hope, no other narrative, no other track playing in the background. He stopped the things that had distracted him and let himself focus on one simple thing: “To me to live is Christ,” Paul wrote in Philippians 1:21, “and to die is gain” (ESV). It’s all—always—about Christ.

Paul experienced a massive shift, and now he was a totally different man. No longer was he a slave to his circumstances or his emotions. Paul now chose to live aware of the power of Christ in him, through him, and for him. Paul now had the power of the Spirit—the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, and he chose to live aware of and under that power.

God built a way for us to escape the downward spiral of our toxic thoughts. But we rarely take it. 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.

God, You equip me for this battle against the lies I believe about who I am and who You are. Help me never to feel a victim to my thoughts, because You are already victorious! Amen

Every Thought Captive—Really?

We once thought of the mind as an immutable thing. The brain you were born with and the way it worked—or didn’t—were just “how it was”; no sense fretting over what can’t be changed. We now know that the brain is constantly changing, whether or not we intend for it to.

With this in mind—and in hopes of discovering how we can break free from our spiraling thought patterns—I started studying the brain. I began to see a pattern at work in many of us. 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.

Round and round and round we go, spinning down, seemingly out of control, our lives becoming defined by this endless cycle.

Depressing.

Unless. Unless there is a way to interrupt it.

What if, instead of spending our energy trying to fix the symptoms, we went to the root of the problem? The reality is that our emotions are a byproduct of the way we think. What’s good about this news is that we can change our thinking.

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. The Bible records his bold declaration that we are to “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5, ESV).

Take every thought captive? Is this even possible? Because honestly, my thoughts run wild a lot of the time. But my deep dive into the inner workings of the brain confirmed what the Bible says: we can take every thought captive. Not only can our thoughts be changed, but we can be the ones to change them.

God, help me break the cycle of my out-of-control thoughts. I want Your truths to invade every decision, every emotion, every thought I have. Amen.