2 Corinthians 10:5 “We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.”

We are in the middle of a war! I don’t mean a war where we must call up our military forces to fight for our country’s freedom. The war we fight every day has spiritual consequences. It is the war for our minds.

I thought about this spiritual battle the other day when I peeked around the side of our barn. Dad and I have been having groundhog trouble. A whole passel of the critters have dug holes around the barn and developed a network of tunnels under the stalls. Little by little, these varmints have created a mess that, if left alone, could undermine the integrity of the barn’s floor. We didn’t want that to happen, so we had to go to war.

Dad took out our live trap, put bait in the cage, and set it by the biggest hole. The next day, I found a large groundhog scuffling around in the trap. When dad got home, he took the critter away and deposited him in a country field far from our barn.

Over the next few days, we caught more groundhogs, and they suffered the same fate.

If only it were this easy to fight the war of the mind.

Our minds are easily infiltrated with wrong thinking. Our upbringing, wrong beliefs, unfortunate events, and other people’s opinions can all burrow holes in our understanding of the truth about God, ourselves and others. When our understanding is wrong, it can mess up everything.

Paul reminds us that the weapons God provides for spiritual warfare are divinely powerful. They can tear down strongholds, destroy arguments and demolish everything that sets itself up against the knowledge of God.

When wrong thoughts become entrenched in our minds, we can’t ignore them. If we had let the groundhog problem go, the animals could have eventually undermined our barn. Likewise, wrong thinking can gradually undermine our spiritual health, affecting how we love God, understand ourselves, and treat others.

So, we must take every thought captive.

It wouldn’t have done any good to open the live trap and release the groundhog near the barn. He would have come right back. We needed to take him far away where he couldn’t do any more harm.

Likewise, when wrong thoughts persist, we must capture them and compare them with God’s Word. If they contradict His truth, we need to reject them and replace them with what God says.

Paul tells us in Philippians 4:8 to dwell on things that are true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, excellent and worthy of praise.

We are in the middle of a war, one far more dangerous than a groundhog invasion. What thoughts have you allowed to settle in your mind? Are they consistent with God’s truth, or is it time to capture them and send them packing?

Through God’s Word and the power of the Holy Spirit, you can take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.