Blessed is the one
    who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
    or sit in the company of mockers,
but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
    and who meditates on his law day and night (Ps. 1:1-2).

There is a definite progression in these two verses. The man described here did not intend to keep company with the wrong crowd. At least not at first. At first, it was just a conversation that led to a decision. Just walking along. But then walking turned stationary and the man was a little further along. Until eventually he took up some kind of residence with evil. He walked, then he stood, then he just sat down. Deeper, deeper, deeper. Further, further, further.

Here is the creep of sin. Sin starts small, but it never stays that way. We walk with it, then stand with it, then sit down right in the middle of it. And the most frightening part is that we never really intended to. It just sort of happened. Like an untethered boat in the middle of a lake, we slowly drift into a place we never intended to be.

And that small beginning almost always begins with the mind. With the thoughtlife. With harboring and then dwelling on what begins as the hint of a suggestion until it grows and grows and grows. No wonder, then, that the Bible pays so much attention to our minds and thoughts, because that’s where it all starts. As in this passage:

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ (2 Cor. 10:3-5).

There is a wonderful and challenging realism to these verses. Not only are we struck with the reality of the different plane of existence, we are also hit headlong with the reality that we often can’t control what thoughts come into our minds. We can, however, control what happens next. We can control if we harbor those thoughts, feeding and growing them, or if we capture and imprison them and make them obedient to Jesus. Here are three occasions, then, when we will need to take every thought captive:

1. Temptation.

This is the most obvious occasion. We have a tempting thought, and we have the choice about what to do next. We can either let that thought roam free in our minds, and therefore start to materialize more and more, or we can grab it and bring it into submission by the power of the Spirit. And while we generally think about taking our thoughts captive in terms of temptation, there are other occasions that warrant this kind of thought battle as well.

2. Discontentment.

Here is another occasion when our thoughts must be taken captive. How often we see the state of someone else’s life – their home, their car, their kids’ behavior – and we become discontent with our own station. That discontentment has an allure to it – it’s easy to let it settle in and take root in our hearts. But our discontentment is not merely a longing for more – it’s actually a subtle charge against the manner in which God has chosen to provide for us. For that reason, we must also be on guard to take thoughts of discontent captive for Jesus.

3. Entitlement.

And linking closely with discontentment are thoughts of entitlement. We see the prosperity of another, and we think to ourselves how much more we deserve what is happening to that person than what is happening to us. And again, that kind of self-indulgence feels good. Really good. Good enough to give a little space in our minds to. But as with everything else, that thought will begin to grow and develop into bitterness, ungratefulness, and jealousy, and so must once again be taken captive for Jesus.

Watch your minds, friends. You may not be able to control that initial thought, but you can certainly control, by God’s grace, what happens next.