Take Every Thought...

"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 Corinthians 10:4-6 ESV)

Lately, I've been focusing a lot on spiritual warfare and our place in it. For years, I've heard the phrase "take every thought captive to obey Christ" but didn't know the context of the verse. I looked it up last night, and this is what I found. Though I was initially excited by the fact that it specifically talked of spiritual warfare, I realized when I looked closer that several things can be learned from just these few verses.

1) First, it talks about our weapons. As Christians, we don't carry around guns or knives or anything like that to fight off Satan's attacks. What we do have is a divine power, granted to us by the Holy Spirit, who dwells in us. This power gives us the ability to break free of Satan's hold on us.

2) Second, it talks about how we are to come against the lies that people will surely bring up. It doesn't say that we are to come against them with our own intelligence, our own insight, or our own opinion, but we fight them by taking all of our thoughts and bringing them to God for Him to discern.

3) Lastly, verse 6 talks about us being "ready to punish every disobedience", but by no means stops there. It goes on to say this, "when your obedience is complete". To me, this points clearly to the fact that of our own strength, following our own ways, we have no power to do anything. However, when we lean fully on God, and we completely obey Him, we gain the "divine power to destroy strongholds" that makes us "ready to punish every disobedience".

So anyway, I guess that the main point I got out of this is that God has all the power, and the power that we have comes from Him. Quite frankly, I'm glad that this is the case, because I would hate to imagine what would become of this earth if we, as sinful humans, had divine power. Just something God showed me that I wanted to share.

~Rachel <3