Bring Every Thought into Captivity to Christ

2 Corinthians 10:3-6

3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh:

4 (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;)

5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

6 And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled.


There is probably fewer scriptures the body of Christ needs today than this one, as a growing number of novel teachings are being introduced into the church, which are the exact opposite of who Jesus Christ really is and what He represents.

Especially important is verse 5, which admonishes all of us to walk and think humbly before God. This is why the Holy Spirit tells us to cast down imaginations and high things that exalt themselves against the knowledge of God.

The knowledge of God has been revealed to us, but there are numerous people proclaiming to be Christians which for a variety of reasons oppose this knowledge. They also existed in the times of Paul, and this is why he so strongly stated what he did.

Finally, it's not only casting down this thoughts against God, but also bringing all of our thoughts into subjection to Jesus Christ. This blasts away the lie of so-called post-modernism, which many people who name Christ have adapted in order to be "relevant." The result has been the salt losing its influence, and they become representatives of the world in the name of Jesus. It's a lie.

What Paul under the influence of the Holy Spirit is saying is we aren't allowed to think what we want about Jesus Christ and God our Father, but are to take what we are taught of Him in the scriptures and line our thoughts up with that. There is no alternative. We are not allowed by God to think sloppy thoughts about Him that don't agree with who He is or the scriptures. To think or believe otherwise is to create a god after our own image or imagination; a god that doesn't exist anywhere except in our minds.

Lining up our thoughts with who Christ is is to obey Him. Our thoughts must be brought into obedience to Christ or we'll be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine.

Quotes from Lilias Trotter

source: wikipedia

The sentence of death passes, in the Cross, on the old nature in its entirety, as the new comes into being. This is the one only basis and groundwork for all carrying out in our practical experience of what that death means. Once for all let this be clear. Apart from the work done on Calvary, all working out of a death process in our own souls is only a false and dangerous mysticism. . . . "I have been crucified with Christ" (RV)--yes, long before I ever asked to be--glory be to God! and yet as freshly as if it were yesterday, for time is nowhere with Him.
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“We have not to produce out of our higher nature a lowliness and a patience and a purity of our own, but simply to let the pure, patient, lowly life of Jesus have its way in us by yieldingness to it and by faith in its indwelling might. "All that God wants from man is opportunity." The whole of our relationship to His power, whether for sanctification or for service, is summed up in those words.”
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“Surrender--stillness--a ready welcoming of all stripping, all loss, all that brings us low, low into the Lord's path of humility--a cherishing of every whisper of the Spirit's voice, every touch of the prompting that comes to quicken the hidden life within: that is the way God's human seed-vessels ripen, and Christ becomes "magnified" even through the things that seem against us. "Mine but to be still: Thine the glorious power, Thine the mighty will.”
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“Measure thy life by loss and not by gain,
Not by the wine drunk, but by the wine poured forth.
For love's strength standeth in love's sacrifice,
And he who suffers most has most to give.”
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Trained faith is a triumphant gladness in having nothing but God - no rest, no foothold - nothing but Himself - A triumphant gladness in swinging out into that abyss, rejoicing in a very fresh emergency that is going to prove Him true - The Lord Along - that is trained faith.
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I was watching vaguely the breaking of the waves while listening for His voice.  Suddenly, there came, clothed in His living power, the words – “Fear ye not me,” saith the Lord, “which have placed the sand for a bound of the sea that they cannot pass; though they roar they shall not pass over it!”  Oh with what joy it came as one watched them hurling themselves in with all their might and succeeding in doing nothing but washing a few tiny pebbles a few inches and dragging others back in their place – such power, and such impotence!
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Shall we not ask God to convict us, as to where lies the hindrance to this self-emptying? It is not alone mere selfishness, in its ordinary sense, that prevents it; long after this has been cleansed away by the Precious Blood there may remain, unrecognised, the self-life in more subtle forms. It may co-exist with much that looks like sacrifice; there may be much of usefulness and of outward self-denial, and yet below the surface may remain a clinging to our own judgment, a confidence in our own resources, an unconscious taking of our own way, even in God’s service. And these things hold down, hold in our souls, and frustrate the Spirit in His working. The latent self-life needs to be brought down into the place of death before His breath can carry us hither and thither as the wind wafts the seeds. Are we ready for this last surrender?
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What a revolution would come over the world – the world of starving bodies at home – the world of starving souls abroad – if something like this were the standard of giving; if God’s people ventured on “making themselves poor” as Jesus did, for the sake of the need around; if the “I” – “me” – “mine” were practically delivered up, no longer to be recognized when they clash with those needs.
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Study the inner life of Jesus. “I speak not of Myself,” He says.  “I can of Mine own self do nothing.”  “I seek not Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.”  His human self-life, sinless though it was, was laid down that He might live by the Father; and our self-life, defiled and worthless, shall we not lay it down that we may live by Him? 
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For all their teaching of surrender and sacrifice is no fanciful mysticism; it is a simple reality that can be tested at every turn – nay, that must be so tested.  If we are apprehending Christ’s death in its delivering power, our homes will not be slow to find it out.
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O Jesus, the Crucified, I will follow Thee in Thy path.  Inspire me for the next step, whether it leads down into the shadow or up into the light.  Surely in what place my Lord the King shall be, whether in death or life, even there also will Thy servant be. 
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Let us dare to test God’s resources…Let us ask him to kindle in us and keep aflame that passion for the impossible that shall make us delight in it with him, till the day when we shall see it transformed into a fact.
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“So then, turn your eyes upon Him, look full into His face and you will find that the things of earth will acquire a strange new dimness.” (Helen Lemmel use these words as the inspiration for writing "Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus")
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“Take the very hardest thing in your life – the place of difficulty, outward or inward, and expect God to triumph gloriously in that very spot.  Just there He can bring your soul into blossom.”
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Be our fellowship in His rejection what it may, we will welcome it, rejoicing if we are even “counted worthy to suffer shame for His Name”; “esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt”; “going forth unto Him without the camp.”
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It is only as we go on in a life of surrender that the blessed joy of pouring forth upon Him our costly things dawns on us. The giving sets free, as has been well said, a spring of conscious love, and the love, in its turn, inspires to fresh giving; and though the pain involved is still pain, such a strange sweetness becomes interwoven with it that we wonder whether heaven can be perfect without the possibility of suffering loss for Him.
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But this stepping out at all risks, with the element of uncertainty contained in it, is just where the truth of our surrender is tested, and therefore it must be faced thoroughly. So long as we reserve to ourselves the power of withdrawing to the old life if an emergency arises, there is no real progress possible.
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There came such a lovely sense... of what it means to be "buried with Christ" - not only dead but buried - "put to silence in the grave" - "I can" and "I can't" put to silence side by side - the lovely silence and stillness of "a grave beside Him" with God's seal on the stone and His watch set, that nothing but the risen life of Jesus may come forth. ~ Lilias Trotter
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God's guidance, if our soul's instinct is healthy, tallies with the sense of rest - in a very real way, this sense of rest guides us - and legislates for us. Anything that brings a sense of restlessness means that we have got further from under the cloud shadow - we have gone off on some self devised path, or we have not kept pace with God... It is the same in cases of perplexity - where there is no clear command in His word to guide us - where the sense of rest falls (always taking for granted that our wills are in His Hand) there is His path - it is there that the shadow of His cloud is falling.
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There should be neither undergrowth, nor overgrowth, but balanced growth. Spiritual equilibrium alone will bring forth much fruit both in us and in others. We were created for more than our own spiritual development; reproduction, not mere development, is the goal to mature - reproduction in other lives.
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But what if God begins from the other side, generating a glow of Holy Spirit fire from within? No matter if, for the moment, it is a hidden process; nothing can be seen of the soldanella under the ice until the top of the air-bell gives way and the flower is there. I believe a moment will come of a sudden breaking forth of that which has been working below the surface, and the miracle of the snowfields will be wrought afresh by the crowding up of human souls who have won through the hardest fights.
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He shall sit as a priest upon his throne. 'Ask of me and I will give thee... as thy possession.' What he receives as Priest he dispenses as King and somehow the whole aspect of prayer has been reversed. I used to think that our intercession must sweep round from us to him and bring back the answer, but now I see it differently; it all starts with him and sweeps down here as low as our helplessness, then back to his throne, the place of power and authority.
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'Concerning the work of my hands command ye me', is the Old Testament foreshadowing of these creative hours of which, with our poor, tentative, calculating faith, we know so little. But to command is to know the will of the Father and it has come to me with new light and power that the first thing we have to be sure of day by day, is that our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. If we can listen in the stillness, till our hearts begin to vibrate to what he is feeling about the matter in question, whether it concerns ourselves or others, we can, from that moment, begin to pray down from his throne.
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It is utterly, unbelievably simple. Receive Jesus with a heart-grasp, and you will find, like the flower, a spring of eternal life, entirely distinct from your own, that is perishing, set working deep down in your inmost being.
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"The death of the Cross" - death's triumph hour - that was the point where God's gate opened; and to that gate we come again and again, as our lives unfold, and through it pass even on earth to our joyful resurrection, to a life each time more abundant, for each time the dying is a deeper dying. The Christian life is a process of deliverance out of one world into another, and "death," as has been truly said, "is the only way out of any world in which we are."
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The sap - the will - the "ego" - is withdrawn from the former existence, its aims and desires, and is sent into the new. It is given over to the other side: we hold to it that this is now our life, the only one that has the right to be. We reckon ourselves dead to the old; we reckon ourselves alive to the new; "putting off" the former, "putting on" the latter.
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Oh! the pains that God has to take to bring us to this happy, childlike "abandon," equally ready for silence, or for saying or doing unhesitatingly the next thing He calls for, unfettered by surroundings or consequences. How much reserve and self-consciousness have to give way with some of us, before the absolute control passes into His Hands, and the responsibility with it! Then only can we know the "liberty," the "boldness," the "utterance" of Pentecost. "Whithersoever the Spirit was to go they went, thither was their spirit to go:" that is "the perfect law of liberty."

Candace Cameron Bure's Godly Example and Life

Ephesians 5:22-24

22 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.

23 For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.

24 Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.

Source: modernmom.com

Candace Cameron Bure received some attacks lately for her comments in her newly released book - 'Balancing It All: My Story of Juggling Priorities and Purpose,' where she talked about her desire and success in entering into a submissive role in relationship to her husband.

It's almost sure that Bure, who is a devout follower of Jesus Christ, was at least in part thinking of the scriptures mentioned above when addressing the issue.

She confirmed it saying this:

"The definition I'm using with the word 'submissive' is the biblical definition of that. So, it is meekness, it is not weakness. It is strength under control, it is bridled strength."

"And, listen, I love that my man is a leader," she asserted. "I want him to lead and be the head of our family. And those major decisions do fall on him. ... It doesn't mean I don't voice my opinion. It doesn't mean I don't have an opinion. I absolutely do, but it is very difficult to have two heads of authority."

"In my marriage we are equal ... in our importance, but we are just different in our performances within our marriage," she added.

The former Full House star, who is the sister of actor Kirk Cameron, is a breath of fresh air, and the negative responses to her way of life shows what she lives and communicated needed to be heard.

Along with 'Balancing It All,' Bure has also written 'Reshaping It All: Motivation for Physical and Spiritual Fitness.'

She most recently starred in the successful "Let it Snow" on the Hallmark Channel.

Here's a link to her website for a more in depth look at what Candace is up to.

Christ and Emptying Self

One thing that those who mean business with God will experience, is the work of the Holy Spirit in helping us to empty ourselves in order that Christ may be enlarged in us.

This will be His continual focus, as the Holy Spirit, as far as He relates to believers, lives to remove and weaken our self life in order that Christ may be formed in us. That is the end result of all that God has for us, and it's an enormous undertaking; one that will continue on into eternity.

What we must understand to cooperate with the Holy Spirit is there is nothing in us that He can work with. Nothing good dwells in the flesh, and the sooner we accept that, the sooner we and God can get on with His purpose for us.

No matter how good we may seem when compared to other human beings, no matter what we may consider as good intentions or clean living, all of it is unclean before the Lord, who is the only true light.

In other words, from our fallen nature we have absolutely nothing to offer God but our hearts. That's it. Even there our hearts can be deceptive, and we can't trust anything about ourselves as it relates to God.

If we will embrace the work of the cross within us, we will find that God will have a place to do the work of conforming us to the image of Jesus Christ. If not, He will continue to work and wait until we're ready to surrender all to Him. Saying we are ready to surrender, or singing we're ready to surrender all, doesn't mean we are in fact surrendering all.

The Holy Spirit is perfect in being able to reveal that by putting us through difficulties. It is in the hard times of life that we find out where we are really at. There is where God can do some work if we're willing to abide in Him while we go through our struggles.

Many Christians unnecessarily harden their hearts or are clueless as to the ways of God as they relate to finding a place to build Christ within the believer. If we are willing to see, we will discover and understand that it is in the struggles of life that the Holy Spirit finds a place in us to do His work.

Embracing that reality won't make it any easier, but it will work out the peaceable fruit of righteousness, where we can graciously be quiet and restful within even if our outer world seems to be falling apart.

All of it is for the glory of God in that we continually grow more and more like Jesus. The key is self-emptying, and the Holy Spirit is able to help you in that if you open your heart to Him.