If a thief came to your house, you wouldn’t invite them in and let them have free rein to steal and destroy whatever they liked. You'd call the police and have them arrested. And that’s what we need to do when wrong thoughts come to our minds. We must stop them and take them captive before they take us captive. The best time to do that is the moment the first wrong thought tries to enter our minds, because when we allow a thought to have space, we empower it, and give it a chance to overcome us.

The Bible says, ‘Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you’ (James 4:7 NIV). On our own, we don’t have the power to resist Satan. But the moment we call on God and submit our will to Him, we’re more than a match for Satan, because we have God’s strength and power to rely on, not just our own. We get to decide who'll control our minds: ‘The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace’ (Romans 8:6 NIV).

When a thought keeps turning over and over in your mind, ask yourself, ‘What direction is this thought leading me in? Is it towards something spiritually harmful, or towards “life and peace”’? If you realise you've failed to keep a wrong thought out, don't give up. Take an honest look back and ask yourself, ‘What was I thinking that led to it getting through? Was I around people who had a bad influence on me? Was I in the wrong place, or the wrong mindset? Have I been neglecting God at all recently?’ In the long run, monitoring your mind will really pay off.

What Now?

What’s playing on your mind at the moment? Have a check-up to see if it’s leading you away from trusting God (in which case, ask Him to help you change your thought-direction), or if it’s taking you on a path towards ‘light and peace’.