Chronic Illness
It says in Proverbs 23:7 “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he:” If a person will develop control in their thinking they can have victory over their emotional life. There are two passages of scripture that give us some clear direction on how to gain this control over the thought life. The first of these passages is in 2 Corinthians 10:4-6 “(For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) 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; And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled.” You do not have to allow the strong holds of anxiety, grief, loneliness, depression or other emotional responses have a place in your mind. You can have victory over them by following the three step process found in this text. First, cast down the wrong imaginations that you have been entertaining. Don’t let your mind run wild into all the possible scenarios that could take place or into the poor me’s. Determine not to dwell in negative thinking so that you don’t make your bad situation worse with emotional problems. Casting down wrong imaginations means that you refuse to entertain the thinking about the negative side of your problems.
The second step shown here is to capture your thinking. It says “bringing into captivity every thought”. Captured thinking means that you not only reject the negative thoughts but you purposely determine what you are going to think about. I will give you some tools to accomplish this in just a moment, but I want to lay the foundation here that directed thinking will help you to avoid the situation where your mind constantly runs to the negative. Captured thinking says, I will decide what my mind will dwell on, I will decide where my thoughts are directed. You cannot control the illness, you cannot control the pain but you can control your mind and when you have control over your mind you restore a central element that chronic issues rob people of which is the feeling of having control in their life.
The third step in 2 Corinthians 10 is to correct wrong thinking. It uses the phrase, “having a readiness to revenge all disobedience”, this means that some of the wrong thinking that you have allowed may have embedded itself in your natural responses. You will have to root out any negative natural responses and reject them for the right biblical responses that you are going to put in their place. Often we don’t realize just how much of our thinking and reaction is based upon our past thoughts and wrong beliefs. You will want to search out those wrong beliefs and replace them with right ones so that you will not fall back into the trap of negative thinking.
