Pornified Mind: Reclaiming your thought life—Part 1

If you’ve been engaging pornography for any length of time, you have a toxic waste dump in your mind that takes time and intentionality to clean up. Over the next few video blogs, I’ll be talking about important steps you need to take to begin decontaminating your mind.

First, 2 Corinthians 10:5 tells us to take every thought captive to obey Christ. What does this mean? If you’re anything like me, it’s meant, “Bad Dave, don’t think that thought. You need to start thinking holy thoughts right now.” I don’t know about you, but that approach hasn’t been particularly helpful for me.

2 Corinthians 10 is talking about spiritual warfare and the reality that the battle is happening inwardly. We’re called to destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God. With that in mind, think about how unhelpful the “bad Dave” approach actually is. According to the New Testament, who is the accuser of the brothers? The enemy! When we respond to our temptations with that type of thinking, berating ourselves with thoughts of failure, our worthlessness, etc., we’re ironically playing right into his hands. He wants us isolated, feeling guilt and condemnation.

In contrast, God’s goal is to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth. He’s all about relationship, wanting us to live out of our union with him. The enemy wants us to feel isolated and alone. God wants us to rest in the hope that we’re reconciled to him, and therefore able to approach the throne of grace with confidence, to receive mercy and find grace to help in our time of need.

All this is to say, taking your thoughts captive means to lasso this thought, bring it into the throne room, and consider it before the King. The goal is not to allow the space in your head to be alone space. You need to be increasingly and self-consciously sharing your thoughts with your loving heavenly Father and your elder brother, who reigns as King over the universe. And this is exactly what the enemy does not want you to do.

So if you want your mind renewed, the first step is to be aware that you need to engage God with your temptations. When the thoughts come, bring them into the throne room. Don’t run from him. Don’t shrink away in guilty isolation. Acknowledge the temptation. Talk to him about how you struggle with intrusive thoughts, and know that he is a present help to you in that trouble. Ask Jesus for his thoughts. Ask him to help you understand the context for this temptation. We’ll talk more about the specifics of this in the next couple of videos.