"for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control." - 2 Timothy 1:7 (ESV)
"for God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." - 2 Timothy 1:7 (KJV)
I would like you to take note that the Greek could be translated into what, at first glance, seem to be two very different gifts of the Spirit. And this is only two translations. In the CSB, this word is translated as self discipline, which I find to be a very captivating interpretation because discipline and disciple, quite obviously share the same root. According to Merriam-Webster, "Discipline comes from discipulus, the Latin word for pupil, which also provided the source of the word disciple (albeit by way of a Late Latin sense-shift to 'a follower of Jesus Christ in his lifetime')".
We will be using the King James Version today, primarily, maybe touching on others as we go.
Most of us are probably familiar with heart language, which is used often in Scripture, as well as by many believers (myself included). However, as I have written before, talking about the heart often causes a disconnect, a certain unreachability. After all, as the prophet Jeremiah said, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" (17:9). Our hearts, the seat of passions and desires, are often diffucult to understand because our passions often war against each other.
Our minds, however, are a place we are perhaps all too familar with, and though the Spirit of God is absolutely needed to bring light inside our hearts, we need Him just as much to bring renewal inside our own heads (Romans 12:2). Thoughts are fascinating for many reasons, one of them being that they are not a material thing, but they nonetheless shape how we see the material world around us. Don't you want to invite Christ Jesus to not only dwell in your heart, a place pretty hard to reach on a moment-by-moment basis, but also in your brain, a place where we all need revival too?
Your brain, the place where anxiety, depression, and eating disorders, etc, take up residence inside you, isn't that a place to be renewed? As Micah said, "But as for me, I am filled with power, with the Spirit of the LORD" (3:8). Not only "my heart is filled", not only "my mind is filled", but I am filled. The Spirit does not stay locked up within one's own heart, it fills you, and that is exactly how He pours out of you.
Christ dwells inside believers; mind and heart. Are hearts are not the temple, our body in all its entirety is. "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?" (1 Cor 6:19).
Because of this, we can see the fruit of His Spirit in our own minds, one of those gifts being a sound mind, freedom from fear. Not only freedom, but the ability to demolish fear in all its forms.
"We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." - 2 Corinthians 10:5
Paul implies here that our thoughts are not always our own. In fact, many thoughts we possess are accusitory, and as a result we must measure it against the knowledge of God. We need to examine the thought as it is, its tone, feeling, implications. Anxious thoughts are rooted in a spirit of fear, and do not measure up against what we know about God and what He has given us. They are not of a sound mind, so we can reasonably conclude that that thought is not ours.
To take every thought captive is to pray ceaselessly, it is a practice that paves little neural pathways of submission that look a lot like the narrow path Jesus describes.
Fearful thoughts usually show up loudly, drowning everything and everyone else out. The gift of a sound mind is the gift of a quiet mind. He offers to make our heads, which often seem to be our greatest enemy, a quiet place where His sheep can hear His voice clearly. God, Who often speaks as a still small voice (1 Kings 19:12), must be allowed to quiet the roudy intruders before we can hear Him.
Our thoughts are not our own, but they do shape us, pyschologically and spiritually. And truly, it is of no power of our own by which we are able to demolish evil, but it is only by the Spirit of God.
I am not trying to over simplify some of the very real struggles people have, and I am not promising God will instantly come and heal them all. After all, it's hard; Paul consistantly uses war termanology for a reason, and it's because its that diffucult to fight.
But know this- the voice of the Good Shepherd, however quiet, wields more power than any thought. And so we take it and "make it obediant to Christ" because all fear cowers in the presence of Him, and He is ever present in the minds of those He loves.
Anxiety, the Greek word being merimna, literally means to divide, rip apart, or even to choke.
"...making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth." - Ephesians 1:9–10
While fear rips and tears, it is the plan of Christ, and has been since the beginning, to unite all things in Him.
The Spirit of peace is avaliable to calm and unify the divided, loud, and warring thoughts in our heads, and though it may sound not possible, I can assure you, Christ desires to give us the gift of a sound mind. He wants to come and have His dwelling in you, to come and move and heal and restore all that is broken in you.
And so, we pray. Pray for Jesus to come and have His will done not only in our hearts, but our minds, the location of one of our biggest battles. Pray for His voice to be louder than our own. Pray for the ability to take every thought captive and see it in light of what it actually is, only a thought, which wields no power compared to the power of the Word of God.
Thoughts have no breath in them. But Spirit in the original language literally means wind or breath. The breath of God, the same breath that breathes the Word Himself, is the same one that dwells inside the messy organ that is our brain. The same Wind whose breath created the universe, who holds the power of life and death, wants to breathe death over the evil thoughts inside of you. So, as Paul told the Phillipians, put on the mind of Christ, and let Him speak soundly into your life, and let us recognize His voice more than any others, because we know Him. And nobody, not even cruel thoughts, can ever take us from His hand.
"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand." - John 10:27-78
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