If you struggled with OCD as a Christian, you’ve probably heard people talk about taking your thoughts captive and making them obedient to Christ. I wanna take a deep dive into the scripture today.
Hello and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD with Carrie Bock. I’m a Christ follower, wife and mother, licensed professional counselor who helps Christians struggling with OCD get to a deeper level of healing. When I couldn’t find resources for my clients with OCD, God called me to bring this podcast to you.
With practical tools for developing greater peace, we’re here to bust through the shame and stigma surrounding struggling with OCD as a Christian, sharing hopeful stories of healing and helping you replace uncertainty with faith. I’m here to help you. Let go of the past and future to walk in the present abundant life God has for you.
So let’s dive right into today’s episode. I’m gonna start by reading Second Corinthians 10, three through five in the ESV. For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.
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. Whenever we’re looking at scripture and we’re trying to pick apart, what is God saying to me here? What does it actually mean? First of all, we need to look at the context of who’s writing, who are they writing to?
What’s going on in this section of scripture? So let’s just take a broad overview. Paul is writing to the Corinthian church. This is his second letter to them. I’ve said it before that if there was a reality TV show about Christians that were a hot mess express, the Corinthians would’ve been on it.
Remember they were new believers coming from a Pagan culture, trying to figure out how to live as Christians. Now, how do we do this Christianity thing that Paul has told us about When we look at the chapter before, it doesn’t really give us a whole lot of context clues. Paul is talking in chapter nine about how he’s taking up this collection for Jerusalem and is talking about giving generously.
I like to look at the chapter before, because we have to remember the chapter and verse markers were put in later so that we could all find our spot. But it was originally just one long letter. Right? But in early in chapter 10, we see that Paul is responding to a couple different things that were said about them.
I’m assuming that these were said by people within the Corinthians community or even within the Corinthians Church in verse one, he’s saying, Paul, who am timid, timid when face-to-face with you, but quote, bold towards you when you are away. This leads us to believe that people were saying, Hey Paul.
You’re kind of gentle and meek when you’re here, but when you write us letters, you’re really hard and harsh and just bold towards us. Then in verse two, Paul says, I beg you that when I come, I may not have to be as bold as I expect to be towards some people who think that we live by the standards of this world.
So that’s another accusation. People are saying, Paul, you’re not living by the spirit. You’re living according to the standards of this world. This leads him into verse three that I quoted before. Though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. So he’s setting up the stage for talking about the difference between fleshly arguments, fleshly wars that people have, versus spiritual battles and spiritual arguments that come up.
If we wanna look at a parallel passage, you can go to Ephesians six where it talks about the armor of God. And in verse 12, it says, for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of the dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
So we know that as Christians, these verses are telling us that our biggest battles are going to be in the spiritual realm, and that in order to fight those spiritual battles, we have to be, as Ephesians six says, armored with the armor of God. So let’s talk about that for just a microsecond, because we could spend a ton of time talking about the armor of God.
But when we’re talking specifically about our thought process, you need to remember that we have the helmet of salvation in battle. Your head is a very important aspect to. Our head and our heart. Obviously, if one of those things gets knocked out, we’re not going to survive. In the armor of God. We have the helmet of salvation to protect our head, and for a offensive weapon, we have the sword of the spirit, which is a word of God.
For a defensive weapon, we have the shield of faith, which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Verse 16, being really secure in your salvation, protects your head, protects your mind knowing I am the Lord. He loves me. He died for me. I am saved. I am his. That is amazing. And then this shield of faith of knowing that there are gonna be many things that come at us.
Sometimes our own thought process of things that aren’t true and aren’t in line with the Lord and what he is told us in his word. And that shield of faith, that belief and rest and trust in Christ is gonna extinguish the flaming arrows of evil. Both of these things that I just talked about that are in Ephesians six, there are gifts, guys like these spiritual weapons and spiritual armor.
These are gifts from God. Salvation is a gift we can’t produce. Salvation. Faith is a gift from God. We can exercise our faith after God gives it to us, but it’s God who draws us into this love story is God who has rescued us. It’s God who has caused us to be able to believe in him in the first place.
There’s so much effort that I see Christians with OCD trying to exert in an effort to live out their faith, and I would just encourage you to remind yourself that there’s so much that doesn’t depend on you. We can’t forget that our part is obedience to what God has already done for us. We are not working our way towards God.
That’s religion. That’s not the gospel. We are abiding and responding to the finished work on the cross, and we are surrendering our lives one day at a time, taking up our cross to follow Jesus every day. Okay, so let’s flip back to second Corinthians 10. I know maybe seem like I’m jumping around, but sometimes this is what you need to do when you study scripture is to look for other places that similar things are mentioned, and I’m gonna jump to another scripture later.
But when we look at this idea of. Taking thoughts captive and making them obedient to Christ, demolishing arguments. I think that when we look at this, we think, okay, so a thought comes into my mind. It’s a thought that’s not godly. It’s a sinful thought. It’s something that God doesn’t want me to think about or focus on.
And I immediately have to hop on it and squash it like a bug. Like it’s just gotta go. I’ve got to rebuke that thought in the name of Jesus. And these are the things that OCD really latches into and they become very compulsive. And as a Christian, you’re trying to figure out, how do I follow my faith while at the same time not giving into the OCD compulsive behavior of this praying repeated prayers or rebuking thoughts or shaking your head to get them outta your mind.
There’s so many different avenues that this can go towards, but those are the things that we’re trying to prevent while also staying aligned with our faith. I really would encourage you to search the scriptures for a verse that says that we choose everything that pops into our head. I can promise you that it’s not there.
So while we have guidance in the scriptures about dealing with our thought process. Obviously that’s important because sometimes our thoughts do turn into actions. However, there are many, many times that we think about things that we don’t ever do because we check ourselves or we pray about it and we say, oh, no, that is not a good idea.
That’s not a good decision. We talk about it with someone else. I mean, there may be times where you want to eat 10 chocolate chip cookies, but then you think through the consequences of that and you go, I am gonna feel so sick afterwards, and that is not gonna be honoring to my body. So I am not going to do that.
How about one to two cookies? So nowhere in scripture does it say that we have complete thought control as a Christian and that we can control everything that comes into our minds. However, I have spoken to many Christians with OCD who are struggling because they really genuine believe that they should be able to control everything that comes into their mind.
That is not truth, that is a lie. It may have been taught to you somewhere along the lines of Christian teaching. Or you may have inferred it or implied it from some things that you’ve been taught, such as take every thought captive. You cannot control every thought that comes into your mind. In the case of Paul, it’s interesting because he is talking about things that people are actually saying against him.
These are not just thoughts that are coming into his mind about his ministry, but he’s saying, Hey, some of you are saying this about me. Some of you are saying these things about me, that I am bold when I’m away, but I’m not bold when I’m there. In verse seven, he says, you are judging by appearances here and in other places.
Paul is telling us that people were actively trying to discredit his ministry. Why? Because he was preaching the gospel. Who would stand against preaching the gospel? Evil is the short answer, or these spiritual battles that we face in the heavenly places. It’s interesting that Paul brings in the word thoughts here because he’s talking about people who were making verbal arguments against him.
However, I’m wondering if the significance there is that sometimes when people are saying things to us externally that we can and do at times have a tendency to internalize them. There may be things that you have been told throughout your life that you believe that might be completely false or untrue.
You might have all kinds of contrary evidence towards those thoughts. Just like Paul, we can’t believe everything that other people say about us, and we need to remember that in Paul’s case, because he was in ministry and people were trying to discredit him, and he was in a position of leadership. It was really important for him to address these statements or these thoughts.
Now, what does that mean for you as you’re trying to navigate OCD? What does it mean to take a thought captive? The best way that you might be able to do that is simply to leave it alone. And I know that seems really, really hard because it’s against maybe everything that you’ve been taught about your thought process.
And I think it helps if you’re able to not just immediately judge a thought as, this is a good thought, this is a bad thought, but more as something a little bit more neutral of just, this is a thought that I didn’t control. It popped into my mind, and now I have a decision to make. I can either entertain this thought or I can ignore this thought and move on.
If I entertain this thought, even in the sense of rebuking it or praying it away or shaking my head or doing something other kind of mental compulsion, trying to think about a positive thought to replace it, that is much more likely to make the thought hang around longer or to make the thought come back.
So if I can let that thought go, let it pass by, not engage with it. That is a much better way for it to be taken captive and made obedient to Christ versus jumping in and doing something about it. I do realize that some of this stuff may be completely contrary to everything that you’ve heard or been taught by other people.
We also have to remember there’s a difference in dealing with intrusive thoughts and someone else who’s not dealing with intrusive thoughts and how you might respond to certain things. I want to share with you another scripture that I think might help you as you’re going through and discerning how to handle your thought process, and this is really beautiful, I think, for people with OCD who have so much questioning going on.
This is from one Corinthians two, and I’m gonna start in verse 10 and go through the end of the chapter. These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God for who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in Him.
So also, no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.
What this is saying is that we have the ability to understand spiritual things because we have the Holy Spirit inside of us. Speaking those spiritual truths to us. Continuing in verse 14, the natural person does not accept the things of the spirit of God for they are folly to him and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
The spiritual person judges all things but is himself to be judged by no one for who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him, but we have the mind of Christ. This is a really beautiful truth that we have that we can hold onto, is that God has given us the ability to understand spiritual things by putting the Holy Spirit in us, by giving us the mind of Christ.
Once again, this is a gift that you have as a believer in Jesus Christ. And I want you to know that you can walk in that authority and in that freedom, and as you’re working through your OCD journey to let go of the pressure maybe that you’re putting on yourself spiritually to try to control your thought process, the pressure that you’re putting on yourself to have like the perfect thought life because no one has that.
The pressure that you might be putting on yourself to. Suppress these thoughts or handle these thoughts or manage these thoughts and all those things often just feeds the OCD monster and makes everything worse. So every thought that you feel like you’re continuing to have to manage and suppress, and.
It even gets to the point where people get concerned that they’re going to have a thought and they haven’t even had the thought yet. So it’s like we’re not even dealing with the thought. We’re dealing with. The thought of the thought when ICBT calls that thought, thought. Fusion, which is a lot of words, but it’s definitely something that I see a lot in Christians who are struggling with OCD.
I just wanna end this episode in a prayer for you. Maybe you’re just really struggling with your thoughts right now. Dear Jesus, I know that people who are listening to this episode are really desiring to have a healthy relationship with you, a healthy relationship with their thought process. When we ask that you would free them from OCD from. Help them to get the exact treatment that they need so that they can live the abundant life that you’ve promised us in Jesus Christ. Also, always clinging to who that you say that we are loved, chosen, forgiven. When we struggle, remind us that your Holy Spirit is in. Remind everyone listening that we have the mind of Christ.
In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. I thank you so much for tuning in today. I send out a weekly email newsletter that gives you a little bit of behind the scenes of what’s going on here at the podcast, and I really just design it to be a little extra dose of encouragement. When I send out notices of episodes that are coming out, and so I hope that you’ll join us.
Hop onto carriebock.com and sign up for that email list. Keep going, OCD Warriors. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.
