This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

This is day two together of our look at 2nd Corinthians 10. Yesterday we began
to look at how you and I face some of those strongholds in our lives and find
victory in Christ. The weapons we fight with are meekness and gentleness and
this divine power to demolish strongholds.

And we began to talk about how you do that, how strongholds get demolished, but
we didn't look at verse 5 yet. Verse 5 is where Paul gets very practical about
this and he lays it out for us. How do you demolish those strongholds, those
places of a continuing sin, of a continuing jealousy, a continuing attitude, a
continuing pride, a continuing unforgiveness in your life?

How do you break that down? 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. This verse, verse 5, tells us that demolishing
strongholds is something that happens in your thoughts.

The Bible tells us very clearly that you are responsible for your thoughts. Now
you're not responsible for all the thoughts that are around you and in some ways
our minds are like a radio. We are being bombarded by different frequencies all
the time.

Selfish frequencies, kind frequencies, lustful, loving, joyful, depressed. All
our lives, all these thoughts are flowing all around us and they're even flowing
in our minds all of the time. Some of them are temptations, some of them are
invitations to do something good.

You are not responsible for all the noise, you're not responsible for every
tempting thought that you have, but we are responsible for what we choose to
tune into. Being a believer in Christ, here is the awesome thing about becoming
a believer in Christ. It gives you the power to change the station.

It gives you the power to tune into something different and Paul here says when
you tune into something different you can begin to demolish those strongholds
and he's very, very clear about how this happens. He says here's what we
demolish, we demolish arguments and we demolish pretensions. The word arguments
here in the Greek has the idea of false reasoning.

Sometimes we falsely reason ourselves into a sin. We falsely reason ourselves
into a selfishness. Well they got that so I should get that and our mind keeps
going down this same pattern of false reasoning.

The truth of God's word has the power to demolish that. It demolishes false
reasoning and it also demolishes pretensions. Now this word pretensions is the
word in Greek hoopsoma and it really has the idea of height, something that is
high that's built high.

And the idea here is something that's high sounding, well that sounds like a
good idea. That makes me feel better about myself but actually it's a high
barrier that needs to be brought down. Now the worst of these in the world today
is this high sounding thought that you can do anything you want.

You're God actually. Many people go after that because it makes them at the
beginning feel powerful in themselves but the end of that is building a barrier
between them and God that has to be brought down. Paul says we have the power to
do that.

We have the power to demolish strongholds and then he says we also have the
power to capture something. These have to go together. Demolishing goes along
with capturing.

Once it's demolished, the wall is demolished, then you have to capture the city.
We have the power to capture every thought to make it obedient. You may have
played that game when you were a kid, capture the flag where the whole goal is
for one team to capture the flag of another and great energy goes in to getting
to that flag, capturing it and taking it back across your line.

Well this is not a game. This is capturing our thoughts for obedience. This is
capturing our thoughts for a changed life.

I really appreciated what somebody on our research team said about this,
capturing every thought to make it obedient to Christ. They said I am totally
intimidated by the phrase we are taking every thought captive to the obedience
of Christ. I don't know if I can ever come close to that as my mind wanders and
meanders all day long.

I love that honest statement because so many of us face that. How do we capture
every thought when our thoughts just seem to be firing in so many different
directions? How do you take thoughts captive for obedience?

How do you make it more than a game? How do you make it more than just some high
sounding thing that you're never going to reach? Let me just walk through some
things that you can do today to capture your thoughts to make them obedient to
Christ.

Four specific things. You ask God to cleanse your mind of sin. One of the ways
you capture your thoughts for obedience to Christ is to say Lord cleanse my mind
of sin.

Forgive me for all the sin that I know and show me things that I'm not seeing
right now. You cannot take, let me just say this to you, you cannot take away
the memories of a sin that you committed but you can ask God to cleanse you of
that sin. Cleanse you in his presence.

The facts are the minute you ask Jesus Christ to forgive you, he became a
believer, he cleansed you of all sin in your life, past, present and future. But
as a believer you need to continually go back to him and remind yourself of that
cleansing. Or remind myself that you cleanse me of sin because of the cross.

Now I know as I talk to people about this they have a couple of concerns, just
honest concerns of living a pure life cleansed of sin. There are some who think
well I'm sort of concerned that that's going to make me like this really
namby-pamby kind of a person and people are going to look down on me because of
this. This concern about not knowing what's going on in the world.

This concern of I'm hiding my head in the sand. Well let me just say concerning
about hiding your head in the sand is not an excuse to stick your head in the
mud. I was going to say toilet which might be more appropriate but let me just
say mud.

The truth of the matter is you're not going to know more about this world by
involving yourself in the sin of this world. That is the kind of false reasoning
that we have to demolish. That's Satan's thinking.

The only way to really know more about this world is to know better the God who
made this world to understand him better. So you don't have to be concerned
about that. A greater concern that I think a lot of people have is I'm going to
go to God and I'm going to say will you cleanse me of this sin but what if I sin
again?

Well first of all it's not if. You're a human being. We do struggle with sin,
every one of us.

But the idea that I'm not going to go to him for cleansing because I might sin
again, that's That's like saying I can't take a shower because I might get dirty
again. If you sin again then you go to him and you remind yourself of his
cleansing again. But the longer you wait the more you stink and the further you
feel from him.

In a spiritual kind of way you feel separate from him. So you go to him for
cleansing. That's one of the keys to taking every thought captive.

First thing you do, ask God to cleanse your mind of sin. Second thing you do is
you meditate upon the truths of the Bible. You just think about God's truth.

The word meditation, it's like a cow chewing its cud. It chews it and it gets
the most nutrition possible that it can out of it. It swallows it, then it
regurgitates it, sorry if you're eating lunch right now or dinner or whatever.

And then it chews it again to get even more nutrition out of it. Meditation is
getting the most you can out of God's word. Sometimes many times in today's
world we confuse this word.

Meditation is not losing your mind to the universe. Meditation is focusing your
mind on the truth of God. That's biblical meditation.

It's like a camera that focuses the lens just right so you can see things
clearly. That's meditating on the truths of the Bible. So you meditate on God's
truth.

You ask God to cleanse your mind of sin. The third thing you do is you value
God. You value God.

You think about the value of who God is. How do you value something? You value
something when you're willing to give it what's valuable to you.

I can't say I value God unless I'm giving to him what's valuable to me. My time,
my money, my talents, I give back to him what's valuable to me. And when I'm
afraid to do that and I make the choice to do that, that's one of the ways in
your life that you're focusing your mind on God, that you're taking every
thought captive to make it obedient.

It's thinking about the value of God in your life and valuing him back by giving
to him. And then a fourth thing you do is you praise God. You praise God for
what he's doing in this world.

The Bible says if anything is praiseworthy, let your mind dwell on this. There's
many ways to do this, but let me just remind you of one today. One way to praise
God for what he's doing in this world is to look for what's best in people, in
God's people, to look for what's admirable in God's people.

Who made people? God made people. To love God, it says all throughout the
Scriptures, to love God, especially the New Testament, you have to love people,
to love God with your thoughts, to take every thought captive to make it
obedient to Christ, to love God, you have to love people.

Let me just tell you, and I know this from personal experience, it is easy to
see the faults in others, but loving God involves looking for what's best in
others. You don't have to lie about the fact that they have faults. We all have
faults.

It's easy to see the faults. That's the easiest thing in the world to do. You
just balance that out by looking for something good in that person.

They haven't yet come to faith in Christ, looking for what could happen in their
life if they came to faith in Christ, looking at the talents and abilities that
they do have that God could use. If they've come to faith in Christ, looking at
what God is doing in their life, how they're growing, how they're changing, you
look for what's good in others. So right now as we close today, as we close in
prayer, let's just do these four things in prayer together.

Just in a prayerful heart toward God, say, "God, cleanse me of sin. And Lord,
help me to focus on Your truth, the truth of Your Word. Just bring Your Word to
my mind today as I walk through the day, or let me open up Your Word and see it
today.

Father, I want You to know how much I value You, who You are, Your character,
Your goodness, Your grace, Your power. So help me to give back to You today in
the way that I use my time, the way that I use my money, the way that I use my
talents. Help me to give back to You, to see myself as doing that, to see my
life as a stewardship before You.

And Lord, help me to live with an attitude of praise. Every time I see what's
wrong in somebody's life, help me to also look for what's good in their life and
to pray for them in that moment. Jesus, it seems like an impossible goal to take
every thought captive for obedience to You.

But Lord, I'm willing to work on it, because I know You're willing to work in
me. So just one thought at a time today, help me to take those thoughts captive.
Because I know You love me, and I know in Your love for me, You can change me.

So I pray, I pray that this would be the start of an exciting new journey in my
life today. In Your name, I pray these things. Amen.

Tomorrow, we're going to talk together about how to look past the surface of
things.