-“…My sheep listen to my voice; I know them and they follow me…”
–John 10:27
-“…What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go look for the one that wandered off?…”
–Matthew 18:12
-Good Shepherd, You have a wild and crazy sheep in love with thorns and brambles. But please don’t get tired of looking for me! I know You won’t. For You have found me.
–from the journals of Thomas Merton, 1948
-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
I slammed my Bible shut, and rolled my eyes (I mean…lifted my eyes heavenward)…
Yeah, yeah, yeah…blah, blah, blah…I know, I know, I know! I need to “take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ.”
HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO DO THAT?!?!
My brain is like the love child of the Energizer Bunny and a squirrel, hopped up on espresso!
My thoughts are a stampede of rabid lemmings, intent on launching themselves over an abyss of distraction…or despair…at the slightest provocation.
Uff da.
Upon serious (and relatively calm) reflection, however…came this answer…
But God.
How am I supposed to do that?
I’m not. I can’t. But God can.
I groaned. “Oh, no, this is one of those ‘trust-in-Me-growth-opportunity’ moments, isn’t it?”
It was not necessary for Him to directly respond to that question; His silence rang loud and clear.
I kneeled down, and raised up my two-word prayer…”Lord, help.”
He started by reminding me to THINK…
Is the thought True, Helpful, Inspiring, Necessary, Kind?
Then, some wisdom from the Word…
Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. (Philippians 4:8)
“Okay, Lord…You’ve given me some awesome tools of discernment here…what else?”
“Well, Shelbo…if you could stifle the theatrical expressions and outbursts…much as they entertain Me…perhaps we could look at Second Corinthians again?”
I nodded vigorously…bowed over the pages with, um, proper reverence…read…and SAW.
This is a war, and my head is the battlefield. For me, the toughest part of this fight is the whole “stillness thing.” I just want to gallop in, a la Braveheart, with the war cry and the war paint and a Sledge-O-Matic, pulverizing those thoughts like so many watermelons. But the verse says, “Take captive every thought…”
Not “Chase down each ‘bad thought’ and annihilate it from the face of the earth, screaming ‘Adios, suckahhhh!!!’ before returning to all the (other 99) sweet, docile ‘good thoughts.'”
Would I do that to a poor, confused, misled lemming?
To a little lost sheep?
The Lord didn’t do that to me.
And, yo! look at the second part of the verse…
“…to make it obedient to Christ.”
Not to me. To Him.
An illustration (because they’re fun!)…
Occasionally, a sheep-thought will wander across my mind…
“Chick, you accepted the Lord as your Savior thirty-five years ago! You’re still dealing with this…that…that? You’re still doing, saying, thinking…”
There it goes, heading for the cliff (or at best, the spiney thicket) with a few buddies ambling behind it…
This time, I don’t move. I don’t try to coax or bully that sheep-thought back with guilt or shame or logic or any other human method. Instead, I seek the Shepherd…
“Lord, help.”
He gives it a kiss on the head, and a gentle swat on the butt, and back it scampers.
I’ll tell you what, it’s way more pleasant now in my inner landscape. I can actually relax in the pasture, and simply marvel at the beauty of His creation and the miracle of life. No condemnation, no chaos. No pressure. Just peace.
I can gaze at my flock of thoughts with steadfast love…
Just as my Savior gazes at me.