Take Every Thought Captive II

I think I made the point in the first devotional in this series that our thoughts lead to our emotions which lead to our attitudes which lead to our actions. So we need to think about our thinking and learn to think well.

Before we get into that, let's look at how our brains work. This is going to be vastly simplified, and comes from a variety of sources:

1. Our thoughts come in the "doorway," the thalamus, and send a message to the cerebral cortex that a message is coming through. It kind of searches for related memories.
2. Then they go to the hypothalamus, the brain of our endocrine system, which shoots out a chemical message in response to the thought or our 5 senses. The hypothalamus produces hormones which control: body temperature, hunger, moods, emotions, release of hormones from many glands, sex drive, sleep, and thirst.
3. Then they go to the amygdala, which is kind of a large library full of the emotional perceptions we have stored.

What we can do, to take every thought captive (2 Corinthians 10:4-5) is: 1) not react immediately when the emotion shoots through our body; 2) take the "book" off the "shelf" and acknowledge what we're feeling; 3) and if the thought is toxic, we simply replace the book on the shelf.

In practice it looks like this: The other day, I was doing a zillion and one things to prepare for Saturday at church. I was teaching three classes in the afternoon and was pleasantly buzzed as I got ready for them. When it was five minutes away from time to leave, I had 15 minutes of things to do. I knew Mike would be tapping his watch and defensive anger shot through me. I took the "book off the shelf" and said to myself, "Ok, self, you're angry because you had so much to do and Mike didn't have so much to do. Well, that's your own fault - you agreed to teach those classes." Then I put the book back, the anger dissipated quickly, and the day wasn't ruined by my bad attitude.