How Do We Deal With Unwanted Thoughts?
I was preparing to preach at a DNOW on the topic of peace and rest. One of the major components of this is our thoughts. During research I came across this section of a book entitled A Still and Quiet Mind by Esther Smith. I found it particularly helpful and thought provoking.
Many Christians who deeply struggle with unwanted thoughts are prone to sensitive consciences, perfectionistic tendencies, and black-and-white thinking. They scrutinize themselves closely, examining each thought to see what they find. They develop a heightened awareness of their thoughts and what they imagine the thoughts mean about them. Their guilt, shame, and anxiety don’t dissipate with acknowledgment and confession. They may even grow stronger. When this happens, several explanations are possible.
It’s Possible You Are Experiencing False Guilt over Thoughts That Are Not Sinful
An overly sensitive conscience can lead people to see every unwanted thought as a moral failure. Lingering thoughts of grief that don’t turn to joy can start to feel ungodly. The suffering associated with depressed and anxious thoughts is sometimes mistaken for sin. A struggle to change thoughts after experiencing trauma can look like a stubborn unwillingness to believe the truth of Scripture (more on trauma in chapter 9).
Painful intrusive thoughts that are fueled by physical changes in the body can feel like the unforgiveable sin (more on intrusive thoughts in chapter 10). When we see sin where there is no sin, it leads us to fashion standards for ourselves that God never established. When we fail to live up to these false standards, we are left to drown in anxiety, guilt, and shame. These feelings only serve to fuel the forward momentum of our unwanted thinking patterns.
It’s Possible You Believe Your Thoughts Mean More about You Than They Do
Unwanted thoughts may begin to color your sense of identity. Highly distressing thoughts feel like signs of weakness and failure. Sinful thoughts feel like proof that you are worthless or unforgiveable. Your inability to get past your unwanted thoughts feels like a symbol of how disappointing you must be to God. Fear and self-loathing intensify as your identity becomes centered around thoughts of suffering and sin instead of grounded in your unshakable standing as a child of God.
It’s Possible You Are Relying on Perfect Thinking to Justify Yourself before the Lord
Sometimes acknowledging and confessing our sin doesn’t lead to liberation because we start to act as though we can justify ourselves through perfecting our thinking. We anxiously confess each individual thought of sin, sometimes ten times over, failing to see that this represents a heart set on saving itself. In doing this, we act as though we need to sanctify our thoughts to be right with God, instead of allowing our right standing before God to compel us toward more sanctified thinking.
Do you believe in Jesus and his work on the cross? If so, he has saved you and justified you. Your soul is safe with him. As Jesus is right now—glorified, righteous, and sitting at the right hand of God in heaven—“so also are we in this world” (1 John 4:17).
This means we don’t have to fear. We need not wonder whether our souls are on the line every time a questionable thought crosses our minds. We don’t need to confess out of fear that we may be punished or lose God’s favor in some way; we need Jesus’s love to cast out our fear of what our unwanted thoughts might mean about us (see 1 John 4:17–18).
What does it look like practically for us to let Jesus’s love cast out our fear? Sometimes, it means we become less concerned about whether each of the thousands of individual thoughts we have each day are sinful and more focused on the overall posture of our hearts toward the Lord. Do we believe he loves us? Are we accepting the gospel? Are we resting in his work and his work alone?
Our thoughts will become increasingly sanctified when we start to feel truly safe and unafraid because of the justifying work God has already done on our behalf.
THOUGHTS THAT ARE CAPTURED BY THE GOSPEL
Only one thing can truly help us to overcome both our thoughts that have turned to sin and our thoughts that have become enslaved by guilt, fear, and shame. We must capture our thoughts with the gospel instead.
Esther Smith, A Still and Quiet Mind: Twelve Strategies for Changing Unwanted Thoughts (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2022), 85–87.
Shalom,
Josh.