captive

Opening Prayer: Thank you, Lord Jesus, for your word and your Spirit.  Help us to immerse ourselves in your truth, so that we become more and more like you every day.  Amen.

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 10:1-5

Journal: What does it look like to take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ?  How can we keep from doing the opposite?

Reflection: God’s desire is that we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ (2 Cor. 10:5), and, yet, what we seem to be doing in this day and age is to take God captive to our own thoughts of him and make him obedient to us.  Forcing him to bend to our own will and reason and intellect, to our own thoughts and feelings, in an effort to create a God that is more acceptable to our world, to our postmodern culture, and to ourselves than the God of the Scriptures.

     It is the tendency of the intellect to say, “Unless I can understand it, unless it makes sense to me, it must not be true.”  Which takes God captive, and subjects and imprisons him to our own ability to understand and comprehend him.  Or, as I am more often guilty of, to make God the captive of our feelings.  It is the tendency of the emotions to rest our certainty and our perception of what is true on whether it feels right and true or not. 

     The only problem is that any God who is created by us, is no God at all, but merely a fabrication, a creation of our own thoughts, feelings, and preferences.  The product of a manufactured theology meant only to suit our own tastes, an apologetic crafted to defend our own opinions, and a narrative spun to make God into who and what we want him to be, rather than allowing him to be the wild and free and untamable God that he is.  We must stop making God bend to us, rather than bowing down in awestruck wonder and dumbfounded amazement before him.  We must get back to taking captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 

Prayer

Closing Prayer: Forgive us, O Lord, when we try to make you the captive of our thoughts and feelings, rather than taking every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ.  Help us to hold fast to your word and your truth, by the power of your Holy Spirit, so that we will become more and more like you, rather than trying to make you more and more like us.  Amen.