If thieves came to your door, would you invite them in? No, you’d call the police and have them arrested. And that’s what you need to do when wrong thoughts come to your mind! Take them captive—before they take you captive. And you must do it the moment the first one tries to enter your mind. When you entertain a thought, you empower it, and it will overcome you.

The Bible says, ‘Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.’ (James 4:7 NIV) On your own you don’t have the power to resist Satan, so don’t try it! But the moment you call on God and submit your will to Him, you’re more than a match for Satan. You get to decide who will control your mind: ‘The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.’ (Romans 8:6 NIV)

When a thought keeps turning over and over in your mind, ask yourself, ‘What direction is this thought leading me in? Is it towards spiritual death, or towards “life and peace”’? Think about it: you don’t buy insurance after a storm has flattened your house. If you’re wise, you do it before the storm comes. So instead of failing and saying, ‘I’ll never be any different,’ look back and ask yourself, ‘What was I thinking that led to my failure? Was I in the wrong company, or the wrong place, or the wrong mindset? Have I been reading God’s Word and praying regularly? Have I built my life around people who strengthen me?’ In the long run, monitoring your mind pays great dividends!