You’re sitting in a comfortable beach chair on a white Caribbean beach. Sea gulls make a ha, ha, ha, ha, sound as they fly overhead. Soft waves break and roll toward the shore.

Suddenly a child standing beside your chair begins to kick sand on you. The kid is having fun and laughing.

Once you realize this kid intends to bury you in sand, you rise to your feet, gently grab the child and walk him over to his mother, who is running in your direction, yelling at the boy.

What you did in that story, you must do with your thoughts. You must remove from your mind every thought that threatens to harm you. And you must replace it with a positive one that strengthens you.

Let me give you a heads-up. If you’ve taken the four steps I’ve written about over the last few months—identified your original design, received and extended forgiveness to others and yourself, repented of sinful thoughts and actions, and expelled an evil spirit, if present—you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the power you possess. Once you’ve cleaned out the dirty room, you’ve also broken the power of evil in your life.

To maintain that freedom you must follow the exhortation of Paul and keep, “taking every thought captive to the obedience to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). The way your brain works is amazing. Once you reject a thought and kick it out every time you confront it, it will disappear, literally. The neural pathway on your brain will vanish. It happens every time you forget a phone number or the face of a friend you haven’t seen in years.

But kicking out the harmful thoughts is only half the solution. Now you must replace it with healthy thoughts. Paul put it this way: “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.” (Philippians 4:8).

Now that you’ve done the work to clean out your soul, work to fill it with godliness.

_{Photo by Ken Teegardin, CC}