How many things from the past do you ruminate about? How many things in the future are you prestressing about? Our thought habits and patterns have developed over our entire lives which means, we are going to now look at those thoughts and begin to partner with the Holy Spirit to practice better ones. 

Chronic pain in the body is an epidemic of fear in the mind. Did you know that the brain processes physical pain and emotional pain in the exact same place? So, if we are having unhealthy thoughts that are repeated over and over and over in our mind, they may be keeping the brain and nervous system in a state of panic. This state of panic keeps the pain going in your body.

We must learn how our thoughts are deeply intertwined with our pain so we can learn how to change the thoughts. Once the thoughts are changed, the pain goes away. Does this mean you have to become the healthiest human on the planet who has perfect thoughts and never has to worry about fear again? Of course not, that’s just what being human means. But, when we have these intense emotions and thoughts rise up, we’ve learned how to calm our brain and nervous system in a way that doesn’t cause us to have to be in pain.

We can create a home in ourselves for all of our thoughts and emotions to reside. We look at them through a biblical lens and allow God to show us how to be with the thoughts that may be harder to change. This isn’t about changing overnight; this is about becoming our own best friend again and realizing that many of the unhealthy thought patterns we’ve developed have been a way to protect ourselves. These unhealthy thoughts are even one way we’ve learned to love ourselves because our certain hatred of ourselves feels safer than the uncertainty of what others think about us. This goes deep and the Bible is really incredibly healing when we realize that taking thoughts captive heals our mind, body and soul.