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Have you ever thought about your thoughts? Sometimes when we start to examine our own thoughts, it can feel like a tangled web of good thoughts and not-so-good thoughts. One step in untangling our thoughts is testing whether a thought is really true.

I’ll tell you about a thought I had and how I tested it.

When My Thoughts Looked Like a Dreary Basket of Eggs

I was praying with my prayer partner this week and feeling sleepy. I drifted off and had this image in my head: a sad-looking basket of pastel-colored eggs sitting on a picnic table next to a man who was smoking. One or two of the eggshells were broken. The scene was dark and dreary.

It didn’t seem important at first, but then I asked God whether there was any meaning to it. As my friend and I kept praying about our lives, the eggs reminded me of a situation I was helping my daughter with.

I realized the egg image in my head was not how we usually picture pretty eggs: bright, cheery, and full of potential. Instead they were dreary and dismal, like my thoughts about my daughter’s situation.

Every time I wondered how her conflict with her friend would be resolved, I felt weighed down and sad. But the thought came to me that God doesn’t feel that way about our troubles. If I had his thoughts, I’d probably be thinking about all the hopeful ways we could nurture that relationship.

Maybe you’ve had a problem that feels like that. Every time you come back to it, your thoughts end up in the same heavy place. It’s not like I was failing to trust God. I’d just assumed I was seeing the situation clearly without realizing my perspective was tainted.

I’m Not About the Detective Work

Many Christians think spiritual warfare means noticing the devil’s attack, rebuking him, and then walking in biblical truth. But I don’t want my relationship with God to turn into detective work about the enemy. I want to rely on the Holy Spirit to do the intel for me.

First Peter 5:8 says, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” Peter doesn’t say we have to understand every scheme before we can fight back.

By being aware and vigilant, without being hypervigilant, we notice where God’s fighting for us and let him turn on the lightbulb of biblical truth. When the lights come on, the darkness simply melts away.

The Part of My Thinking That Was Actually True

Here’s how self-awareness from the Holy Spirit helped me take dark thoughts captive in my situation. Every time I wondered whether my daughter’s conflict would be resolved, I felt weighed down and sad. I was unknowingly giving my child a diminished view of friendship and conflict resolution, and I was using the failed friendships in my own past as a pattern for what might happen again.

Whenever we’ve been hurt, our minds start asking, “What does this mean for me?” And here’s the part of my thinking that was actually true.

I had stopped putting my whole heart into my friendships because of frequent moving. I had also failed at resolving many of my personal conflicts because of worldview differences. I’d finally let my hope for close friendships wither, as I realized that God is the only dependable source of true love.

Looking back, I see those disappointments were real. The lessons I learned about God during my spiritual battles were important. But somewhere along the way, that disappointment started clouding my expectation of what God wants for me now. That’s when I realized my thinking had become twisted.

Have you ever noticed that the most convincing lies in your head are the ones mixed in with what’s actually true? When my assumptions come from real history and partial truth, they can feel like my own, quite reasonable point of view.

And that’s why I needed God to step in with the lightbulb. I couldn’t just spot the lies, rebuke the enemy and walk in truth. Even though I didn’t realize it, I wasn’t really expecting God to give us a good way forward in my daughter’s situation. And without his good plans, the situation looked dismal.

What the Bible Says About Twisted Thoughts

The Bible shows us where twisted thoughts come from. In John 13:2, the devil had “put” the intention to betray Jesus into Judas’s heart. In 2 Corinthians 11:3, Paul says that a Christian’s thoughts can be led astray as the serpent deceived Eve.

You can probably think of other places in the Bible where the enemy brought in lie-based thinking. But the Bible doesn’t exactly explain how to know when it’s happening.

Your feelings are there to tell you something important about what’s happening inside you. Once you notice yucky feelings, ask God for help. He wants to turn on the lightbulb that brightens up your egg basket.

For me, the heaviness wasn’t just about my circumstances. It was giving me an alert about the way I was seeing it.

If You Feel Weighed Down When You Pray

If you feel weighed down when you pray, it may not be because the weight of the world’s on your shoulders. It may be because what you’re experiencing is not a realistic view of the world. It could be a twisted interpretation of reality shaped by past experience and mixed with some of the enemy’s lies.

I felt God was showing me that he saw a bright potential for my situation, while I saw it through the lens of failures in the past. Based on those failures, I was likely to give my daughter a dreary hope for conflict resolution and long-term friendship.

It started to feel like I was inhaling the enemy’s viewpoint like cigarette smoke, just like the guy next to the egg basket in my image. Once I noticed that this thinking was not only dim but yucky, I realized God had a much better point of view.

What Happens When God Turns On the Lightbulb?

Do you want to be able to tell the difference between the way the enemy is influencing your thoughts and what God wants to show you? If you do, the first thing to ask isn’t, “Where is this thought coming from?” It’s, “What’s this thought leading me to believe about my Father?”

Because here’s the thing: the enemy’s lies are there to cause doubt about God’s character in his relationship with you. This doubt will make your teamwork with the Holy Spirit feel less satisfying.

So how do you know what teamwork with the Holy Spirit is supposed to feel like? The lightbulb I sensed from God matched what he had already been teaching me, it agreed with his character in Scripture, and it showed me how to move forward with wisdom.

Here are a few questions for testing your own teamwork with the Holy Spirit:

1. What is this thought leading me to believe about the way God treats me?
2. Does this agree with what Scripture shows us about him?
3. Does this way of thinking draw me to enjoy our relationship, or move me away from it?

When we love God and receive his love wholeheartedly, our actions line up with how he works. Even when the path forward isn’t clear, our faith journey gives us reminders that God’s moving. Noticing those and writing them down takes effort, but it shows us that we’re succeeding with him.

And that’s the incredibly useful role of prayer journaling.

How I Knew God Was Teaming Up With Me

Here’s how I knew God was teaming up with me in my prayer life this week. First, he started a conversation. Even though I didn’t think anything about the egg image at first, I thought I’d just ask anyway.

Then he reminded me that his thoughts aren’t dismal. He didn’t create me to live in defeat. My failures to invest in long-term friendships because of frequent moving, my failures to resolve conflicts because of worldview differences, and finally letting my hope for close friendships wither caused heavy discouragement.

The lightbulb came on when I remembered what he’s shown me from the Bible. He doesn’t get weary and live in discouragement. And finally, this showed me how to move forward with his wisdom. If the future in God’s mind is clean and bright, I can keep asking him to resolve my daughter’s friendship.

The Ask, Write, Test Process

Here’s the basic Ask, Write, Test process I teach for listening to God’s voice. Ask God what he wants you to know and write down any thoughts that come to mind, whether they seem important or not.

Then test those thoughts by what you know of God from Scripture. Ask yourself whether this is something he would say to you if he were sitting next to you.

What Changes When We Expect God to Be Involved?

So what changes in our lives when we start acting as though God wants to partner with us through his invisible presence? We might start talking when no one’s around but him. We start feeling like there’s purpose in life, and we’re here to enjoy it.

Things that felt boring and irrelevant start to make sense as lights turn on. We start assuming that God’s involved and active in the parts of our lives that feel discouraging.

Because here’s what we know: the enemy can only interfere wherever God lets him. I don’t know any other way of thinking about spiritual warfare that brings more joy and peace.

Every time I wondered whether the conflict would ever be resolved, I felt weighed down and sad instead of imagining all the hopeful ways we could try to restore the relationship. Knowing God saw those hopeful ways reversed the negative thinking without having to cast out the devil.

This Isn’t About Positive Thinking

Vulnerability is not culpability. When you realize you’ve fallen for a negative way of thinking, just let God correct it and move on. There’s no point in feeling bad about it if God’s not feeling bad about it.

Of course, not every discouraging thought is leading you astray. There’s a difference between feeling sad because of a loss and letting that sadness take away our hopes for the future.

When an image or song comes to mind during prayer, let it remind you of what God’s been showing you in the Bible. It’s not the image but the Scripture that will straighten that twisted thinking into the pure truth.

Aligning with God’s bright point of view doesn’t mean denying our pain. It actually does the opposite. It allows us to feel sad for what we’ve missed out on by not experiencing the truth. Then it brings happiness because we don’t have to miss out on that anymore.

Forcing optimism is a scam. Sometimes Christians use positive thinking to avoid processing their emotions. It’s much safer and healthier to notice what we’re feeling and ask questions in our prayer journal to find out more.

Remember, if you feel anxious to make sure you’re doing this all right, you can take that anxiety right into your journal and talk about it with God. Noticing what needs to be brought into your conversation with God is always the first step of effective spiritual warfare.

Let’s Pray This

Lord, I’m so glad you know exactly what to do about the challenges I’m facing. I can relax completely in your love and care. Thank you that I can trust you to keep me vigilant to notice lies from the enemy that affect my relationship with you.

I receive the joy and peace that comes from simply trusting that you’ll figure it all out. In Jesus’ name, amen.

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Next Steps:

Get our free “Hearing God Starter Kit” and learn the journaling process featured in this episode at:

Sophiculture.com/guide

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