I love God’s law with all my heart.

But there is another power?? within me that is at war with my mind. 

Rom 7:22-23

I recently read a disturbing article about a church planter wife who literally gave up the fight in the ultimate way, by taking her own life.  I don’t know any details of her life or what would drive her to do such a drastic thing, but we all know too well the pressures of starting and leading a new church.  I was reminded of our need for support, for each other, and for the encouragement to “fight the good fight” (1Tim 6:12) and to “not grow weary in doing good” because we will reap a harvest in the proper time if we don’t lose heart. (Gal 6:9)

But, I’m afraid these “encouragements” might not be the right truth to apply to the wounds of a person who is too far down that road of despair.  I can imagine that “Keep fighting” and “Don’t give up” could feel like a whip cracking on the back of someone who has already given up hope, is tired, despondent and depressed. These words, though powerful reminders, don’t put practical weapons in their hand.  How do you fight the good fight, especially when you are tired, wounded, disheartened and depressed?  I’m just guessing that a vast majority of us have been there, or will be.  We live on the front lines after all.  We are taking ground from the enemy.  Flaming arrows are constantly coming our way.  We didn’t sign up for church planting because we thought it would be easy!

Let me share a practical weapon that I learned to wield from my father and mentor in the faith, Jeff Floyd.  When I have taken time to work through this process, or to help others work through the process, it has truly been transformational.  We know from scripture that we are “transformed by the renewing of our mind” (Rom12:2), so our thoughts are at the center of the battle.  A million things a day stimulate thoughts in us.  Those thoughts are what precipitate a certain action. (If we hadn’t had that particular thought we might not have done that particular action.) That action leads to certain reactions, by us or others around who were acted on.  Those reactions are likely to then stimulate further thoughts in us that cause us to go around the same or a similar path over and over. 

Now this process is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as our thoughts are in line with Christ’s teaching.  That’s the key. 2 Corinthians 10:5 says that we need to take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. When our thinking is out of line with Christ and takes us in the wrong direction again and again, forming a habit, we can find ourselves enslaved to that mindset and trapped in wrong attitudes and behaviors that lead to frustration, despair and depression.

Let’s make it practical now and follow the diagram with an example.  Let’s imagine something goes wrong in our church plant.  That’s not hard to imagine.  Ministry is constantly messy.  Things don’t go the way we would have liked, people mess up, fail to follow through, oppose us or don’t live up to our expectations.  Any of these could be the “stimulus” that gets us going. Let’s imagine, just hypothetically, that our immediate thought is “We’re failing as leaders”, or “We’re not good enough”, or maybe even “We might not make it as a church.” Any of these ungodly thoughts could easily lead to the action of “striving”.  Just work harder.  Figure this out. Try this model instead. We could spend hours and days struggling, trying hard, fighting to overcome this mess.  The inevitable reaction is “weariness”.  It’s tiring to constantly fight and strive. Now what happens when our button is pushed again when we are already weary?  Another mess comes up and a few more times around instead of just weariness we turn to despair, then depression, then who knows what.  The underlying faulty belief system that is feeding this cycle is that “if we do things right then everything should run smoothly”.  The prevailing spirit that results in this situation is “frustration”. 

But it doesn’t have to continue like this!  We have the choice to take our thought captive before it wreaks more havoc in our minds, hearts and ministries!  Instead of one of those ungodly thoughts, let’s choose something wholesome like “Here’s an opportunity for God to shine and me to learn”, or “I am not in control, but God is”, or “Here’s a mess, but God has an answer”.   Where does that lead us?  An expected action might be something like “quietness and trust” (Is 30:15) or “resting in God”.  Then the resulting reaction is “strength” and “joy”.  Now when the next mess comes up, the joy of the Lord is your strength!  The belief system that is being fed by this is that “ministry is messy but God is in control and His plans will prevail”.  The prevailing spirit in this scenario is “satisfaction”.

Of course, this is just one example of the many many situations you face in ministry and life and the many many ways your thoughts and actions could go.  Try working through this for something specific that has you stuck in your ministry, your marriage or your relationship with your kids.  Focus on very specific thoughts and actions.  You might have to start with an action or reaction that you know is not right and work your way back to determine what thought led you there.  God will be faithful to help you replace your ungodly thoughts.

There may be a power that is warring against your mind (Rom7:23), but God’s Spirit gives us the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16) and  “you belong to God, my dear children. You have already won a victory… because the Spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world (1John 4:4)!

The Winning the War of the Mind by Women in Church Planting, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.