Night Thoughts, Tamed

Your head hits the pillow and your brain slams the gas—sound familiar? We dig into a practical, faith-rooted way to slow runaway thoughts and finally find real rest at night. Drawing from 2 Corinthians 10:5, we talk about what it truly means to take every thought captive, not as a lofty ideal but as a simple, repeatable practice you can use the moment worry starts to sprint. Think of it like calf roping for the mind: you lasso the thought, halt its momentum, and turn it around toward truth.
By the end, you’ll have a few simple steps you can try tonight, and a hopeful reminder that rest is both a promise from God and a practice we grow into. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Daily Focus
• 0:28 The Struggle To Fall Asleep
• 2:03 Taking Every Thought Captive
• 3:07 The Calf Roping Picture
• 3:48 Renewing The Mind For Rest
• 4:32 Encouragement And Blessing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:05

Good morning. I am Denny Mack, and you're listening to Starting Right. Every weekday morning, I'm going to be here to share stories of life and hope from God's Word. So grab a cup of coffee, sit back and relax for the next five minutes as I help you start your day by starting right. Let me ask you this. How was your sleep last night? No, seriously, it's it's how well did you sleep last night? It seems the more people I talk to, the more I'm hearing about how difficult sleep is for a lot of people. In fact, most people I know are saying that they are not sleeping well at all right now. And that's a real shame, and it also is a real problem. Now, one of the things I dislike the most, and this is what usually happens to me when I don't sleep, is that I can be up and I can be reading a book or something before I go to bed, and I'm really, really tired. And so I put the book down, I get ready for bed, I climb into bed, and now all of a sudden I am one hundred percent awake. My body is ready to get up and go do something when just a few minutes ago I was so tired. It is like as soon as my head hits the pillow, my mind hits the gas pedal, and all of a sudden it is now roaring. And every thought about every situation and everything I'm going through throughout the day or that I will have to go through tomorrow comes racing back and racing through my mind and causing me all kinds of grief. Because rarely are those thoughts positive thoughts. They're all worried about having to get this done, having to get that done. What if this bad thing happens? What if this doesn't work out the way I need it to? What if the pieces don't come together in this the way I'm hoping it will? And all of a sudden my mind is just blazing down the road at a hundred miles an hour. And it's so frustrating. One of the things that I need to do is take this portion of scripture from 2 Corinthians chapter 10 and verse 5 and be able to apply it more effectively in my life. I've known the truth of this scripture, I apply this scripture, and I have taught from the scripture a number of times. The truth of it can still elude us if we're not careful. It says this we demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. Often the part that is so important in that particular verse is the last portion where it says we take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ. We stop the thoughts from running away from us so that when our mind all of a sudden starts to explode at a hundred miles an hour, particularly in a direction we don't want it to go, we need to learn how to stop that and to bring it back to the place that it should be. In my mind, I see it played out like this. Have you ever seen calf roping in a rodeo?

unknown: 3:10

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00: 3:10

Where the calf breaks out of the stall and behind it comes the cowboy on the horse who lassoes the calf and the horse stops. When that calf comes to the end of the rope, all of a sudden it stops, it's thrown and it turns completely around and comes to a dead stop. Its momentum is completely canceled. And that's how I see what this portion of scripture is trying to tell us. When it says to take every thought captive, when our minds start to run at that hundred miles an hour, we need to be able to lasso it and to stop it and to stop it right there in its tracks. And we must learn to make that happen on a regular basis. God promises that He will give us rest. But He also tells us in Romans chapter 12 that we must have our minds renewed. We must learn to think in a different way. Our thought processes have to become those that are more in line with God than they are with the world. And so that means we have to learn to stop the old thought processes from happening, to bring us back in line with what God has for us and to stop it in its tracks so that we can literally take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. If we can do that and learn to do that effectively, we will then learn how to stop our minds from racing when we're trying to get our rest and trying to get our sleep. And we will then be able to enter into the rest that God has for us. So I hope you have a great day, gang. And I hope you have a wonderful sleep tonight. And know that when your mind starts to take off on you, you can stop it in its tracks and find the grace and peace of God to help you get through the night and to sleep well. Have a good day.