Be Sound

"For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and of a sound mind."
2 Timothy 1:7

Back in my high schools days on some boring Friday night, I talked a group of my friends into going on a scary adventure.  We went and found what was rumored to be a haunted farm house.  The house was located in the middle of an orange grove, so it was dark and spooky.  There were no doors or windows left on the house so it was easy to enter.  After looking through the house for a bit, I gathered everyone together so I could tell them why the house was haunted.  I began to tell everyone a completely made up story, that was told to me by a completely made person.  It was about a crazy farmer that lived in the house, who murdered his whole family.  As I was telling this phony story I could see my friends starting to feel a little creepy, so I poured it on more.  Pretty soon every noise from inside or outside the house seemed to be magnified, and everyone was getting even more scared.  And then something amazing happened, I began to scare myself!  I was making the story up, I knew it wasn't true, I knew it was fictitious, yet I was starting to get a little freaked out.  At long last, there was a thumping creaking sound that came from another room that made us all scream and run for our lives.
How crazy is that?  I was able to get myself into a freaked out fearful state, with my own made up scary story!  I had knowingly brought myself to a place of not being of sound mind.
There is good spiritual application to this story.  It is very important for us to be of sound mind, to be disciplined in our thoughts and imaginations, and to be clear and sober in our reasoning.  Our enemy knows how to get us to the place of an unsound mind, with one fearful thought, our mind begins skipping and our imagination begins to exaggerate situations, and presto, we freak out!  At times the unsoundness is not even from the enemy, it is self-inflicted, we magnify circumstances or problems and we create scary scenarios that drive us to fear.
Our enemy loves to keep us unstable through fear.  The best way for us to battle this, is to be disciplined in keeping our focus on the Lord and on His word.  We need to learn to take our thoughts captive to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5), and as we do, fear will wane and His peace will reign.  Search His word for those promises that keep you heart and mind stayed upon Him.