Every Thought Captive
Battling the Toxic Beliefs That Separate Us from the Life We Crave
Best-selling author Jerusha Clark explores the mental struggles and anxieties unique to women, and shares the joy and freedom found in taking Every Thought Captive.
What’s on your mind today? Your significant other, or your lack thereof? The flippant comment someone made? Your image in the mirror or someone else’s recent weight loss? Are you wondering what tomorrow will look like, or why yesterday turned out the way it did?
As thoughts like these float through our minds, we often allow ourselves to believe poisonous lies like:
- ‘I’m not good enough;’
- ‘What others think about me defines who I am;’
- ‘I am what I accomplish.’
These thoughts, and others like them, hijack our minds and separate us from the life Jesus died to give us. Christ declares, “you will know the truth and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). In order to be set free from the devastating misconceptions that infiltrate our thinking, we must know and live out the truth. Grabbing hold of the life we crave starts with taking our minds captive to what is true.
In Every Thought Captive, Jerusha Clark explores the deepest recesses of the feminine mind and examines the sources of our insecurities, unholy desires, and anxieties. Drawing from other women’s and her own experiences, Clark shares insights from God’s Word that provide a road map to victory over toxic beliefs.
Book Review from Publisher’s Weekly (2006-01-16)
Wife, mom and self-confessed overthinker, Clark (I Gave Dating a Chance) offers Christian women contemplative reasons for taking their innermost thoughts to task. She debunks the “self-improvement” plan, insisting that Christ alone offers freedom from “toxic” thinking. She speaks to fellow strugglers she believes are wasting their precious lives believing the lie that they are worthless and tries to free them from the strangleholds of covetousness, unforgiveness, impurity and self-abasement. Clark’s self-disclosing style effectively draws close the wary skeptic as she offers substantive hope for lasting change. Clearly, acquiring healthy mental habits and consistency in seeking God’s truth are essential mechanisms to bringing about this new life pattern. In every chapter, Clark reveals a pernicious “lie” and then its counterbalancing “truth” before supplying practical ways to combat destructive thoughts. One of her most compelling sections deals with how depression affects women’s thinking: “God can’t love me,” “I am alone,” “Things will never get better,” and “Depression is a sin.” Evangelical Christian women will find relief and help for their damaged thought patterns in Clark’s advice.
