Scared of Your Thoughts? Bring God's Word Near to Help Dispel the Fear

Overly scrupulous people fear many things, but one of their biggest fears is Phronemophobia, the fear of thoughts. Some honest, sincere people are held in the cell of something called Thought-Action Fusion. They think that their thoughts are so powerful that they become actions. These individuals believe they are who they think and therefore, if they think bad thoughts, they must be bad. Despairingly, this distortion only leads to an increased continuance of this habit, which eventually leads people to have a wrong identity of themselves.

• "If I think about hitting someone, I must be a violent person."

• "If I had a sexual thought, I must be a filthy individual."

• "If a bad word came across my mind, I must be a perverted person."

Sadly, individuals can berate, condemn, and misconstrue themselves. What happens normally (thoughts come and go), stick with these individuals, but God never meant for people to control their thoughts; He meant for them to control what they did with them.

Thankfully, God’s Word divides thoughts from intentions. Here is an important lesson: All bad intentions are bad thoughts, but not all bad thoughts are bad intentions. The human brain has more than 6,000 thoughts going through its synapses every day and most of them are not intentions. Bad thoughts (assaulting another, sexual acts, bad language, etc.) only become bad intentions when we welcome the thought, accept the thought, dwell on the thought, engage with the thought, and desire the thought. The next time a bad thought runs through your head, let it come, let it go, and know that you are not always what you think! Remember, God is greater than your heart (1 John 3:20). While you should stop keeping the birds from making a home in your hair (don't entertain sinful thoughts [Proverbs 24:9; Matthew 5:28]) trying to stop the birds from flying over your head is a useless pursuit. God has so much other things for you to do today!