God places heavy emphasis on our thinking, commanding us to “Love the Lord your God…with all your mind” (Luke 10:27) and to ponder only what is commendable (Phil 4:8). So, it’s especially distressing when wicked intrusive thoughts just pop into your head. What can you do when thoughts intrude?
Don’t overreact
Often when a counselee brings up intrusive thoughts, they feel full of shame. They are embarrassed to say out loud what was hidden internally, because the thoughts had such wicked content like violating others, hurting a child or animal, or causing destruction. Wicked intrusive thoughts are sometimes startling because they seem so random and unexpected. Actually, we have lots of intrusive thoughts all day long. Most are just benign thoughts that pull our attention away from one thing to another. Only the ones that we evaluate as a certain level of wicked really startle us, and in many cases cause us to have an initial knee-jerk reaction of shame. We are not automatically sinning just because a wicked thought comes into our mind.
Don’t underreact
However, just because intrusive thoughts are not automatically sinful doesn’t mean we should ignore them. We can’t stop a thought from popping into our
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