Why Taking Thoughts Captive Isn't Step One

Title: Why Taking Thoughts Captive Isn't Step One: How to Actually Defeat the Negative Thoughts

Podcast Date: September 22, 2026

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Description

Negative thoughts can feel relentless, especially in a dressing room, in front of a mirror, or anywhere body-image fears get loud. But today Heather Creekmore explains why simply telling yourself to “take your thoughts captive” often doesn’t work.

In this episode, Heather explores 2 Corinthians 10:5 and clarifies that taking thoughts captive isn’t thought suppression, positive thinking, "Jedi mind tricks," or a battle of willpower. The deeper issue is often the belief beneath the thought.

In this episode

Why taking thoughts captive is not step one 02:19
What “captive” means in the context of spiritual warfare 03:54
How negative body-image thoughts can reveal doubts about God’s character 04:23
Why trying to suppress thoughts can make them feel even more persistent 07:26
The difference between a thought arriving and choosing to dwell on it 08:00
How hidden beliefs shape recurring negative thoughts 08:39
What “I believe, help my unbelief” has to do with thought battles 13:03
Why confession and knowing God’s character come before taking thoughts captive 19:32
How bringing secret struggles into the light can help expose lies 22:26

What to Do Before Taking Thoughts Captive:

Get honest about what’s underneath the thought. A thought like “I look horrible in this dress” may be connected to a deeper fear of being rejected or unworthy of love.
Confess the lie and the unbelief beneath it.
Remember who God is by searching Scripture for specific truth about His character.
Invite trusted people to speak truth with grace and help bring the struggle into the light.
Take the thought captive once it has been exposed as a lie and brought under the truth of God’s Word.

Learn more about Heather Creekmore's books and programs here: https://www.heathercreekmore.com

Join the 40-Day Journey or one of Heather's coaching groups at: https://www.improvebodyimage.com

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript is AI-generated and has not been edited for accuracy or clarity.

Heather Creekmore [00:00:02]:

Life Audio. Hey friend, Heather Creekmore here. I'm wondering if this has happened to you. Let me know if this is relatable. You're in the dressing room. Boy, those fluorescent lights are awful. Those 3-way mirrors, they're not very kind either. And you're trying on all the things because you're desperate.

Heather Creekmore [00:00:20]:

You have to find a dress to wear to the thing, and this is your last chance. And you start trying on these dresses and Boy, do the negative thoughts come one right after another. Oh, look at how awful you look in this. Oh, what is wrong with your body? Uh, they're actually much worse than that if we're honest, right? There are things you would never say to your worst enemy, but negative thought after negative thought is flooding you. You've gotta pick a dress, but it's too hard. You're overwhelmed by this barrage of negative thoughts. So what do you do? Well, you remember hearing in church one time, or maybe many times, about taking your thoughts captive. Ding! That's what I'll try.

Heather Creekmore [00:01:09]:

I'll take my thoughts captive. And you try your hardest. No, thought, go away, thought. I'm not gonna think that anymore. I'm not gonna see that in the mirror anymore. Go away. Bye, thought. Leave.

Heather Creekmore [00:01:22]:

I'm taking you captive. And it doesn't work. In fact, maybe what happens is the thoughts just start coming so quickly at you. It's almost like you've got your little ping pong paddle, you're trying to shoo them away, but they are like spitting out of a machine, ball after ball after ball, and you just cannot keep up with pinging those negative thoughts away. Why didn't it work? Why does it not work just to take your thoughts captive? Friend, that's where we're going today. If I had a dollar for every woman with whom I have sat and done a coaching session or just had a deep conversation and she started telling me how she's struggling with certain things, and then she would go to, I know I just need to take my thoughts captive. If I had a dollar for every time that's happened to me, I would be very wealthy. Because I think we believe that taking thoughts captive is like step one in our battles.

Heather Creekmore [00:02:29]:

But friend, today we're going to talk about why that's not true. Taking thoughts captive is a biblical principle. It's good for us to do. Yes and amen. But it's not step one. And that's what we're going to look at. And, and if you're trying to make it step one, That may be why it's not working for you. So I'm so glad you're here today.

Heather Creekmore [00:02:49]:

Hey, we are in the middle of our very last 40-day journey. You can still get in. There's still 4 sessions left. You can go to improvebodyimage.com and look for the 40-day journey tab. I'm going to take the registration link down in 1 week, so the end of September. But if you want into this very last group, I would encourage you just, just jump on it. Just do it. Join us for this last 40-day journey.

Heather Creekmore [00:03:12]:

Now let's get to today's episode. Hey friend, well, let's start by looking at where this whole concept of taking thoughts captive comes from, and that's 2 Corinthians 10:5, where Paul writes about destroying arguments and every lofty opinion that's raised against the knowledge of God. And he says, and taking every thought captive to obey Christ. So the church grabbed this concept, rightly so. And we hear this a lot, right? You have to take your thoughts captive. You have to identify the thought and take it captive. What does captive mean? Well, captive is a war word. It's what you do to an enemy soldier.

Heather Creekmore [00:04:00]:

You don't just ignore him or pretend he's not there. You apprehend him. You bring him under new authority. It's like, nope, you, uh, you got a new job now, guy. You are captive. You are a prisoner of war. Here's what I want you to notice. Paul isn't talking about stray thoughts like, wow, these jeans are unflattering.

Heather Creekmore [00:04:23]:

He's talking about a specific type of idea. It's ideas, it's thoughts that argue against who God is. These are attacks— maybe we want to use the word lies— about God's Character. They're lies about God's love, God's love for us. And these lies, of course, they show up in our body image struggles constantly. They show up in a lot of our struggles, but they can sometimes wear a disguise. We might think something like, God must not care that I feel invisible, or if God really loved me, he would have given me a better metabolism, or he wouldn't have given me this body shape. And this is what Paul's talking about, right? Paul's talking about those thoughts that at the heart of them question who God is.

Heather Creekmore [00:05:26]:

They really do, right, what we saw the enemy do in the garden. Like, did God really say that? Is that really true? Did God really mean that? They question God. But here's what I see happen, and I mentioned this a bit in the intro. So many times I hear, I speak to, I counsel Christian women who try to just skip to the taking thoughts captive part, right? They've latched on to this concept. They're having these thoughts, but they're just trying to Make them all prisoners of war. And it doesn't work. I mean, they're doing the thing, but it doesn't work effectively. The thoughts keep coming back.

Heather Creekmore [00:06:14]:

It's like they escape from prison all the time. And there's a reason for that. There's a reason why we can't skip to taking thoughts captive as step 1. And here's the reason. Often we try to do this In what I would call the world's way. We try to do this taking thoughts captive activity as if it's a New Age practice. Oh, I hate to say that, but it's like the Norman Vincent Peale Power of Positive Thinking, or it's like the literal Jedi mind trick from the original Star Wars movie where Obi-Wan Kenobi tells the stormtrooper, these aren't the droids you're looking for. And the stormtrooper repeats, these aren't the droids we're looking for, right? It's become that kind of practice, and that's not what we're talking about when we talk about spiritual warfare, right? Verses right before verse 5 talk about the weapons of our warfare, and spiritual warfare are not carnal, right? They're not things that we do with our body and our brain.

Heather Creekmore [00:07:26]:

And yet too often we Try to make taking thoughts captive into just a power of positive thinking, brain-wrangling activity. Taking thoughts captive is not suppressing thoughts. I think we hear the word capture and we think that means stop thinking it, but it's kind of like that old illustration, like, try really hard not to think about a pink elephant right now. How did that go? How many pink elephants are you picturing, right? Taking thoughts captive is not suppression. We also need to understand that not every thought we have is a sin, right? Jesus was tempted by thoughts and he never sinned. A thought showing up at your door isn't the problem. The problem is when you dwell on that thought, when you invite that thought in for dinner and to hang out and to spend a week. That's When the thoughts can become a problem or can become sin.

Heather Creekmore [00:08:28]:

And it's those sinful thoughts that have to be made obedient to Christ. It's those sinful thoughts that have to be covered and replaced with the truth. And speaking of truth, I think sometimes we fail when we skip to taking thoughts captive first because we actually skip over The belief part of this whole thing. We skip over what is going on beneath the surface. What is going on in our hearts? What do I actually believe that is leaving room for this lie, for this negative thought to come and hang out? Remember how scripture says, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks? Right. Really, what we think about is an overflow of what's going on in our hearts. It's what we truly believe. And this is where it gets kind of interesting, friends.

Heather Creekmore [00:09:33]:

This is what I just wrote a book on. It comes out February 2nd. I'm so excited about it. It's called Did I Say the Right Thing? And a Million Other Micro Fears That Christian Women Face. It's It's for sale right now for preorder if you want the lowest price possible, but it releases February 2nd. And this book was written out of my decade of conversations with women who are just trying to bat away the negative thoughts, who are wondering why they still have all these negative thoughts even though they've been trying so hard to take them captive, why it's not working. And what I dig into in this book Is this concept that although many of us as Christian women, we believe we have the God and Jesus answer, right? Like we know the truth. Like I can tell you the verse in the passage and I believe I'm going to heaven.

Heather Creekmore [00:10:25]:

I believe God is who he says he is. And I believe God's done what he says he's done. And I believe the truth. And then when we try to make it more personal, When we face things like negative thoughts around our bodies, or around, is God actually good to me because he gave me this body? Or is God actually good to me because he gave me this horrible circumstance that I'm facing? Does God even love me? Does he see what's happening in my life? When we face negative and, dare I say, sinful thoughts like this, temptations to doubt God's character, we have to have a solid foundation of knowing that we actually believe the truth in order to fight these thoughts. And most of us don't want to go that far. Most of us believe we've got the God and Jesus answers. Check, check. I'm good.

Heather Creekmore [00:11:29]:

And yet, when push comes to shove, when we start analyzing those negative thoughts that keep coming And keep coming back. We can't take them captive because they are attached to a belief, and that belief is a lie, and that belief contradicts what scripture says about God or what scripture says about us. And it makes it really difficult to get rid of the thought if the lie, if the false belief remains. You know, I— it might be especially hard for those of us who were raised in the church or have been in a relationship with Jesus for a long time because we tend to think, well, I know all that. I know all that. That doesn't apply to my current problem. I know all that. I've got all that down.

Heather Creekmore [00:12:19]:

Right. But I'm always willing to press in with a woman and say, I know you think you know it, but what Are you really believing? How are you really operating? What is actually dictating what you think about yourself and the world and God in these circumstances? Is it a situation where you're kind of like that father in the book of Mark? His son is demon possessed and he's flailing around and the disciples can't cast the demons out. And Jesus comes and he's like, please, you know, can you help my son? And Jesus is kind of like, Can I help him? Like, who do you think you're talking to here, guy? Like, of course I can help him. And the father says these beautiful words. He says, I believe, help my unbelief. Friend, that's, I think, where we're all at, right? I believe, but oh goodness, there's times when I don't believe. There's times when my unbelief flares, and those are the times when my thoughts can get out of control. But I want you to hear today, right, this exercise of taking thoughts captive is not about grit and determination.

Heather Creekmore [00:13:35]:

Like Paul specifically says that the weapons of our warfare are divine, right? It's about God's power. It's not about your willpower or you trying harder or just, you know, gritting your teeth and just, oh, go away, thought, go away. No. This is about actually trusting in God at a deeper level, surrendering these places in our lives where we are tempted to wrestle unbelief and say, okay, God, this is going to be the true test of my faith. Do I believe what you say about me is true? And if I believe what you say about me is true, then I know these thoughts I'm having are not true. They have to be taken away as prisoners of war. They have to be taken captive in obedience, in submission to what is true. So as we wrap up today, let's talk about some practical steps.

Heather Creekmore [00:14:37]:

What do you do first, right? If taking thoughts captive isn't first, what is first? Well, I think what's first is being honest, right? You hear the thought, but remember, you've got to go deeper than that thought, and you've got to be honest with yourself and name what is underneath That thought. So let's go back to the dressing room for an illustration. You're looking in the mirror and the thought comes, you look horrible in this dress. None of these dresses are going to look good on you. This is going to be a horrible event because you are going to look so bad and there's nothing you can do to make yourself look better. Everyone is going to wonder how you dared show up looking so bad. How did you let yourself become like this? You are so lazy. You have no self-control whatsoever.

Heather Creekmore [00:15:22]:

Oh, I can't believe how you've let yourself go. And They just keep coming. Some of you know the way this sounds, but what's really underneath all that, right? Of course you can hear the shame, but can you also hear the fear? The fear connects to this belief, and the belief is, unless I look a certain way, I won't be loved. I won't be accepted. I won't be approved of, or maybe even I won't be worthy of love, acceptance, or approval. And that's a deep lie, friends, right? Because what does scripture tell us? Well, scripture says there's nothing I can do to be worthy of God's love. It's an act of his grace alone that he sent Jesus to bridge that gap, to cover a chasm that I could never be good enough to cover, right? I am loved and accepted and approved of through Jesus alone, not because I got my body right or I'm not missing out on God's grace because I couldn't get my body right. And so that lie, that lie that I'm not worthy of being loved, I'm not worthy of being accepted, I'm not worthy of, you know, being approved of, right? That lie does stand in contradiction to what God says is true.

Heather Creekmore [00:16:45]:

Now here's where it gets tough. You may have to ask yourself, where did get that lie from? Like, did I just come up with that on my own? Where did that come from? And chances are, if you and I were to work together in a coaching situation, we could dig and we could find out where that came from. Maybe it came from something your parents said, or just a very strongly held belief system in your family of origin. Maybe it came from something a mean girl said in high school, or ex-boyfriend, or ex-husband, right? There's, there's different places we can identify where perhaps the enemy used someone else's words to make this lie take root and really even create it as an alternative belief system in our hearts where we can say, okay, yes, I believe that God and Jesus answers. I believe Jesus accepts me, approves of me. And I also believe based on this thing that was said to me however many years or decades ago, that I will not be worthy of love, approval, and acceptance unless I can wear a smaller size dress or unless this dress will look good on me. Oh, friend, and that gets tough because you got to go deeper. It's deeper than just, I feel like my arms are fat, no one's going to think I look good.

Heather Creekmore [00:18:03]:

It's, what am I really believing is true about myself? What am I really believing is true about God? And that's where you have to start. And you might not be able to start there alone. I'll just be honest with you, like, it's really hard to dig deep. We would much rather stay at the surface. My problem is that my arms are fat, and so what I'm going to do is I'm going to shape up my arms, and then my problem problem will go away. And we'd love to believe that, right? That's what diet companies have been selling us for decades. Like, if you just change your body, you won't have these problems anymore, so just change your body. And yet, how many of us have been trying to just change our bodies for years or decades and not come out at a different place? We're still struggling with the thoughts.

Heather Creekmore [00:18:46]:

I mean, I work with women every week who have met their goal weight and gotten into that size they thought would make them happy, and they only Say things like, it didn't work. The bar changed. I thought I just needed to make it there and, uh, I had to keep going. It wasn't enough. And so you've gotta be honest about what it is you're really believing in your heart. Are you believing what God says is true? Or are you believing these thoughts, these lies maybe that have been with you for a long time? Are you believing those as equally true or even more true than what God says is true? And you may need help finding them. You just might. But once you find them, that's an opportunity for confession.

Heather Creekmore [00:19:32]:

That's an opportunity for you to bring to the Lord, God, I'm so sorry. I have actually been believing this thing that is not true about you, about me. God, I've been believing lies. Forgive me for that. Right? 1 John 1:9 says, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Friend, you've gotta confess it. When you see the sin, confess it. And getting honest about what's underneath this barrage of thoughts has got to be your step 1.

Heather Creekmore [00:20:02]:

And then once you can confess them as lies, oh friend, that's a powerful step 2. Confess the unbelief, confess the sin that's hiding there, pretending to just be innocent negative thoughts about your body, but there's something deeper underneath. And then step 2, after you've confessed that lie you've been believing, I want you to remember who God actually is. Like, I think this is what we skip the most, is actually growing in our understanding of who God is and what his character is, right? And this is what Paul's whole argument depends on. You cannot fight an argument against the knowledge of God if you don't actually know God. God. So before you can correct the lie, before you can reorient your heart to what is true, you have to know the truth. And not generic truth, like specific truth, right? Does God care? Is God really compassionate? Well, search scripture, find out the answer.

Heather Creekmore [00:21:05]:

Does God really delight in you, or does God really just care about you staying the right size? Uh, Open up the Word. Look at Zephaniah 3:17. Look at Psalm 139. Find passages that tell you about the character of God. Remind your heart and your mind of what is true about God. This is how you hold up the defense against the lies of the enemy. No, Satan, this is what's true. No, Satan, God's Word Says this.

Heather Creekmore [00:21:41]:

No, this is what's true about God. This is what I believe about God. And you're going to have to preach the gospel to yourself. Maybe you've heard that expression before, but you're going to have to tell yourself, no, no, I believe this is true. I believe that I am wearing robes of righteousness because of what Jesus did. I believe that I am cleansed of all my sin. I don't have to be reminded of my sin anymore. It's been forgiven and cleansed and put as far as the east is from the west.

Heather Creekmore [00:22:08]:

from me. I believe that I am accepted. I am loved. I am approved of in Christ. I believe I am safe in the shelter of his wings, right? Get into God's word. Don't just assume you know it. Keep reminding your heart of the truth. And this is where I can't overstate enough the importance of having people in your life that can speak truth to you, that you can confess these things you struggle with to.

Heather Creekmore [00:22:39]:

But that can just exhort and encourage you. And if you don't have anyone in your life like that, friend, let me find those people. Find them. Uh, that's one of the reasons why we do our coaching groups. It's one of the reasons why we've done the 40-day journey, and now we'll just be transitioning to regular coaching groups. But we've done these groups because we do meet women all the time that are like, I can't talk to anyone else about this stuff. Like they might think I'm strange having an issue with this. Well, come to us because we got a bunch of women that are struggling with the same things.

Heather Creekmore [00:23:11]:

But having someone speak truth to you in love with grace is going to help you as you work to solidify, what do I really believe? What is true? It's so important. But by bringing someone else into your struggle, this is how you take the secret struggle out of the darkness and into the light. And when we shine light on it, Oh, then we've got a real chance of being set free, right? Then we've got a chance of seeing it clearly and then seeing how God can come in and touch these places where we have doubts, where we have fears, where we're confused, where we just need more of his grace. And then after all that, friend, this is where I think you can take your thoughts captive. All right. If you've done all those other things, Right now, thought capturing makes sense because it's not Jedi mind tricks, right? It's saying, oh wait, this thought is connected to this lie. Oh Lord Jesus, help my unbelief. Show me why this lie isn't true.

Heather Creekmore [00:24:22]:

Remind me of the goodness of your character. God, I believe who you are is true. What you say is true. Thought, you're— you gotta go to— you gotta go to prison. You're gone, thought. You are gone. You do not hold up to the truth of who God is. You are a lie.

Heather Creekmore [00:24:43]:

You are not welcomed here. You must fall in submission to obedience to Christ. Get out of here. And then you know what happens? It actually works. It actually works. You can actually defeat those negative thoughts and begin to win the battle in your mind like never before. Friend, I hope this has helped you today. If you've been just trying to take thoughts captive without the rest of these steps, I hope you will try it this week.

Heather Creekmore [00:25:19]:

Thanks for listening today. Hey, I hope something has helped you stop comparing and start living. Until next time, bye-bye.