Get This Out of My Head

Introduction

Your thoughts sometimes "pop up" like ads on your phone: thoughts of lust, anger, or anxiety that you never chose but that settle in anyway. And the more you try not to think about them, the more you think about them. In this message drawn from Philippians 4:4-9, Craig Etheredge shows you that you cannot empty your mind through sheer willpower, but you can displace your negative thoughts by filling your mind with something else. Three concrete levers, drawn from the text: continual praise, fervent prayer, and the word of God.

Outline of the Message

1. You Cannot Empty Your Mind, You Have to Displace It

• Craig opens with a simple image: 55 percent of Americans think their phone is listening to them. In reality, it is the algorithms that know your history and predict your behavior, and things start "popping up" on your social media as if someone were reading your mind.
• Your thoughts work a bit like that. They emerge from your past experiences, sometimes painful ones, from images that bombard you, from spiritual warfare, and from temptation. Often, they are negative.
• The problem: when you try not to think about a thought, you end up thinking about it even more. In physics, "to displace" means to push something out of a space by putting something else in its place. Craig takes a glass full of Pepsi (the dark thoughts) and makes it overflow by pouring water into it until the Pepsi is pushed out. That is what displacing a thought looks like.
• You cannot scoop your thoughts out with a spoon. You cannot empty your mind and refill it with nothing. The only way to push negative thoughts out is to saturate your mind with something else: the word of God.
• 2 Corinthians puts it this way: "take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." When a thought arrives like an arrow, take hold of it and ask: where does this come from? From God, or not from God? Some thoughts come back so often that they build strongholds in your mind: critical thoughts about yourself, about others, or things you have let in from elsewhere.

2. The Power of Continual Praise (v. 4-5)

• "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice." This is not a suggestion, it is a command. Rejoice constantly.
• "Pastor, my life really is not going well right now. How do you expect me to rejoice?" Look at the verse again: rejoice in the Lord. Not in your circumstances. No matter what you are going through, you have the ability to rejoice in the Lord: to think about God, to stand before his face, to remember what he has already done for you.
• A very concrete practice: take a sheet of paper and write your list of praises. He saved you. He forgave you. He adopted you into his family. He sees you. He chose you. He is your peace, your joy, your comfort. He brought healing, blessing. And right now, this very moment, he is interceding for you.
• Psalm 16 puts it this way: "I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken." When you fix your eyes on God instead of your circumstances, you become stable.
• Craig tells the story of Jo, a man from his church, who went back to California, where he had lived his old, dysfunctional life. A dark cloud fell over him, he felt sad and depressed. So he decided to praise God: "Lord, I praise you because I am no longer who I used to be. I am a new person in Jesus Christ." And the weight lifted.
• Remember that this letter was written to Philippi, the very place where Paul, thrown into prison after being beaten (Acts 16), began praising God. The foundations shook, the doors flew open, and the jailer, probably sitting right there in the church receiving this letter, was saved. You may feel like you are in prison right now: hard circumstances, old patterns holding you back. My friend, you can be free in the Lord Jesus.

3. The Power of Fervent Prayer (v. 6-7)

• "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God." In the United States, one in five teenagers has an anxiety disorder; 20 percent of adults do too. And many of us carry a heavy weight of worry every single day.
• Proverbs 12:25 says: "Anxiety weighs down the heart, but a kind word cheers it up." What Paul is asking you to do: take that heavy weight and roll it over to the Lord. How? Through prayer. And he gives three ways to pray.
• Prayer (Greek proseuche), simply "conversation." Talk to God. Throughout your day, in your car, whenever negative thoughts come. There is no need for a special formula, or the phrases you have heard from other people. Moses spoke to God as a friend (Exodus 33:11). Do the same: "Lord, I am struggling in my marriage, I don't know what to do. Lord, my kids seem to have lost their minds. Lord, this conflict at work..." He listens. He cares.
• Petition, asking God to provide for a specific need. "But if he already knows my needs, why tell him?" It is not to inform God, it is to remind you that it is he who provides for everything and that you depend on him. Jesus invites you to do exactly that: "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you" (Matthew 7). If you ask for bread, he will not give you a stone; if you ask for an egg, not a snake. How much more will your Father in heaven give good things to you.
• Thanksgiving, we are so quick to ask, so slow to say thank you. Craig tells of his evening practice: lights off, one deep breath, and he replays the day from the morning onward. "Thank you for coffee with that friend." He prays for him. "Thank you for dinner with my wife, for the kids in the pool." Sometimes he falls asleep giving thanks, which is far better than falling asleep worrying.
• And the promise follows (v. 7): "And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." That is what comes and drives the negative thoughts out of your mind.

4. Filling Your Mind With What Comes From God (v. 8-9)

• "Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things." Where do your thoughts drift when they wander? Toward anxiety? Toward people who hurt you? Toward past offenses? Toward lust?
• Paul tells you: let your thoughts dwell on that list, and every one of those things comes from the word of God. Craig points out that in his illustration, it took a lot of water to displace a little bit of Pepsi. It takes waves, floods of the word of God to saturate your mind.
• Play defense. Proverbs 4:23: "Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it." Your mind is like a castle: walls, gates, a drawbridge. In times of battle, you close the gates.
• Your eyes are a gate: movies, images on your phone. Your ears too. A woman once told Craig she was struggling with fear and anxiety. He asked her: "What are you listening to?" "True crime, all the time." "Close that gate." There are podcasts that make you anxious, movies full of lust. Let the Holy Spirit tell you what you need to stop.
• Play offense. Fill your mind with the word of God. Read your Bible every day. A one year reading plan, an app, whatever the method, just put the word in.
• When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness (Matthew 4), he did not just think about the relevant verses. He spoke them out loud. "It is written..." And the enemy had to leave.
• Craig tells of a time his family faced a battle with fear, crippling waves of it. He wrote out verses of promises of protection and guidance on small index cards and stuck them everywhere in the house: the bathroom, the car, the kitchen. When fear returned, he would pick up a card and say out loud: "It is written... here is God's truth." And Satan would leave, the fear would disappear, and they were free again.

Key Takeaways

• You cannot scoop your mind out with a spoon. You displace negative thoughts by saturating your mind with something else.
• Praise is not rejoicing in your circumstances, it is rejoicing in the Lord, no matter what the circumstances are.
• Roll your heavy weight of worry over to God through three doors: continual conversation, specific petition, thanksgiving.
• The peace of God "guards" your heart and your mind. It is not a technique, it is a promise attached to prayer.
• Play defense (close the gates on what you watch and listen to) and play offense (fill yourself with the word). When the thought comes, say "it is written" out loud.

Personal Application

1. What are the dark thoughts that keep looping in your mind this week? Lust, anger, fear, judgment toward yourself or others? Name them.
2. Take a sheet of paper and write your list of praises: what has God already done in your life that you can thank him for today?
3. Choose a moment in your day to talk to him like a friend, no formula, no borrowed phrase. What is on your heart right now?
4. Try Craig's evening exercise this week: as you go to bed, thank God for three specific things from the day, and see if you fall asleep differently.
5. What is the gate the Holy Spirit is asking you to close this week? A show, an account, a podcast, a scroll?
6. Write down two or three verses relevant to your recurring temptation on cards or in your phone's notes. When the thought comes back, say them out loud.

Verses Cited

• Philippians 4:4-9, Rejoice in the Lord always
• 2 Corinthians 10:5, Take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ
• Romans 12:2, The renewing of the mind
• Psalm 16:8, I keep my eyes always on the Lord
• Acts 16, Paul and Silas praise God in prison at Philippi
• Proverbs 12:25, Anxiety weighs down the heart, a kind word cheers it up
• Matthew 7:7-11, Ask and it will be given to you
• Exodus 33:11, The Lord spoke to Moses as a friend
• Matthew 4:1-11, The temptation in the wilderness: "It is written"
• Proverbs 4:23, Guard your heart above all else

Frequently Asked Questions

What does it mean to "displace" a negative thought?

Craig Etheredge borrows the term from physics: to displace is to push something out of a space by putting something else in its place. You cannot scoop your mind out with a spoon, and you cannot simply decide "I won't think about it anymore," because the very act of trying makes you think about it more. The only way to push out a negative thought is to saturate your mind with something else. That is exactly what Philippians 4:4-9 proposes: praise, prayer, the word of God.

How do I rejoice when my life is going badly right now?

Paul does not write "rejoice in your circumstances." He writes "rejoice in the Lord." No matter what you are going through, you have the ability to remember who God is and what he has already done for you. The concrete practice suggested: take a sheet of paper and write your list, he saved you, forgave you, adopted you, chose you; he is your peace, your joy, your comfort; he is interceding for you even now. This list shifts your thoughts from your circumstances to God himself.

Why petition God if he already knows my needs?

It is not to inform God, he already knows. It is to remind you and to acknowledge that it is he who provides for everything, and that you depend on him, not on yourself. Jesus himself invites you to ask (Matthew 7: "ask, seek, knock"). The act of asking is an act of faith and dependence, it shifts your thoughts from "I will get through this on my own" to "my Father in heaven will give me good things."

Concretely, how do I use the word of God against a recurring thought?

Craig tells how, facing waves of fear bombarding his home, he wrote out specific verses of promises of protection and guidance on index cards and stuck them everywhere: bathroom, car, bedroom. When fear returned, they would pick up the card and say out loud: "It is written..." That is exactly what Jesus does in Matthew 4 facing Satan: he does not just think the verse, he speaks it. This practice takes two moves: closing the gates on what you let in (eyes, ears) and filling your mind every day through reading the Bible.