ruth·less /ˈro͞oTHləs/ adjective  1. having or showing no pity or compassion.

The other day I misplaced something or made a simple mistake or couldn’t remember something I had just looked up… I’m not exactly sure what it was.  But in my annoyance, I said out loud to myself, “You idiot!”

When something goes wrong, I find that I have a whole raft of self-critical statements that play out in my head, just below the surface of my consciousness. I think most people do.  Well, every once in a while, one of those thoughts slips out and I say it out loud.

“You’d better take that lie and send it back to the pit of hell, where it came from!”, Pam called from the other room.

WHAT? That’s not the usual conversation starter in our household.  I pretended to be shocked.

She came around the corner grinning playfully, but also serious because we often talk about the power of lies and how the Enemy uses them to defeat us.  We try to remind each other of truth, at every opportunity and especially when the other is down or discouraged.

“You gotta be ruthless with those lies. RUTHLESS!” she stated emphatically.

I laughed at her intensity and agreed.  But afterward, I gave a lot of thought to what she said.

We have to be RUTHLESS with the lies; show no pity or compassion. She’s right. I think that we Christians need to be a little more careful when it come to the thoughts that we entertain.

2 Corinthians 10:5 says, ^“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” That’s strong language.- I looked in a thesaurus: demolish: destroy, annihilate, thrash, rout, trounce, defeat those lies. Take captive: arrest, apprehend, take prisoner, seize those thoughts.  Be ruthless!

The truth is, God has given us power, the power to take captive our thoughts, the power to walk in the Spirit, and the power to put down our flesh and embrace truth. But it won’t happen if we coddle sin in our life or embrace the stinking thinking that the devil tempts us to embrace.

Ruthless.  What needs to go? What has snuck into your life. What deception have you bought hook, line and sinker? It’s time to get nasty with the devil.  He is a liar and the Father of lies” (John 8:44) and we are told to “not give the Devil a foothold” (Ephesians 4:26). We are commanded to resist him (James 4:7). So let’s fight!

What thoughts are you playing with that need to be sent back to the pit of hell where they came from? Be ruthless.