Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Spiral of Toxic Thoughts–A Book Review

It’s been a while since we’ve featured a book review. The book under review today was recommended to me by several of my undergraduate students. A group of young women at my university completed a book study of Jennie Allen’s Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Spiral of Toxic Thoughts. I wasn’t disappointed. Allen does a splendid job of addressing one of a Christian’s biggest struggles in staying true and in hope, our thoughts.

Allen identifies a number of lies that we believe, being helpless, worthless, and unloveable. More importantly, each lie is actually rooted in what we believe about who God is. The solution? We choose to fight. We take every thought captive. 2 Corinthians 10:4-6, states, 

“The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 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.  And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete” (NIV).

Toxic thoughts, if not taken captive and demolished, quickly build strongholds in our thought life. According to dictionary.com, a stronghold is “a place that has been fortified so as to protect it against attack or a place where a particular cause or belief is strongly defended or upheld.” Let me emphasize something important. When we are rooted and grounded in the word and in the truth of who God is, toxic thoughts have no chance of creating strongholds. But, when we drift away from God, toxic thoughts will quickly build strongholds that take work and patience to destroy.

In my own life, I have some strongholds that have been fortified through years of toxic thinking. Let me tell you, they have extremely strong foundations. I’m talking about big huge boulder foundations that have sunk into the dirt and require major excavation equipment! What gives me hope? God is for me! And, through him, I am more than a conqueror and I can destroy these strongholds! (Romans 8:31-39).

Contributed by Liz Hunt