New Book by Kyle Idleman Calls Christians to Examine the Why Behind Their Thoughts
Influential author and speaker Kyle Idleman believes that how we think of life greatly influences how we live as followers of Christ. In his new book Every Thought Captive: How Renewing Your Mind Can Change Your Life, Kyle wants believers to focus on not just what they think but why they think the things they think about.
In his new book, Kyle explores the brain and what scripture says about our thought processes. He firmly believes that when we combine the two, with scripture being the deciding factor, we can truly understand and live out as Christ followers what we're thinking, which should turn into how we're living.
Crosswalk Headlines: Where were you when you came up with the book?
Kyle Idleman: It's been a personal and pastoral journey. I love studying God's word to understand better how He has worked in my life. This book, in particular, walks through personal journeys of transformation, but then helps others who want to experience some change but feel frustrated and unsure why. As pastors, sometimes we just want to throw scripture at them. It helped me have a more profound understanding of scriptural truth, like studying the science of our brains and then understanding the same God who gave us science and scripture. Watching how those things work together to bring about transformation gave me more confidence as the pastor; it also challenged me in ways I didn't expect to identify how my thinking affected me and the people around me.
CWH: How much of the brain did you study for the book?
KI: I tried to look at scripture first and then try to understand what the Bible was talking about in the way God had made our brains. So, for example, the Bible says in Romans chapter 12, "Don't be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds." That word conformed is this idea of not being molded into a way of thinking without realizing it, which is a neural pathway. The brain science explanation for a pattern of not conforming is that we have our ways of thinking that we don't even realize. Maybe they were established early, so we were just taught to think a certain way, and that's how we think without thinking about it. Or maybe there was something kind of dramatic or emotional event we went through that created this pattern of thinking. Maybe it's just the constant exposure to our world's way of thinking, and it creates this neural pathway that begins to shape our lives and our emotions and determine our relationships. What I tried to do in this book is start with scripture and then ask, how does science seem to support this?
CWH: What did this book do for you, personally?
KI: What I enjoyed about this book is that I thought I went into it with a pretty clear understanding of these things. I had read, researched, and studied it, but I discovered some things that really ended up impacting me in ways I didn't anticipate. I have a chapter in the book called Win the Morning, which is based upon the idea that what you think about first in the day sets a trajectory for how you think about everything else that happens during that day. It turns out there's some science behind this, and yet it's also biblically consistent with this idea of meeting with God in the morning.
CWH: Explain why it's important to spend time with God in the morning.
KI: His mercies are new every morning. In Mark, Chapter One, Jesus woke up early in the morning, and he spent time with God. If we wake up first thing in the morning, and I'm on my phone and I'm reading the news for 10 or 15 minutes or something, I'm setting my brain up to be reactive to everything else that happens that day. However, if I start that day off with just five or ten minutes of intentionally taking some thoughts captive, thinking through my day, who am I going to meet with? What conversations will I have, and how do I want to respond to this person who can sometimes be difficult or offensive? If I can think about those things at the beginning of my day, it creates a trajectory for my thinking.
Photo Credit: ©Facebook/Kyle Idleman
Originally published July 08, 2025.
