It taunted me with its rumbling voice. When I walked past it, it assaulted my self-esteem. The clutter-filled junk drawer in our house plagued me every time I opened it—until one day, I couldn’t take it anymore. I kicked into high gear and got it looking spick and span. The battle against the unsightly mess was won, but the war was far from over.

Only a week later, its oppression returned with a vengeance. The drawer overflowed again with loose change, screws, pens, and other I-don’t-know-where-these-go things. And that’s when it hit me—I discovered a cleaning hack that revolutionized my life. Namely, the difference between cleanliness and chaos boils down to what you allow to stay. The drawer must either be completely empty or filled with what belongs, so that what doesn’t can be thrown away.

A lightbulb went off in my head, and this reminded me of what happens inside my head and yours. Our minds can quickly become junk drawers—filled with cluttering thoughts that do not belong, which breeds spiritual chaos in our lives. The problem is, you can empty a drawer but you cannot empty your mind. You are always thinking about something. The remedy, therefore, is not to flush the mind, but to fill the mind with what belongs so that what doesn’t has nowhere to stay.

This is the mental master program Paul gave us in Philippians 4:8:

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

When you fill the drawer of your mind with godly thoughts, then ungodly thoughts have a harder time sticking around. But often, we must clear out the junk before we can fill our minds with sanctifying thoughts. Thus, Paul also taught that the way to eradicate “deceitful desires” is “to be renewed in the spirit of your minds” (Eph. 4:32).

We must “take every thought captive” to Christ, grabbing hold of wicked thoughts, and throwing them out (2 Cor. 10:5; cf. Jer. 4:14; Isa. 55:7). The Puritan Thomas Brooks once compared evil thoughts to unwelcome hotel guests, and counseled, “And like unruly philanderers and rakish revelers, they lodge and party day and night, defiling the rooms they lodge in with their loathsome filth and vomit. These vain, unruly guests must be kicked out the door without any warning or delay.”¹

Certainly, a messy junk drawer doesn’t ruin the whole house, but a spiritually cluttered mind will ruin your whole life. Few things are more exigent than getting control of our thought lives, for “as he thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Prov. 23:7). And just as there is peaceful pleasure when opening a clean drawer, the Scripture promises peace to those whose minds are clean: “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you” (Isaiah 26:3a).

1. Brooks, Thomas. The Vanity of Thoughts (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2024), 1-2.

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