Running the race of life with endurance without getting weary, losing heart, and quitting is not easy. Those who are the tough ones who keep going and don’t quit are not doing that based on willpower, but on thinking right, taking wrong thoughts captive, and replacing them with right thoughts. Maybe we can say it this way, taking wimpy thoughts captive and replacing them with strong thoughts. Our body has a built-in self-preservation mode, and when it thinks we are killing ourselves, it will intervene. I ran 12 marathons between my 50th birthday and my 65th birthday. Before I ran my first one, I read many books written by people who had run many marathons. They all talked about this voice inside of us that started screaming at us to stop because we were killing ourselves between mile 18 and mile 22. It was called the “wall” that we hit. The key to running through the wall was knowing it was coming and being prepared to replace negative self-talk with positive. Most marathons I ran had “aid stations” about every two miles with little Dixie cups of water or sports drinks on tables that you could grab as you ran by. I would stop running and walk by these stations, pour a cup of water over my head, drink a sports drink, and then start running again. But at mile 18, mile 20, and mile 22, I would walk for one minute before I started running again. It was so much easier for me to manage that wimpy voice in my head screaming at me to quit before I killed myself when  I was walking than when I was running. The same thing happened when I used to climb Mt Adams right at the 10,000-foot mark. This inner voice in us is wired for easy, for comfortable, and when we start moving into the hard, it talks to us, attempting to get us to take it easy. We also have demons around us constantly speaking to us to take the easy way, if not the wrong and sinful way. If you think you are tired, you will be exhausted; if you think hard, you will become discouraged; if you think quit, it won’t be long before you do quit. The most powerful discipline for me in controlling my thoughts and not letting them control me is memorizing Bible verses. The discipline it takes to memorize Bible verses gives us the self-control to take wrong, wimpy thoughts captive and replace them with the thinking of an overcomer. Most Christians don’t learn many Bible verses because their mind tells them it is too hard and they can’t do it. I wonder where those thoughts came from.