There’s a phrase we use in the world: “The devil is in the details.”

It’s usually applied to negotiations or contracts, a warning to examine how things will actually work out. But there is another application to that phrase.

When you are in a trial, in a tribulation, and you allow your mind to go over and over and over every aspect of the circumstance, something begins to happen. You surrender control of your mind.
We are told to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5).

Yet when we rake over every detail of what has happened, rehearsing it, replaying it, analyzing it, and then telling one person, and then another, and another, adding to it each time, we are not walking in that obedience. We are multiplying our sorrows.

The Scripture says, “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You” (Isaiah 26:3).

Notice, peace is connected to where the mind stays.

Think about this.

How does a bird feed its young? It regurgitates food from its stomach back into the mouths of its chicks. That is how nature works.

But when we regurgitate, and let’s use the plain word, vomit, our circumstances to five other people, and then they begin to add their own details to our story, we are not seeking peace. We are reliving it. We are feeding on it again.

The apostle Paul instructs us clearly: “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6–7).

The guarding of the heart and mind comes after we bring it to God, not after we rehearse it before men.

Instead, when we continually retell and relive the circumstance, we rake over the ashes and coals of what has happened. We fan embers back into flame. We reset the fire of the circumstance rather than bringing it to the Lord and finding peace in Him.

We forget that the Lord was not in the wind, nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire, but in the still small voice (1 Kings 19:11–12).

And that stillness cannot be heard in a mind that is constantly agitated.

So remember this, brothers and sisters:
Unless you are in a place of peace, unless you have quieted your mind enough to hear the still, small voice of God, do not regurgitate the story. Do not relive it again and again.

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21).

If the treasure becomes the injury, the offense, the trial, then the heart will remain there.But if the treasure is Christ, then the mind will return to Him.
You are not glorifying the Lord by rehearsing the wound.You are not edifying your brothers and sisters by spreading the ashes.

And you are not strengthening yourself by reliving the fire.

You are adding to your sorrows (Psalm 16:4).