Remember: whatever you choose to think will build physical structures in your brain. Toxic thoughts build toxic structures and toxic habits which will impact your mental and physical health that’s why it’s so important to live a self-regulated life. Check in with your thoughts, question them, and choose what to accept!
These days, it’s easier than ever to get caught up in what could go wrong, and imagine wretched worst-case scenarios. But I want to challenge us to take Paul’s instruction in Philippians 4 to heart! Let’s choose to feed our souls on something better than the worst possible outcome. I encourage you to find whatever is pure, worthy, excellent, and anything of good-repute – and meditate on that today!
Think about what you are thinking about today. Our thoughts are like a train, they always take us somewhere. Don’t just jump on board the first train that pulls into the platform of your mind. Check the destination board first. Where will this thought take you?
What are your actions saying? What do you do when you are alone, or when your plans are interrupted, or you are disappointed, or your weakness is exposed, or you’re tempted to fear, or someone else prospers or excels you, or you’re called on to help meet someone else’s financial need? How much of a priority do you make your local church? How willing are you to serve obscurely? When those who are closest to you are honest, those who observe you in your unguarded, uncalculated moments, what do they hear from your actions? These are exposing and convicting questions. Jesus had perfect consistency between his words and works. None of the rest of us has this yet.
Repentance is a change of thinking that leads to a change in actions. It is not a one-time event, but a lifestyle.
\We are directly responsible for what we choose to think about and dwell on, and we make these decisions in the privacy of our own thinking.
Cleaning out the garden in our minds is a daily task we must do to identify the bad fruit in our lives.
The Greek word for repentance means “𝒕𝒐 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒚 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒌.” Repentance is a lifestyle, not an event. We are not done repenting until we have glistening hope in the area we are repenting about.
Think about such things. Things that are good. It’s a challenge to do this today. There’s so many competing messages, so many distractions, so many opportunities to get off track. But at the end of it all: my mind is my greatest strength. I can choose to think about whatever I want to. What is good? What is true? What is pure? I challenge myself in this daily because the power of owning my inner world is unstoppable. No one and no thing has power over my mind. And that is a truth I must hold fast to.
There are times when I have chosen to remain silent outwardly. It’s not because I don’t care, it’s because I have the understanding that my inner world really determines what happens in the outer world around me. I’m relying on a power inside of me that when I walk into regions they are transformed because the power and the presence I’m carrying, He chose to walk in meekness, yet He dispelled darkness all around Him.