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Guarding Your Thoughts – Part Two:
If you hang around negativity, then you will become negative. Although this applies for the people who we hang around, this also applies to the spiritual foods that we are eating. How are you feeding yourself spiritually? Are you surrounding yourself with God’s Word? Get in the Bible and stay in the Bible day and night! You will notice a huge difference in our thought life when you are in the Word and when you are not in the Word. God’s presence will set you free from your pessimism, hopelessness, discouragement. It is time to change your mindset, and renew your thoughts and ways of thinking. God never intended for us to live according to the world’s system and ways of doing things. If you can renew your mind and thoughts toward the things of God, you can change your world. Changing your mindset can change your circumstances because your mind is powerful. It has the power to bring life or to bring destruction, because everything starts with a thought. How you think determines how you live. Joshua 1:7-8 is a perfect example of how to change your mindset: 1) be strong and courageous, 2) be careful to obey the Bible, 3) do not turn from the Bible to the left or right, 4) do no let the Book of the Law depart from your mouth, and 5) meditate on the Word of God day and night. “Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection” Colossians 3:12-14 (NKJV).
Spend time in the mind of God and you will notice a change in your own mind. Spend time with Christ in prayer and be still before Him. Allow Christ to tell you the things that you need to hear. says, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” That tells us that our life is going to go in the direction of our most prominent thoughts, which is why the writer of Proverbs warns us and it doesn’t say that “some” things flow from your heart; it says “everything.” If you allow the wrong thoughts to linger in your mind, such as an offense or a fear or a worry, they will drop down into your heart and create a bad attitude. Life is hard enough without being handicapped by negative thoughts and attitudes. Many of the difficulties that come against us will overwhelm us if we have negative attitudes and the wrong perspective. To not guard our heart means that we will allow wrong thoughts to develop into harmful attitudes“Do not let them depart from your eyes; Keep them in the midst of your heart; For they are life to those who find them, And health to all their flesh. Keep your heart with all diligence, For out of it spring the issues of life” Proverbs 4:21-23 (NKJV).
Many Christians struggle with this issue: guarding their minds, especially in our highly technological world, but taking control of our thoughts is essential. Proverbs 4:23 states, “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” The “heart” includes the mind and all that proceeds from it. Someone said that every sin we commit, we commit twice, once in our thoughts and again when we act upon those thoughts. It is easier to rid our lives of sin if we attack it at this fundamental thought level rather than waiting for it to become rooted in our lives by our actions and then try to pull it out. It is important to understand that when a thought enters our mind, we examine it based upon God’s Word and determine if we should continue down that path or reject the thought and replace it with another thought. “The battle for sin always starts in the mind.” Our minds are broken by sin. Which means we cannot trust even what we think. “The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, Even to give every man according to his ways, According to the fruit of his doings” Psalm 16:8-9 (NKJV).
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