Are Your Thoughts Helping or Hurting You?

are the thought patterns that are showing up in your life, helping you or hurting you. Well, I'm going to invite you to take a look at that on this episode.

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Colossians 3-2 says to set your mind on things that are above. And Philippians 4-8 says finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, is there any excellence? If there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Well, I can remember a time where I was not doing that that is what we need to be doing, and several years ago I remember that I had some negative things that were coming out of my mouth and somebody said to me hey, you've been hanging around such and such too much. And I remember thinking they're right. They're right. Wow, where did that come from? And God corrected me and he showed me that I was letting this person's negativity influence me and it was giving me a lens to see things through that I would complain about that. I would have never complained about a month or two before that, and so I had to correct what I was, allowing my mind to think about what I was seeing. And more recently not in the two distant past I even caught myself again that God corrected me because I noticed I had sort of a negative attitude towards things. Looking at everything going on in culture, looking at everything problems at work relationships that have problems in the workplace and all the stuff in politics and everything the news and headlines and all the craziness happening and the chaos today. It's easy to get sucked into that and to have a pessimistic or a negative attitude, and I even developed sort of a chip on my shoulder about a few things. And God brought it to my attention and I corrected it. And what he did was he showed me what's going on here. It's the thought patterns, it's what I was dwelling on. I spent a lot of time thinking about the things that bothered me, that stole my peace, and I'm thinking why would I spend the time thinking about those things? What a waste of time.

And there's a quote from Tony Evans here that I want to read that really ties this together. Well, he says one of the reasons we don't keep our peace is because we tend to dwell on things that are set in opposition to the peace we're asking for. We mull over a lie or over bad things that could happen, and if we continue to entertain messages that work against our peace, anxiety will soon return. We must therefore ask ourselves if we are able to praise God for the things that we are dwelling on. If we can't, then we'll soon lose the peace God has given us.

Well, when I made that correction, it was like a light switch. It just I saw it and I said Lord, I'm done with that. I'm going to look at the positive aspects of things. I can see how God can use all of this to reframe it. He can use it all for my good. Romans 8, 28 is true. He uses everything for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purposes. I had a bigger view of God's sovereignty over all of these situations. I surrendered it to him and then I could see clearly to partner with God in these situations.

So what about you? How's your thought patterns? How are the things that you dwell on? Are they helping you or are they hurting you? Well, I want to invite you to take a good look at that and to make a decision today to surrender those things to the Lord and to set your mind on things above and to think about the things that are true, pure, holy, commendable, and all those things that we heard in Philippians 4-8. Hey, if you want help with this, you can get my free download 21 Days to a Spirit-led Life. Check out the link in the show notes. Make sure you leave a comment and subscribe. If you're on YouTube, if you're listening to the audio of this, you can find the link to the video in the show notes. Thanks for listening. I'm Mike Asp and we'll see you in the next episode.