Who are you Answering?

Much of the unrest we experience in our minds comes from the thoughts we choose to entertain. The world is a crazy place and it is not an environment we can control. Our thoughts we can control. The conclusions we come to, we can control. What thoughts we entertain and respond to, we can control. Sometimes controlling your thoughts means refusal to “think” about certain things. Sadly, this is where many people miss the boat. Those thoughts that scare us; those thoughts that condemn us; those thoughts that cause us to question ourselves, those are the ones we have to refuse. Thinking how God says to think doesn’t mean we walk around all day shouting positives and calling things what they are not.  It means we get serious about what we will and will not think about. What we will and will not entertain. Controlled thinking means refusing to engage in every mental discussion. It is not indulging the thought that is bothering you, as tempting as it feels. You are having the conversation, so who are you answering? It deserves some inspection.

I have to say the “F” word again knowing that it will be glossed over like other cultural sayings we no longer recognize. So instead of saying it, I’ll describe it. It is having a negative expectation for the future. Your future. The way that fear gets ahold of you is by threatening you with some future bad outcome you cannot control in any way, supposedly. Once it gets your attention (and by now I hope you know that thoughts are not always random) it endeavors to engage you in a dialogue. But the game is fixed because as soon as you respond, you admit to the possibility of the things being discussed. Read that again please. You answer, you lose! Where folks go wrong is in engaging. Your old brain is quite sure you can just reason it out and off it goes down the buttered slope with more doubts, more worries, more fear. You beat fear by starving it out. Stop talking about it inside. Who are you answering?

As humans it is easy to feel bad about ourselves sometimes. Despite our good hearts we are fallible creatures easily blown off course by whim. We make mistakes, sometimes the same mistakes for years. We have weak spots, Chinks in our armor. We came into the world with sin born into our bloodlines. Born with a propensity for wrong, not offered as an excuse, but rather for our understanding. The enemy seeps into our thinking with these godawful, endless, perpetual accusations. Indictment after indictment questioning who we are. Questioning our motives. Magnifying our error and weakness. Guilty, guilty, guilty they adjure. But, the question isn’t one of guilt or innocence. Instead it’s an invitation to consider. It’s bait thrown near you while hoping for a nibble. Before you are even aware of what happened, your mind is reeling while defending yourself and justifying your actions. Internal court pleadings with an enemy you cannot see and where God does not preside as the judge. Endless internal discussion as you fight off feelings of guilt and condemnation and judgment. God made you righteous and every other thing you ever needed to be in the life, death and resurrection of His son. All those thoughts and feelings are nothing more than indictments you have responded to and just like with fear, once you consider, you lose. Can you conceive that our God of love and kindness dogs your mind all day with memories of past errors and mistakes? Or follows you around all day seeking to accuse you of sin? Those things may be actually occurring but they do not come from God. God does not judge you. Who are you answering?

“What is wrong with me?” – is the secret thing people say inside assuming it comes from low self-esteem. (I wonder how many things in life that plague us are not from us at all…) The end result is always a question, never an answer. A simple test. Darkness engenders questions. Light provides the answers. If something inside is causing you to question yourself, it does not come from God. God does not operate that way. He is love. He knows what you do not yet understand. He brings us along slowly, gently and He certainly never causes us to question in our hearts. The questioning is yet another invitation for a dialogue. “Maybe I’m losing it?” Are you? Add up three mental burps and you’ve got dementia. God promised us a sound mind and our minds become sound by refusing the dialogue, the discussion, the bait. The discussion leads nowhere but to the dark. Don’t carry around the secret inside anymore that you are quietly flawed. We are all quietly flawed yet God gave us His spirit anyway. Maybe it aint always about us. God won’t lead you to more questions. He will lead you to a quiet place where your heart can be at peace. But, you have to do your part. Refuse those questions about yourself. Who are you answering?

All this time you thought life was about doing, doing, doing in order to be happy. No. The happy is already there waiting for you to cut off access to the trouble. The thoughts that appear to casually float through your mind do matter. Pay attention to what you are thinking about. What have you been considering all day? What are you mulling over? You do not have to answer the darkness, the negativity, the trouble. You cannot grasp the agitation and hope to make it calm and peaceful. You have to let it go. You have to let all the stuff go you cannot control. Your anxious thought never led you to an answer. Your calm thought did. Having faith in God is about letting Him do what He said He would do without any need for monitoring. Stop thinking about that stuff that leads you to agitation and anxiety every day. Put yourself on a mental diet and see how good you feel, no doing required! Who are you answering? Stay in the light.

Just some good thoughts…