What are You Thinking?

Did you know that the answer to the question above has a monumental impact concerning how your life turns out? Human beings live and die right between their ears. What you think about and consider the most is what gets into your heart and from your heart proceed the issues of your life. Your heart is the great citadel, the epicenter from which you believe and those things you believe are what come to pass in your life, both good and bad. To be clear, I’m not talking about how you choose to react to life’s situations, though that’s certainly a factor. I’m talking about shaping and changing the circumstances of your life. Life does not just happen despite what you think as people have often concluded. Much of your life happens because of, not in despite of, what you believe. People receive what they receive because of what they believe. Negatives still happen to us at times due to the systems of the world we live amidst, but even then our ability to prevail over negative circumstances and overcome challenges is based on and predicated by what things we believe. The only way a person can develop a hard and calloused heart is by faithfully and ignorantly thinking the wrong things over and over and over again. In order for a belief to be built into your heart happens only by repetition which leads back to the original question, what are you thinking?

Have you ever wondered what is in the secret chamber called your heart? The answer is simple, namely what do you think about the most? Once something gets into your heart it is not easy to get it out of your heart. This is why God admonishes us to guard our hearts. Once negatives take root in our hearts through repetition of our thoughts, they color and influence much of our lives. Our enemy the adversary knows this, thus he works hard to get us to think incorrectly on a continual basis. He knows that once some slave-like negative gets into your heart his work is made easy because now you will be expecting bad results and literally believing through fear for bad things to happen. Enter how the whole world is controlled. Everything around you is selling fear day after day after day. Fear, often disguised, is a form of belief and carries with it the same power to bring your life to some negative, not positive result. Once you have become afraid or worried or preoccupied or stressed out, fear is at work in your life. The answer to fear is not to deeply consider whatever awful outcome is being portrayed, nor is it to “try” and take it on with your reasoning mind. The answer to fear is to stop thinking the thoughts that are causing you fear. It sounds simplistic and it is, but it is not always easy dependent upon how much reign you have already given it in your mind and life. But, make no mistake it is your mind and they are your thoughts. You are choosing to think them. The only way to get error and self-limiting beliefs out of your heart is to change what it is you are thinking about; what it is you have been feeding your mind; those thoughts that have been effective in torturing you. You can do this and you must do this. The foundation of most of the trouble and difficulty we face in our lives is the thoughts we choose to think about the most. Change your thoughts, change your life.

For this reason, God asks us to control our thinking. He would not have asked us to control our thinking if it wasn’t something we can do. This idea that our thoughts just happen to us, that we cannot control them, that our minds won’t shut off is not true. Sure we have all been overwhelmed at times and frenetic in our thinking, but if we can settle ourselves down we can begin to control our thoughts. Our minds do not function in a vacuum and thus our goal is not to clear our minds of all thoughts, but instead to replace wrong thoughts with right thoughts that we initiate. You can decide what you will think about and you can decide what you will not think about. The decision to not think fear thoughts or any negative thoughts that assail us appears so contradictory to our nature. Our rationale mind wants to take it on. Our human reasoning insists on getting involved. But the ruse being played is that we can somehow get to the bottom of something originating in the spiritual realm with our human understanding based and formed in the natural realm. Try as you might, when it comes to fear thoughts or any thoughts that are not helpful or encouraging, you are not going to get to the bottom of it. All that is really happening is that you and I are being deceived into holding onto things that are not true, eventually making their way into our hearts from whence our life flows forth. You cannot solve a negative thought by giving it fuel from which to burn you. You have to cut off the fuel source and you do that by refusal to think the thought any longer. All of your endless worry and pervasive agitation have never succeeded in solving even one of your problems ever! You cannot problem solve with an agitated mind. “The greatest cargoes of life come in over quiet seas.” The best way to replace wrong thoughts is by thinking right thoughts based upon God’s promises for your life. Indeed, what does God say about the issue confronting your life right now? Think that! Not because things look good or the circumstances have changed, but because what God says is true, is true but it is up to you to believe it and you believe it by thinking about it often.  You can rid your heart of any wrong thing that has ever gotten in there if you will just remain faithful in changing your thoughts. What are you thinking about?

Life is not random and things do not just happen for no reason. We live amidst an ordered universe of cause and effect. There is always a reason behind the things that happen to us and sadly the reason is not always good. Our enemy seeks only to steal and to kill and to destroy. He steals away your life by making you a slave to fear. He kills because of ignorance or a failure to understand and know the truth. He destroys by getting people to spend their entire lives distracted from the truth and thus never accepting God’s free gift of salvation. God wants you and I to win in life. However, we cannot even begin to prevail until we first learn how to recognize and change our thinking. Mindlessly going with the flow sends you down the river with an undesirable destination coming you did not choose. It is not a case of bad luck, it’s a case of uncontrolled thought. You guard your heart by what you choose to think about and what you refuse to think about. Let me put it this way. If you knew how much influence the beliefs in your heart have in your life you would be much more diligent about what you were thinking about. That’s not to say you have to stop living and worry over every thought that pops up. Random imaginings are not what get you. What gets you is a failure to register what you have been thinking about and changing those thoughts as soon as they come to your awareness. You can believe for good things, the best things to happen in your life. You do this by faithfully holding on to what God says is true. God wants to help you get what you need in this life. You cooperate with Him by controlling your thoughts. Remember it does not matter what it looks like. It does not matter how you may feel at any given moment. What matters is what you believe and what you believe is shaped by what you choose to think about most often.

The real acid test for the reality of this truth is the crucible of your experience. What is going on in your life right now? Well, what have you been thinking about the most? There will always be a direct correlation to what you are holding onto in your thinking. If you don’t think it will happen for you, most likely it will not happen for you. If you can begin to perceive it as a possibility for your life you are on the right track. Some errors in our thinking take time to overcome. Some wrong beliefs have been deeply inculcated into our hearts and are not so willing to leave. But with some dedicated effort in right thought we can begin to turn things around, no matter how low we may have fallen. The time to answer the honest question, “what are you thinking?” is today. They are always your thoughts and you have the ability to control them. Protect that heart of yours by investing in good thoughts. Just some good thoughts…