8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
We have the responsibility to reign in our thoughts. We cannot always stop a thought from entering our minds, but we can determine how long we spend chewing that thought. This is one of the key things Jesus-followers need to learn and master. Our thought world is one that must be brought into submission to the Spirit’s presence. But we have gotten in the habit of letting our thoughts run, even take over our lives. This could be thoughts of hopelessness or thoughts of envy. When we follow our thoughts rather than reigning in our thoughts we get in trouble. We can use our thought life to better serve God, but that means we must take control of our thoughts so that we run our thoughts rather than our thoughts running us. I bet you can think of a time when your thoughts ran you down a road you really did not want to travel. Perhaps circumstances were such that you thought you were going to get into a financial bind, or that the bill collectors were going to start their seemingly never ending cycle of calling. The more you thought about that, the more depressed, angry and fearful you became. All this because of thoughts! But you had a choice to make very early in that cycle. You could focus your thoughts on the hopelessness of the circumstance or on the faithfulness of God. You had the choice what to think about. When the negative popped in you could switch to thinking about Christ’s provision. You don’t have to follow the thoughts. You can change channels. The discipline arises when the negative pops back in, which will inevitably happen. At that moment we need to choose to switch back to ETN, Eternal Truth Network. We can go to the Scriptures and soak ourselves in the truth of God. We have a choice. What choice are you going to make when the popup worry window enters your mind? Memorizing Scripture is like a popup blocker for the internet of your mind. The more your mind is filled with Scripture and His Truth, the less space there is for those negative thoughts. Scripture is the spam filter of your thoughts. Install it today!
The Arnold Journey 