You Are What You Think

What I Learned in Marriage-14- As I said in the previous post, our minds are the basis of our selves. Our thoughts determine our mood, emotions, attitudes, ideas, actions, and words. What and how we think is incredibly important because it will determine our lives and futures. The Bible gives very clear, helpful instructions on what we are to think about in order to produce positive, godly lives. The following is an excerpt from my recently published book (Hope in Suffering) which talks about one verse that is foundational for our thought lives…

How many times do our fears, doubts and anxiety come from thinking about something that may happen in the future? How often do the things others say or do hurt us even more because we dwell on them and allow them to damage us? Our thoughts play a huge role in our emotions. If we are thinking about things that are hurtful, we feel hurt, but if we think about things that are happy, we feel happy.

 

Philippians 4:8 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.

We have [a] command here: to “ponder” the things listed in this verse. God is giving us a list of things that are to occupy our thoughts. First they should be true. If you are thinking about something that is false (or may not have happened yet) stop. It will make you unhappy. It should also be honorable, or worthy of respect; holy versus profane, corrupt or vulgar. It should be right, or aligned with God’s principles and standard of holiness. It should be pure, or morally clean. Ephesians 5:11-12 says that some deeds are a sin even to mention because that contact is corrupting. If it is sin to talk about them, then we should not think about them either. What is in our minds is in our hearts and our hearts are supposed to be pure. Our thoughts should also be focused on things that are lovely, or literally advantageous to love, pleasing, kind, gracious. Think about the fruit of the spirit. It should also be of good repute, going back to that verse in Ephesians. We shouldn’t think about things that are dishonorable. Whatever is of excellence (virtue) or worthy of praise are things that we should be thinking about. If we focus our thoughts on God, and the things of God, how can we be sad or hurt? Think about that and let Him take care of evil.