“What were you thinking, you dummy?”
“What a stupid thing to say!”
“You will never be good enough to be her friend!”
“You are too fat/ugly/loud/pimply.”
My guess is that you have spoken, or at least thought, some of these things toward yourself. Right?
Me, too.
We all know how words can hurt other people, but sometimes we forget the power of words that we speak silently to ourselves. Our thoughts have power over us…over our happiness and our joy. This is a lesson that I am learning at 52 years old.
My basic personality is one of perfectionism. I’ve never been very good at offering myself grace when I mess up. I am much more apt to offer YOU grace for your mistakes than I am to offer myself that same grace. AND, the beating that I give myself mentally is ruthless at times.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14 ESV) emphasis, mine
For so many years I knew this verse and quoted it, but always my mind went to the ‘words of my mouth’ part of it. Probably because my mouth has gotten me in more than a few spots of trouble over these 52 years. I always assumed my mouth was where I needed to focus my clean-up efforts.
WRONG!
Sure, I need to sanctify my mouth, but my mind, my thoughts….oh heavenly days!! Those needed some significant attention.
My thoughts of myself often were negative. My thoughts of others were, as well. Very often I fell victim to the victim mentality when someone else would hurt me. In those moments, I would begin rehearsing that hurt over and over in my mind until…..oh poor, pitiful me. So-and-so hurt me and stole my happiness. Ugh, how ugly is that!
Do you do that too? Come on, be honest, now! How often do your thoughts, the meditations of your heart, lean toward the negative? Probably more often than you are ready to admit.
Are the meditations of your heart acceptable in the sight of Jesus?
Friend, I am finding that as I take every negative thought captive…every single negative thought…..and submit it to this test: Is this thought true and pure and acceptable in the sight of Jesus, that many of my thoughts and meditations need a bit of refining fire applied to them.
It is then that the Spirit prompts me to cease thinking that thought and replace it with Scripture or a thought that is pure and holy. It might simply be to repeat the name of Jesus a few times.
Today, as your mentor, I am putting my arm around your shoulder and asking you to commit to taking your thoughts captive. Ask the Holy Spirit to heighten your awareness of negative thoughts that creep into your mind for the next 48 hours. Once He does, take them captive and replace them with thoughts that are pure and holy and true. I promise that you will be amazed at the difference in your joy and happiness as you begin to purify your thoughts with the help of the Spirit of Christ.
Okay, who is with me on this? Who is willing to take my challenge? Let’s do this thing!
