We Are Not the Things That Run Through Our Heads, but what we do with those thoughts matters a lot.
We are not our thoughts. We are not the things that run through our heads, but what we do with our thoughts matters. It is very possible that the things we believe about ourselves and others that seem so normal to us, might be not so healthy and might be affecting our lives in ways we don't like.
If we were raised in a negative environment, the things that happened to us or the things that were said to us might have caused us to view the world through a skewed grid. If ideas we learned from authority figures or others in our lives were learned from someone with distorted thinking, the lenses that we view ourselves and the rest of the world can be very out of whack and we probably don’t even realize it.
If our thoughts about ourselves and others come through distorted filters we can look at ourselves and the world around us with the wrong colored lenses. Some people look at everything through rose colored glasses, but there are lots of other colors that people view the world through and they also can cause problems.
Things might seem true to us, but can we really put all of our trust in our own perceptions.
Life might work for us for a while running on distorted thinking, but usually there comes a time that we hit a wall and nothing works right. Everything seems to get hard because bad thinking will cause us to make poor choices, and our systems can only take so many poor choices before it gets on overload.
There are many warnings in the bible about our thoughts, for example: “Trust in the Lord with all of our heart and lean not on our own understanding!” “Trust in the Lord and don’t worry about our lives, what we will eat or drink.” “Take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” These few are basically saying that we need to put our trust in the Lord for the next step or the next breath.
We need to start challenging our thinking and quit believing lies about ourselves and others.
To do that I had to first learn what distorted thoughts were so I would know what thoughts I needed to challenge. I was amazed when I learned that because most, if not all of my thoughts consisted of distortions. It was pretty difficult to accept that everything I believed was out of whack.
Also, I realized that I had a little pea brain and in comparison to God a pea is not very big. Was I going to let my little pea brain define what my world would consist of and even what God is really like? Is my head my God or is God my God?
It is very sad to think that people believe they are in control of their lives.
When I let go of the idea that my thinking was keeping me safe, and I let go of control of the outcome of things, I realized that it was only God who was in control of my next breath. It wasn’t my thinking that was controlling anything around me, even though I tried to keep myself safe by trying to put things in order in my brain.
When I began to live from the inside out instead of the other way around, that is when I started to get free.
Jesus is in me and we can walk it all out together. I listen to Him who is living inside of me, instead of trying to keep things together by listening to my head, which was absurd anyway.
We need to stand up and say no to the lies that bombard our minds. With God’s help we can change our default, but we are the ones who have to let go and trust. We have to take each thought captive by turning to Jesus instead of our heads.
We can do it, one at a time, one second at a time! The second we are in is what matters, because we are with Him together in this moment. We can make our lives better one second at a time with Him.
The choice is ours to challenge skewed thinking and change our world!
We can rise up in His strength and walk it out by starting to practice to stay in the moment with Him, and challenging one thought at a time. Change each negative to a positive. Don’t trust our thinking anymore assuming our thoughts our facts!
As long as we are alive we have the hope of change. We are not stuck unless we keep doing the exact same thing over and over.
We can become more conscious of Him who lives inside of us then of the things that run through our minds. It takes some practice but we can do it one step at a time.
We can walk out of that broken record in our heads and write the new song for our lives.
Turn our attention to Him who lives inside of us, instead of listening to the voices that run through our heads. It is a minute by minute choice and every new minute is a new opportunity of hope to try it again. It is not a panic or a fret, it is a rest.
Rest in Him every moment! Sit, step or fall back into his rest!