“Do not think that what your thoughts dwell on does not matter. Your thoughts are making you.” — Bishop Steere (1828-1882)
We seldom take the time to consider just how important our thought life really is. Oh, yeah, we sometimes try to guard from lustful or evil thoughts or make attempts to be more positive, but we usually don’t think much about our day-to-day thinking. It’s out of the whirlwind of seemingly random thoughts that fly through our brain that our personal belief system is formed. As beliefs gain strength, they generate intense emotions that we can’t help but react to. Simply put: the things we DO are directly related to the thoughts we entertain. Our thoughts truly do determine who we are and how we behave.
For example, something as simple as a fleeting perception that one of our friends gave us a funny look at church last week can get stuck in our mind. If we keep revisiting that thought, it can easily morph into the belief that they don’t like us anymore. We may even take it a step further and credit that perceived look as evidence that no one really likes us. Beliefs like those can bring on a myriad of different emotions: sadness, rejection, or even indignation. After all, how could they do that to us, after all we have done for them?
Since these emotions don’t feel good, we look for ways to dodge their pain in the future. Before we know it we’re consciously avoiding the person (a behavior) to protect ourselves from getting hurt again—all because we allowed a thought (that may or may not have even been true) to ferment in our mind. As crazy as it seems, we could even end up losing that important friendship, forever, over nothing but a misguided thought.
How many time do we do a variation of this in a day; a week; a year? Every little thought we dwell on today is making us who we will be tomorrow.
“Finally, brothers and sisters, 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. — Philippians 4:0
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