The Mind Connection: How the Thoughts You Choose Affect Your Mood, Behavior, and Decisions (21 page)

The renewal of the mind also requires us to be willing to think about what we think about and to take wrong thoughts captive
to the obedience of Christ. Thoughts that will need to be taken captive are ones that come from the devil or the mind of the flesh. God’s Word teaches us that we have a mind of the flesh that produces death and all kinds of misery and a mind of the Spirit that produces life (see Romans 8:6). If we live according to the flesh, it is because we are thinking with the mind of the flesh, and if we live according to the Spirit, it is because we are thinking with the mind of the Spirit. Thoughts precede behavior!

If I want to walk in love, I cannot spend excessive time thinking about myself and what I want and need. I will need to think about things I can do to help others and show them love. If I want to be unselfish and free from self-centeredness, I cannot have my mind on myself all the time. If I want to lose some weight, I can’t think about food all the time. If I feel an urgency to eat, but know that I really don’t need to eat yet, I should do something and get my mind off of food and the “I have to eat” feeling will go away.

If I want to get out of debt, I should not spend an hour a day reading all the sale catalogs and advertisements that come in the mail, because they will fill my mind with things I want, things that I probably don’t need at all.

If I want to get my house cleaned up, then I should not think about how tedious the cleaning will be. Put your thoughts into what you (the spiritual you) truly want to do, not just merely what your flesh is demanding at the moment. If you or I want to change anything about our behavior, we must first change our thinking about that behavior. When we think about something, we make provision for it. Consider this word of advice from God through the apostle Paul.

Please take time to go over this Scripture several times. It completely backs up the message of this book. We make provision for wrong behavior by thinking about it! Our excuse for wrong thinking has always been to believe that we just cannot help what we think, but that is not true. When I finally saw that I could choose my own thoughts with God’s help, it was the beginning of an amazing life change. You can do your own thinking! Martin Luther King said it this way:

As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free.
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The connection between what we think and what we say is stronger than most people realize. We will never change what we say if we don’t understand how important what we say is! Words are not empty or harmless. Words are containers filled with power, and we choose whether that power will be negative or positive. We can bless or curse with the words of our mouth. We can build up or tear down. We can make people laugh or make them cry. God wants to use us to advance His Kingdom. He wants us to partner with Him in introducing people to Him, and just as we can learn to think as God does, we can also learn to talk as He talks.

Mother Teresa said, “Words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness.”
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It is important that we choose words that are pleasing to Christ, and if they are, they will generally please everyone. According to the book of Proverbs, we must be satisfied with the consequences of our words. Words have consequences!

The apostle James had a lot to say about the power of words. In James 3, he says that although the tongue is a little member, it can boast of great things. The tiny spark of a word can start a large fire. He says that the tongue is a world of wickedness and a wild animal that no man can tame. Wow!

James compares the power of the tongue to the power that a small rudder has to turn around a huge ship, or how a tiny bit in the horse’s mouth is used to turn its whole body about. James is saying that the things we speak out of our mouths can determine the direction of our lives. Oh my! If we believe that, we should make some quick changes. I won’t go so far as to say that everything we speak is what we end up with, but I do strongly believe that words have amazing power, and if we persist in speaking ungodly and negative things, it will definitely harm and hinder the plan of God for us.

It was many years before I had any idea that my own thoughts and words had tremendous influence on my life and behavior. For example, due to being abused and controlled by my father, I repeatedly said to myself, as well as to others, “When I get out of this house, nobody is ever going to tell me what to do again.” I became very rebellious toward authority, and especially male authority. When Dave and I got married, I learned in God’s Word that God wanted me to respect and admire Dave’s opinions and to honor him as the head of our home, but I was totally unable to do so. I wanted to, but I could not!

It took some time and some strong lessons from the Holy Spirit before I learned that I had imprisoned myself in rebellion by the words I said for years when I was younger. I had actually made a vow to myself that I would not let anyone ever tell me what to do. I finally saw my error and repented, asking God to forgive me and to soften my hardened heart toward authority. It took some
time, but as I grew in God and changed my thinking and speaking, my mind was renewed and I was set free.

You may remember earlier when I mentioned that I smoked cigarettes. I was addicted; I smoked for about twenty years, and I repeatedly said, “I know I could never quit smoking, because if I did I would gain weight. It would just be too hard to quit.” Years later when I did desire to quit, I found myself in a greater struggle than I could handle on my own. Dave decided to quit and did, but I could not seem to break free. As I prayed about the habit and asked God to help me, He led me to start saying out loud that I was quitting smoking—that it was a bad habit, costly, smelly, and not good for my health. Amazingly, within a few weeks I had no desire to smoke again. I’m happy to say that was forty years ago.

Words definitely have power. Many people with addictions say over and over that the addiction is too strong for them to break it or that they will never be free from it, and sure enough they end up being right. It would be most helpful for anyone trying to overcome an addiction or break any bad habit to begin confessing what they want to see happen, instead of confessing that they will never be free.

Would God approve of such behavior? Surprisingly, the Bible states that God does the same thing. God had promised Abraham that he would become the father of many nations, but for a long time, Abraham had no children. God changed his name from Abram, meaning “high, exalted father,” to Abraham, which meant “father of a multitude” (see Genesis 17:5). Names and their meanings carried much more weight in Abraham’s day than they do today. Therefore, each time God or anyone else called Abraham’s name, they were declaring that Abraham would indeed father a multitude.

We read in the book of Romans that God gives life to the dead, and calls things that are not in existence as if they are (see Romans 4:17). God speaks things into existence. He used words
to create the world, and it is with His Word that He currently upholds and maintains the universe (see Hebrews 1:3). Perhaps you have no difficulty believing that God’s words have power, but you doubt that your own do. Perhaps it will help if you remember that you are created in God’s image and told to imitate Him.

I am sure somebody has said to you at some time in your life, “Think before you speak.” The truth is that much of what we think literally falls out of our mouths with no forethought as to how it is going to sound or what it may create. We can learn to discipline ourselves enough not to say everything that floats through our mind, but if we meditate on something frequently we will usually end up saying it. Even if it is something we would not want anyone to know we were thinking—in an unguarded moment, we blurt it out.

I was with a friend recently who was wearing something that did not compliment her body shape. The more I thought how bad I thought it looked on her, the more difficult it became for me not to tell her. Sadly, I did end up telling her (in love, of course!), but I realized immediately that my comment made her feel bad. I even went about trying to fix my blunder by saying, “What you’re wearing just doesn’t do you justice; you would look better if the
top was shorter, blah, blah, blah!” I finally just simply said, “I am so sorry I said that.” She said, “I knew it didn’t look the best on me, but it was new and I just wanted to wear it.” The moment I had the thought about her clothing choice, I should have whispered to myself, “Joyce, it is none of your business what she wears.” Thankfully, we are really good friends and she didn’t get angry, but God let me know that I had been really foolish.

This is one tiny example of how I can blurt things out without thinking about the damage it will do, and perhaps you have this
wonderful
ability also. I thought something, I spoke it, it hurt my friend, and it all happened in a few moments. It is frightening how quickly things can go through our minds and fall out of our mouths.

I think it is nearly impossible for us to control our mouths unless we first learn to control our minds. We cannot do either without the grace (help) of God, so the first thing to do is pray. The Psalmist David prayed regularly that the meditations of his heart and the words of his mouth would be acceptable to God (see Psalm 19:14). He also prayed that God would set a guard over his mouth and keep watch at the door of his lips (see Psalm 141:3). David knew that he needed God’s help in this very important area. Both of these Scriptures are good ones to pray daily.

When we speak, our thought life is being turned inside out. If we don’t want our thoughts to be revealed, then we better not think them too long, because if we do, they usually find a way to get out. Jesus said that what is in the heart comes out of the mouth (see Matthew 12:34), and Jesus is always right. It is not safe to keep thinking something
if you really don’t want to end up saying it. Of course, there is a chance you might control yourself and never say what you think, but I believe it is better not to take the chance. I think the connection between the mind and the mouth may be the strongest one we experience. When the two join together and are in agreement, the rest of our fate is sealed. If I think angry thoughts and speak angry words, I will begin to feel angry in my emotions, and more than likely I will display angry behavior toward someone before too long. The mind connection is powerful indeed!

We may not always tell a person if we are thinking something bad about them. But we usually do end up telling someone, and that someone may tell someone, and so on and so forth, until we have created a huge problem that could have been avoided if we had only chosen to think something good. We can overcome evil only with good—nothing else works (see Romans 12:21).

In learning how to cast down wrong thoughts and imaginations, I learned that the only way to eliminate the bad ones and keep them from returning was to fill my mind with something good. That way when the bad ones returned (and they always do), they found no place to enter.

The apostle Matthew teaches us not to worry and speak the worry out of our mouth: “Do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’” (Matthew 6:31 NIV). I have a lot of experience with worry, and perhaps you do also. It seems to be something that is fairly easy for most of us to do. It is interesting how much time we put into worrying, but it is totally useless. As soon as a problem occurs, the natural impulse is to worry, but we can quickly trade it in
for trusting God. Trust is God’s antidote for worry and anxiety. When I find myself worrying, I often say out loud, “God, I trust You.” I discovered long ago that the way to break a thought pattern that I don’t want is to say something else. It gives us enough time to take back control of our thoughts and redirect them. It is true that what is in our heart comes out of our mouth, but it is also true that what we speak out of our mouths will get into our hearts. We can renew our thinking with purposeful words.

God has given us the gift and the responsibility of thoughts and words, so let us use them wisely. Let’s put them to work in our lives in a way that will be pleasing to Him.

If you have never paid much attention to disciplining your thoughts, this may seem like a mountain that you are not sure you can tackle, but if I can do it, anybody can. I had huge problems in this area. Not little ones,
huge
ones. Little by little with God’s help and persistence, I have experienced major changes in how my mind functions.

It seems like a fairly easy task now to simply not think something that I know isn’t a good thing. Of course, I am not always successful, but I succeed more than I fail now, and that is progress worth celebrating. I frequently study in this area, because it is quite easy to fall back into bad habits and start fires with my tongue that I cannot put out. Take God’s Word like you would take medicine. If you are weak in any area, then study in that area and you will begin to improve. Study thoughts, the mind, words, the mouth, and the tongue. You will be amazed at how many Scripture verses God has included in the Bible on these subjects. There are too many to ignore or to take lightly.

I teach and write frequently on this subject, because there is no hope of anyone enjoying the life that Jesus died to give us without having insight into these areas. The apostle Peter said
that if we want to enjoy life, we must keep our tongues free from evil and our lips from guile (see 1 Peter 3:10).

The apostle James said that if anyone thinks himself to be religious and does not bridle his tongue, then his religious service is useless (see James 1:26). To bridle your tongue means to control it. God has given us the fruit of self-control that we might be able to allow or disallow behaviors in our own lives. We can learn what behaviors benefit us and God’s Kingdom and which behaviors do not, and thankfully we can choose accordingly.

I can say with great conviction that in these areas God has taught me some of the most life-changing lessons I’ve ever learned, and I believe it will have the same effect on you. If you need to, read this chapter again and again until you feel it has become part of you. With God’s help, learn to control your thoughts and not let your mind run wild. Don’t let the devil use it as a garbage dump. Choose your thoughts carefully, keeping in mind they will become your words and ultimately your feelings and behavior.

This Scripture teaches us that if we keep God’s Word in our mind, it will be pleasant. Life will turn out better for us. Not only will we think on God’s Word, but also our lips will be accustomed to confessing it. What we allow ourselves to meditate on and to declare influences our destiny!

How we view the power of words will determine how we use
them. Here are some things I suggest that you ponder concerning how to think about your words:

The more we realize the power and influence that words have, the more careful we will be with them.