I decided to start this blog (2010) because my son, John-Robert gave me a One Year Bible for Christmas, the New Living Translation... reading it has changed my life... I post a daily Bible verse on my Facebook page every day and it has been well received... I thought that this would be a wonderful way to share part of what I read each day!... I hope that you enjoy it.



This Year 2012 I am going to do things a little different... not much...just a little. I am again reading through my One Year Bible (for the 3rd time). But I am also using "The Secret Power of Speaking God's Word" by Joyce Meyer. This book is divided by putting scriptures under different categories so they can be used to speak over our life situations. Each day I will read a category of scripture and pick a scripture in that category to write about.



Hugs

Jeannie







Monday, September 5, 2011

9.5.11

Proverbs 4:23 Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.

My Thoughts
The New Century Version says, Be careful what you think, because your thoughts run your life.

My Bible reading today did not have this verse in it but this verse kept coming into my head. I like the New Century Version too...I think our heart determines what we keep in our thoughts and what we throw out of our thoughts. The devil loves to plant doubt in our heads, he loves to plant unkind thoughts of others in our head, he loves to deceive us by telling us what other people must be thinking. The devil loves to tell us that we are worthless, or not good at something. He tells us that people that don't even know us don't like us. He tells us that things that are wrong are fun but he never tells us that they may be fun today but they will bring misery for so many more hours than they brought fun.

What we have to do is guard our hearts above all else. We put good in our hearts... we put God's wisdom in our hearts. We put the things that God tells us about ourselves in our hearts. We put the good about others in our hearts. Then when the devil puts wrong minded thoughts in our heads we can choose to meditate on the good that we have stored up in our hearts instead. When we think good, we do good.  When we dwell on bad we eventually end up doing bad.

Is it as simple as that??  It is... a good example is if we keep thinking something negative about a person, eventually what we are thinking comes our of our mouth, often in the form of gossip. If I were to think "Mary" never dressed right for work over and over, eventually when somebody at work was talking about Mary, just to be a part of a conversation my negative thought of Mary would come out of my mouth. That thought would become words, those words get repeated and Mary gets her feelings hurt.  Those words chisel away at Mary's self esteem. If on the other hand when the devil whispered something bad in my head about Mary I took the time to notice something good, to replace that negative thought withs something from my heart, then when I felt the need to be a part of a conversation I would have something nice to say.  So if I said "What I love about Mary is that she always, always says good morning and starts my day off nice." I could be a part of the conversation, I would bring attention to Mary in a positive way. Then if Mary heard what I said about her it would make her smile, if would build her up.  Kind words reinforce our good behavior and make us want to repeat it. I would go home and not worry about what I said being repeated.  It would all be good.

Imagine what a day would be like if all we said was good, if all we heard was good. Imagine if all we did was good, and all that was done to us was good. What an amazing day we would have. We may not be able to change what others say or do, but we can put good into our hearts. We can make sure our words and actions effect others in positives ways. We can be the change we want to see in the world. We can do this by "guarding our hearts above all else" it will "determine the course of our lives."

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