Philippians 4:8-9 And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.
My Thoughts
We can kill two birds with one stone here... Psalms 50:14 tells us, Make thankfulness your sacrifice to God." So if each day we make sure to spend the day being thankful, we will be fixing our thoughts on what is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely and admirable. Things that are excellent and worthy of praise.
God ask us to do this, I believe, because He wants us so totally aware of what He does for us so that we will depend on Him more and more and more. And He wants us totally dependent on Him, because He loves us so much. And God knows He can do so much more for us that we can ever do for ourselves. God wants to do so much for us! But because God gives us free will He only does these things for us if we invite Him into our lives to do them. The more we fix our thoughts on good things, the more we know the good things are from God, the more we will invite God into our lives and the better and better our lives will be.
Some people come to know God and their whole lives change over night. They "get it" all! And they get it all at one time. For most of us, I think, we get parts at a time. We invite God in ... then we limit what He can do in our lives because we have invited Him into the guest room only. We have not given him reign of the whole house. Then we add rooms that we will let Him into. What we don't get until we get to know God, really know God is that joy comes when we let Him into the attic where we have stored everything of value, and into the basement where we have hidden all the things we want to forget about.
Peace and love and change comes when we give God every part of our lives. Not leaving one single thing out. And we can be most thankful when we aren't hiding anything from God. We can better fix our minds on good and noble things when we are not busy trying to stand in front of the basement door. When we are not busy making sure we have locked the windows to our deepest darkest secrets. When we give God ever thing then we can fix our minds on the wonderful! When we give God ever thing we can see joy in the ordinary. We can be content with where God has us and know that He has so much more in store for our lives.
Today I dare you to make a list of 100 things that you are thankful for. Yes 100. Because then you begin to get past the obvious things...and you start remembering to notice the things we so take for granted, like the fact that we just flip a light switch in the dark! Or that ................................... you fill in the blank. Don't forget when you make the list to add, the Thank you God part!
I find that when I send up thank you's to Heaven, joy falls down on my soul!
No comments:
Post a Comment