Food for Thought

I think that my thoughts have too much power. I often wonder why. Our thoughts are so much a part of us, who we are. I agree with the adage that as a man thinks, so is he. If you think about it, what one eats determines how one feels and looks. Food can impact the energy one has to accomplish specific tasks and build up or tear down. I think my body needs food, good food. So why do I not equate that truth with my mind needing good thoughts too? If my thoughts are powerful, shouldn’t I consider them?

The question for me is how do I consider my thoughts? I fear that sometimes I am unaware of how and what I think. Thoughts become so engrained and habitual that I identify them as “just me.” This is who I am. I don’t think about, as well, how my thoughts are closely connected to my feelings. I just think and then go along for the emotional ride seemingly powerless to change the course. But maybe, I give my thoughts too much power because of the connecting emotion. Emotions give my thoughts a sense of truth, of reality. It feels true, well, because it causes me to feel.

Do my feelings have too much power? I think and feel that they do. I feel confident that my thoughts can be the tracks on which my emotions run. I am sitting in the “railroad car” of my emotions, carried along on tracks over which I think I have no control. I tend to go places I don’t want to go. Sometimes I like the ride. Sometimes I want to go back and change my destination.

I have considered the idea that my thoughts and emotions do have power. I thought carefully about it and made a decision based on my reflection. My emotions do freely ride on the tracks my thoughts take. My thoughts take me places I do and don’t want to go. But, I will not continue to “ride” them to any destination. Like good food can sustain and care for my body, good thoughts can sustain and care for my mind. Good thoughts will connect with positive emotions that will carry me to places I desire to go, places I should go.

Philippines 4:8-9 says, “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell (think)on these things. The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.” I think this verse says that what I think about brings peace as I walk in the truth regardless of how I initially feel. Paul David Tripp in his devotional, New Morning Mercies, says that “we are to look on what is lovely, pure, right and true but our wandering hearts don’t always love what God says is right, true, lovely and pure.” Maybe I struggle with negative emotions because I think I know what is right, true, lovely, and pure. Maybe it doesn’t match up to God’s view of what those things are in my life. Maybe I want my way to be the lovely thing. When I don’t get my way, the thing God considers lovely is not lovely in my mind’s eye. So, I think about what is not lovely, and off I go in my emotional railcar to the very place the tracks of my thoughts take me.

I think my thoughts and feelings have too much power. I think any believer can relate to this truth in their own life. But, here is something to think about. We can control what we think and thus how we feel. It is implied in the verse above. Dwell on, and think about these things so that it impacts how you live, where you live, and where you go. Dwell on what God, through His word, says is lovely, pure, right, and true. Break up the tracks of your thoughts that take you down paths of despair and hopelessness by laying down new tracks of truth, the truth which will provide a new “railcar to ride in” with a new destination in mind.

I think my thoughts have too much power, so I will shape them by the truth of God’s Word that defines what is lovely, right, true, and pure. I will feed my mind with good thoughts to replace the thoughts that are not good that create emotions that carry me to places I don’t need to go. Thoughts worthy of praise and excellence will be the food for my mind. From such thoughts, the incredible peace of God will be with me!

Now that is food for thought!