“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 4:8 (NIV) You can learn a lot about a person’s physical health by simply looking at their physical diet. Are they eating a variety of whole foods? Are they eating a lot of fast food? Is their diet full of foods that help them grow strong and have energy, or is the food they consume wearing them down? The same is true spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. You can know a lot about your spiritual, mental, and emotional health by looking at your mental diet. Hours of talk radio, cable news, soap operas, social media, and binge watching is the equivalent of mental junk food. It’s not healthy for you. In fact, it’s poison. It is wearing down your ability to live a life of purpose. Proverbs 15:14 says, “A wise man is hungry for truth, while the mocker feeds on trash” (TLB). You have a choice—and every day, you must choose to feed your mind with the best thoughts. Philippians 4:8 gets specific about the kinds of thoughts that are best for your mental, emotional, and spiritual health: “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” (NIV). Does that list of things describe what you think about most of the time? If you’re honest, the answer is “no.” We would all answer “no.” Our minds don’t naturally go to these things because we are human and sinful. So you have to train your mind to think thoughts that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy. How do you do that? By doing it! You have to practice filling your mind with these things by reading the Bible, meditating on it, and memorizing it. You have to hunger for it. How you think determines how you live. What you put in your mind is going to affect every area of your life—so you need a steady diet of truth from God’s Word.
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“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?”
James 4:1 (NIV) Every second of your life, there’s a battle in your brain. There’s a mental battle going on right now! It could be between right and wrong, between what’s easy and what’s hard, or what’s healthy and what’s unhealthy. All your negative emotions—stress, depression, anxiety, loneliness, fear, jealousy—are a mental struggle. All of your internal conflicts start in your mind. In fact, so do all of your external conflicts. James 4:1 says, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?” (NIV) That battle going on inside your mind between conflicting desires can continue even when you are sleeping, as you experience restless sleep and bad dreams. It’s a battle that rages 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This battle in your brain is constant and intense because your mind is your greatest asset. You are your thoughts, your will, your emotions, your soul. Without your brain, you’re not you. The Bible says in Romans 7:22-23, “I love to do God’s will so far as my new nature is concerned; but there is something else deep within me . . . that is at war with my mind and wins the fight and makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. In my mind I want to be God’s willing servant, but instead I find myself still enslaved to sin” (TLB). If you follow Jesus, then God’s Spirit is in you. It’s part of your new nature. That means that Satan can’t control your mind, but he can make suggestions. The only influence Satan has in the life of a Christian is that he can put thoughts in your mind. He can get your attention—and that’s a pretty big deal. Why? Because whatever gets your attention gets you. Once he puts a thought in your mind, you have to decide if you’re going to accept or reject his suggestion. There’s a lot going on in your brain right now, and all of it will eventually show up in your attitude and your actions. Ask God to help you choose right over wrong, healthy over destructive, and his truth over Satan’s lies. He is ready to give you the power you need through the Holy Spirit! “The mountains may move, and the hills may shake, but my kindness will never depart from you. My promise of peace will never change . . . I will rebuild your city with precious stones. I will reset your foundations with sapphires. I will rebuild your towers with rubies.”
Isaiah 54:10-12 (GW) There is only one place in the Bible where the word “reset” is used. It’s found in Isaiah 54. The nation of Israel had lost a war to Babylon, where they were taken as captives and would remain for 70 years. The Israelites were pretty discouraged—not just because they had lost but because their Holy City, Jerusalem, had been destroyed. In the midst of all this, God did not want them to forget that he was still with them. He loved them, and he was going to rebuild—or reset—their lives. God says in Isaiah 54:10-12, “The mountains may move, and the hills may shake, but my kindness will never depart from you. My promise of peace will never change . . . I will rebuild your city with precious stones. I will reset your foundations with sapphires. I will rebuild your towers with rubies” (GW). God was going to rebuild their city and their whole lives. But the foundation wouldn’t be made of clay or rock or cement. God said he would build Israel’s foundation with sapphires and rubies. Why would God build a foundation with precious jewels? Because every other kind of foundation can rot or decay—but sapphires and rubies last forever. That’s why they’re so expensive! God would build Israel’s foundation with the most precious things on Earth. That is how much he loved and cared for his people. When Job was going through hard times, his friend said to him, “Put your heart right, Job. Reach out to God. Put away evil and wrong from your home. Then face the world again, firm and courageous. Then all your troubles will fade from your memory, like floods that are past and remembered no more. Your life will be brighter than sunshine at noon, and life’s darkest hours will shine like the dawn. You will live secure and full of hope” (Job 11:13-18 GNT). If you need to make a big change in your life, then you’re going to need a strong foundation. And you’re only going to find that foundation in God, who loves and cares for you. Get rid of the sin and junk in your life that keeps you from focusing on God. Then you can live full of hope, moving forward with courage and shining brighter than the sun. “Forget what happened before, and do not think about the past. Look at the new thing I am going to do. It is already happening. Don’t you see it?”
Isaiah 43:18-19 (NCV) You are a product of your past. You have been shaped by the good and the bad things in your life. But you are not a prisoner of your past—you can be free! That’s what Christianity is all about. Through Jesus Christ, you can be born again and start a new life. Jesus makes it possible for you to push the reset button and get a second chance. Here’s what God says about your past: “Forget what happened before, and do not think about the past. Look at the new thing I am going to do. It is already happening. Don’t you see it?” (Isaiah 43:18-19 NCV). God doesn’t want you constantly looking at the past. If you’re always looking in the rearview mirror, then you’re going to crash! The only way you can move forward is to focus on the present and look forward to the future. The rest of your life is in the future, not in the past. Your past is past; it’s over. You can’t change it, so don’t dwell on it. Instead, start asking God to do something new in you. Maybe you feel like nothing new is happening in your life right now. Do you know why? Because you’re not asking. James 4:2 says, “You don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it” (NLT). Look again at what that says: You don’t have it because you don’t ask for it. If you’ve never asked God for a reset in your life, then all you need to say is, “God, I need a fresh start. I’ve blown it. I’ve made mistakes, and I need you to reboot my life.” This is the first step to a reset. You just have to ask God for it! Everyone needs a reset at some point—because life is hard, and we all make mistakes. Are you ready for God to do something new in your life? Ask him for a fresh start, and he’ll give you renewed energy, a renewed spirit, renewed hope, and a renewed heart. “In everything we do we show that we are God’s servants by patiently enduring troubles, hardships, and difficulties.”
2 Corinthians 6:4 (GNT) We often think that the world is impressed with our success and how we enjoy our prosperity. But they’re actually more impressed by how we as Christians handle adversity. When you’re going through pain, non-believers around you are watching you. They’re wondering what it means to be a Christian when you’re in the same kind of pain they are. Does it look any different? The truth is, we have the same pain as everybody else. We just have a different source of comfort. Your successes don’t give you credibility. Your suffering gives you credibility. The more honest and vulnerable you are about the suffering in your life, the more powerful your impact will be in people’s lives. The apostle Paul was a pro at using his pain to model his message. He says in 2 Corinthians 6:4, “In everything we do we show that we are God’s servants by patiently enduring troubles, hardships, and difficulties” (GNT). Your deepest life message will come out of your deepest pain. The world doesn’t need to see Christians who are perfect or have it all together. They need something real and authentic. They need to see Christians who are patient in pain, who walk faithfully in suffering. Every area of your life where you’ve experienced pain is a testimony. Has God helped you work your way out of deep debt? That was painful—but it’s also a testimony. Has God helped you patiently endure chronic pain? That’s a testimony. Anywhere you’ve had pain and experienced God’s help is a testimony. Do not waste your pain; don’t waste your hurt. People all around you are going through the very thing you’ve already gone through, and they need your help. They need you to comfort them. The greatest witness of God’s love in all of history was not Jesus’ perfect life, his sermons, his miracles, or his stories. It was his suffering. God can use your faithfulness in suffering to great effect in someone’s life. In fact, your faithfulness in suffering could be your greatest witness! “Even though Jesus was God's Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered.”
Hebrews 5:8 (NLT) Every pain in your life is an opportunity to grow in character. How do you learn love when you feel unloved? How do you learn joy in the middle of grief? How do you learn peace when everything’s in chaos? How do you learn patience when you’re not feeling patient? You learn those qualities, with God’s grace, when you are going through pain. You have to decide if you’re going to let the pain be a stepping stone to maturity or a stumbling block to spiritual growth. Once you make a decision to follow Jesus, God’s number one purpose in your life is to make you more like Christ. If you’re a part of God’s family, then he wants you to grow up! He helps you do that by taking you through everything Jesus went through. There were times when Jesus was lonely, frustrated, misunderstood, criticized, and in pain. But the Bible says, “Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered. In this way, God qualified him as a perfect High Priest, and he became the source of eternal salvation for all those who obey him” (Hebrews 5:8-9 NLT). If Jesus was made perfect through suffering, then you are matured the same way. There are some things you learn only through pain. In that sense, pain becomes a gift if you let it draw you closer to God in worship, closer to others in fellowship, and deeper in discipleship. When Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, he recognized all the ways they had grown through their pain. He says in 2 Corinthians 7:11, “Isn’t it wonderful all the ways in which this distress has goaded you closer to God? You’re more alive, more concerned, more sensitive, more reverent, more human, more passionate, more responsible” (The Message). Those seven qualities of Christlikeness are developed in you too when you ask God to use your pain to build your character. If you’ll do that, the pain won’t leave you where it found you—it will transform you! “We were really crushed and overwhelmed, and feared we would never live through it. We . . . saw how powerless we were to help ourselves; but that was good, for then we put everything into the hands of God, who alone could save us.”
2 Corinthians 1:8-9 (TLB) Whenever you experience something painful in your life, you have a choice: You can run from God, or you can run to God. Running from God never makes sense,. How are you going to get any comfort when you’re running from the greatest source of comfort? If you’ll choose to run to God, you can use your pain to draw closer to him in worship. How do you do that? You don’t tell him what you think you ought to say. Instead, you tell him exactly how you feel. You argue with him and tell him that you don’t like the pain. This is called lament. The Bible is full of people crying out to God in lament, including one-third of the psalms. Even complaining to God is an act of worship. You can worship in all the phases of grief. You can express your shock. You can unload your sorrow. You can share your struggle. You can surrender. You can ask God to use the pain for good in your life. Paul does this in 2 Corinthians 1:8-9. He says, “We were really crushed and overwhelmed, and feared we would never live through it. We . . . saw how powerless we were to help ourselves; but that was good, for then we put everything into the hands of God, who alone could save us” (TLB). There are thousands of stories of people who came to know Jesus out of their pain, whose lives were totally transformed in the process of worshiping when they were in pain. And I can say to them, like Paul said in 2 Corinthians 7:9, “I am glad . . . not because it hurt you but because the pain turned you to God” (TLB). When you’re in pain, it’s not a time to run away from God. It’s a chance for you to draw close to God, trust him more, worship him more, and—ultimately—know and love him more. “Let God train you, for he is doing what any loving father does for his children.”
Hebrews 12:7 (TLB) Do you know the difference between correction and punishment? Punishment is a penalty for the past, and correction is training for the future. Correction is discipline, not punishment. When something bad happens, we often think God is punishing us when God is actually just correcting us. How can we know this? Because God doesn’t punish his children. Jesus has already taken all of the punishment for every sin on the cross. Every sin you have ever committed and will ever commit has already been paid for. So God doesn’t punish you for your sins—but he does correct you. His correction is the evidence of his love, because he doesn’t want you to keep going the wrong direction. One way God corrects us is through pain. Hebrews 12:8-10 says, “If God doesn’t discipline you as he does all of his children, it means that you are illegitimate and are not really his children at all. Since we respected our earthly fathers who disciplined us, shouldn’t we submit even more to the discipline of the Father of our spirits, and live forever? For our earthly fathers disciplined us for a few years, doing the best they knew how. But God’s discipline is always good for us, so that we might share in his holiness” (NLT). God doesn’t correct those who aren’t his children. As a father, we don't correct other people’s kids, but we certainly correct ours. We do it for their good because we want them to know the joy of following God and doing things his way. God wants the same for you if you have chosen to follow him and are his child. Following Jesus means cooperating when God brings any kind of correction into your life—not because he wants to punish you but because he loves you. When God corrects you, he isn’t mad at you. He’s mad about you! The Bible says, “Let God train you, for he is doing what any loving father does for his children” (Hebrews 12:7 TLB). God’s correction is for your good, even when it comes with pain. “do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. ”
Philippians 4:6-7 (ESV) What will be the center of your life? In other words, who or what are you going to live for? You have a lot of options. You can center your life around a career, a sport, a hobby, making money, or having fun. There’s nothing wrong with any of these things. They’re all fine, but they all make a lousy center for your life. You need something at the center of your life that is absolutely unchanging, that can never be taken away from you. Because if your center can be taken away, you will always be under stress, knowing you could lose your security. That’s why you need to center your life on something that is unchanging and secure. There’s only one thing you can put at the center of your life that will never change and is strong enough to sustain you through life: Jesus Christ. Do you remember an old toy called a Superball? When you bounced it on the ground, it would go dozens of feet into the air. Why? Because the center of a Superball was a tightly compacted, solid core, not a mushy center like a tennis ball. Its solid core gave it bounce-ability. When your core is solid in God, you also have bounce-ability. You bounce back from stress faster. You bounce back from problems faster. You bounce back from grief faster. You bounce back from crisis faster. You have something solid in your life that doesn’t change, and you worry less. The Bible says in Philippians 4:6-7, “Instead of worrying, pray . . . It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life” (The Message). One of the ways you know that Jesus is at the center of your life is you worry less. Any time you start worrying, it should be a red flag, a warning sign that says, “I’ve allowed someone or something to become the center of my life instead of God.” If you make a person the center of your life, you’ll be under stress because you know that person can walk out of your life or even die. Knowing your center isn’t secure brings constant stress. So what’s at the center of your life? If it’s the stock market, your grandchildren, or your dating life—something other than Jesus—you’ll be stressed. But if Jesus is at the center, you’ll be blessed. The choice is yours: Are you going to live a life that is self-centered or God-centered? Make the decision today. “We must show love through actions that are sincere, not through empty words.”
1 John 3:18 (GW) It’s easy to go through life stressed and overloaded. But getting your relationships right is one significant way to reduce the stress you feel. Yesterday we looked at one truth about life and relationships: The best use of life is love. Today we’ll look at a second truth: The best expression of love is time. You may think that love is spelled L-O-V-E. But a better way to spell love is this: T-I-M-E. The Bible says in 1 John 3:18, “We must show love through actions that are sincere, not through empty words” (GW). When you love someone, do you know what gift you desire most from them? Their focused attention. When I love you, I want to see your eyes. I want to talk. I want to listen. I want to commune. I want to fellowship. I want you! The greatest gift you can give anyone is your time—because your time is your life. Time is your most precious commodity. You only have a certain amount of it. God has already decided the number of days you are going to live; you’re not going to get any more. You can always get more money, but you cannot get more time. When you give someone your time, you are giving that person a portion of your life that you will never get back. That’s why your time is the greatest gift you can give. Many people are in time-starved relationships. They may live in the same home, but they’re passing each other like ships in the night. Even though they give a goodbye kiss here and there, their relationship is shriveling. It’s drying up for lack of attention. Many things can rob a relationship. Work can rob a relationship. Activity can rob a relationship. Too much church involvement or ministry can rob a relationship. Even hobbies can rob a relationship. You may wonder, “How can I find more time for those I love?” Start by turning off the TV, unplugging the computer, and putting down your phone! It’s amazing to me that people spend so much time in the virtual world while neglecting the people right beside them. If you want to revitalize a dying relationship, a dying marriage, or a dying friendship, start with investing more of yourself by giving the gift of your time. |
AuthorTaken from Daily Hope by Rick Warren. Categories
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