Your Life Is Shaped By Your Thoughts

Written by Rick Warren on Purpose Driven 

“Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.” Romans 12:2a (NLT)

You cannot become all God created you to be until you understand the five factors that influence your identity. The first two are chemistry (how you are made) and connections (your relationships). You are a product of the way God created you and of the relationships in your life.

Your identity is also influenced by your circumstances and your consciousness.

Circumstances are the things that happen to you and around you — none of which you control. You are a product of the trauma, troubles, suffering, shame, shock, pressures, and pain that have shaped your life. Perhaps even abuse has affected your identity. If you’ve ever had a series of failures or a catastrophe, it has left an indelible mark on who you are.

Consciousness is how you talk to yourself. You know what? If you talked to your friends the way you talk to yourself, you probably wouldn’t be friends anymore, because our thoughts are filled with the lies we’ve heard from other people that we’ve let simmer and fester. When we repeat other people’s thoughts in our head, they go deeper and deeper in our consciousness, and they begin to shape our identity.

Proverbs 4:23 says, “Be careful how you think; your life is shaped by your thoughts” (LB). Your thoughts don’t have to be true to hurt you; you just have to believe them. If you tell yourself your marriage won’t last, then it won’t. If you’re afraid you can’t do something, then you won’t. Your thoughts run your life!

Your circumstances may be out of your control, but God is in control of everything. Your thoughts shape who you are, but you can change the way you think. Your circumstances and consciousness have shaped who you are, but the way you respond to your circumstances and the thoughts you choose to believe will shape the rest of your life.

Talk It Over

• What is your natural response to a difficult situation or circumstance? Do you run away or face it? Do you worry or trust God?
• How do you need to change the way you think?

• Who or what around you influences your thoughts in a negative way?

HELP…..I can’t see!

Why is everyone else so messed up!  Why can’t they get it together? Why can’t they live right, and love right; speak right and act right? Why can’t they see how they are falling apart and falling short? Why?

We are so quick to see the faults in others, which is just a distraction from the enemy to keep us from seeing the faults in ourselves. If we do not take time to examine ourselves and deal with our own shortcomings and sin, we will be sure to take a great fall! The Word says to ‘examine yourselves.’

Just for today ask God, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me, and know my anxieties; And see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Psalm 139:23-24

Use this day to take your eyes off of everyone else, and put them on yourself! You may find that it is not glasses that you need, but only to take the big plank out of your eye! (I’m so busy looking at you, I can’t see myself).

“Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the plank that is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck that is in your brother’s eye.”  Luke 6:42 NKJV

“Judge not and you shall not be judged. Condemn not and you shall not be condemned, Forgive and you shall be forgiven.” Luke 6:37

Love somebody today who doesn’t love you; doesn’t care about you; won’t repay you, can’t repay you and doesn’t want to repay you…then you will be treating them the way God treated you…

A Bondservant of Christ,  Rev Toni-Brooke Brown, Pastor
God’s Storehouse
18301 John R, Detroit MI 48203
313 867-1234
www.Gods-Storehouse.org  / Twitter.com/revtonibrown

Encouragement When All Is Gone

David encouraged himself in the LORD his God. – 1 Samuel 30:6, KJV

There may come a time in your life when you find that all that you hold valuable is gone. Your job, your spouse, your children, your home—everything you truly loved and held dear is gone. To compound the problem, you also find that the individuals you thought you could count on have not and will not come to your aid. People that you trusted, loved, looked out for, and even blessed are too often the first to align themselves against you when you need them most. When you need an encouraging word, when you desire some level of human assurance, people you thought you could count on may be the first to withhold the very thing you need to help turn your situation around.

I pray that you never find yourself in this predicament. However, if you do, remember that you are not necessarily in your situation because you were disobedient. The spiritual fact is that evil tests and puts the most pressure on the most worthy souls. No one has been greatly used of God who did not experience the great fires of adversity. If you are there, it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with your level of anointing. No one was more anointed than Jesus, but He found Himself in the midst of adversity.

Sometimes there will be no one to encourage you. Every now and then you must take it upon yourself to independently lift your own spirit. You are going to have to encourage yourself.

The only way to do this is to focus upon and have trust in God’s Word. Find out what God has to say in His Word about your situation. If God said it, that settles it. You can count on Him to do all that He has said. Do all that you can do. Make a commitment to the application of His Word in your situation. Encourage yourself with the truth of God’s love for you, His commitment to bless you, and the reality that He cannot lie.

 

 

Excerpt from 100 Days of Inspiration

Written BY: Anthony Collins

Anthony has been successful for over 30 years, holding executive level positions with Fortune 100 companies. He has overcome tragedies, addictions, disasters and close calls. He writes to help others see and accomplish what it has taken him decades to understand. You can purchase this book at 100 Days of Inspiration or visit his website at Tony Ministries.

Ugly On The Heart

Post is shared via Peacefulwife, written by Ponder Woman 

I hardly know what to do with myself these days.  There is no imminent crisis or catastrophe on the horizon, nothing to fear, no storm to weather, no ugly secrets to guard.  And yet, the absence of all that, so familiar throughout my life, has left me scratching my head and examining my heart because I feel somewhat unsettled.

Someone waved to me.  But was it really to me?

A woman I know only by name and by sight initiated a friendly pre-church chat.  Why?  She must have some ulterior reason because otherwise why would she bother?  Bother with me?

Greetings galore.  New friends.  Changes, good changes.  It’s so much!  I don’t know what to do with it all.  And strangely, with all the overwhelming good God is working I want to react the same way as I did to all the dark and stormy circumstances my life was all about for so long.  I have the overwhelming urge to run and hide somewhere.  And I have been wondering why that is.

I think it is because I have lived almost my entire life with ‘ugly’ branded on my heart.

Aesthetically speaking, I leave much to be desired but I’m talking about ugly that starts on the inside, in the core of my being.  My heart and soul were crushed early on in life and I could never live above the identity it gave me.  I simply grew into the identity it branded me with.  Ugly.  Garbage.  Useless.  Waste.  Pathetic.  Loser.  These were just a few of the things I thought of myself.

When God came into the midst of it all it was incredible.  It continues to be incredible.  I have learned that He is faithful in the big things and in the little things.  And still, I want to hide from Him at times.  Some days I don’t and I run to Him.  Other days I want to run from Him hard and fast because I feel like he will reject me.  I forget again that He loves me with a perfect love.  I forget that He is capable of seeing a heart in me that I can’t even see because I grew up with ugly in my heart and so I still can’t see beyond that.  I forget that He can.  And when I forget, I can’t stand the thought of Him seeing what I still see because I have practiced seeing it so long that even when it isn’t there anymore I still see it.  Like staring at a lit light bulb at night and then suddenly switching it off.  The imprint of what was is so much etched into your vision that you continue to see it for some time after even when the situation has completely changed.

Trusting God is a moment by moment exercise.  He loves me.  He forgives my past.  I don’t have to live in the shadow of it.  He already set me free from it and put me on the path to full healing.

So much has changed all around me. So much has changed in my own heart.  All I have to do is look onward and forward and not backward.  I guess there is just something about the human condition that looks for the familiar so often, even if it is a bad familiar.  I guess that is why it is a near impossibility to change on our own; why God is the only way to real change and to true healing.