Today’s Verse:
I am filling my mind with only good things (Philippians 4:8).
In Context:
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. Keep
putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard
and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you. (Philippians 4:8-9
NLT)
I absolutely LOVE these verses! If only I was able to abide
by them every day all the time. This is
truly the definition of renewing the mind, particularly when our thoughts are
often far from honorable, right, pure, lovely, and admirable. It’s so easy to get caught up in all the
problems of the world and in our own lives.
It’s so easy to complain, be negative, blame someone else, wallow in
self-pity, and generally be sour. It
seems to be easier to be negative than it is to be positive.
One of the things we are trained on in the world of childcare
is to use positive guidance. This means avoiding the use of the words “No,
don’t, and stop.” You don’t realize how
hard it is to eliminate these words from your vocabulary until someone
challenges you to actually do it. Don’t
run. Stop hitting your friends. No, that is not okay. Instead, we attempt to rephrase these into
positive terms. Use walking feet. Be gentle. What can you do? Here’s your
choices. Imagine if we all tried to take these words out of our vocabulary
entirely….not just when working with children.
Fixing our thoughts only on the positive, the best in people, the things
that are worthy of praise, not worthy of our complaints. How might that change us and others we work
with, play with, or meet each day? What
if we used positive guidance on ourselves and our mindsets, so that whenever we
start to even think negatively, we “rephrase” our thoughts. It’s certainly something worth trying, isn’t
it?
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