Can You Fix Your Thoughts?

“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 from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.” Philippians 4:8-9 NLT

You’ve heard of the power of suggestion right? All it takes is for someone somewhere to put some obscure thing in our line of sight, or train of thought and all the sudden the sneaky-sneakies start sneaking in. This may or may not have been a recent real life scenario: It’s a Friday night and you’re binge watching a funny show, the kids are in bed, the house is quiet, the dog is snoozing blissfully at your feet and as the break in the show comes on the juiciest hamburger gets flipped across the scene. YUM! Oozy cheese begins to melt on the patty and then a plethora of your favorite toppings pile on top like crisp lettuce, onion, tomato, sauce and then the whole thing is hugged into burger perfection by two angelic pillows of a bun. Now, who’s jonesing for a burger? 

Isn’t it amazing what our thoughts can do? You went from enjoying a peaceful Friday night, to thinking “the next chance I get, Imma sink my teeth into the perfect burger!” And when you do? Burger-rejoicing sets in. (You know I’m right, burger rejoicing is totally a thing) 

I’ve been noticing “thoughts” and the suggestion of them a lot lately. It’s all too easy if you start paying attention to how they affect everyone around us, including ourselves. That friend who’s been discouraged admits she’s had a major flare of up in her depression. A family member’s anxiety keeps getting triggered because their new boss reminds them of their old (and rather infuriating) boss. And then there’s you…..you can’t even voice some of the things you repeat to yourself out loud because they don’t exactly fall under the golden rule category do they? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just drive a nail into the wall and fix our thoughts that easily?

 I think it’s time to start thinking about what we’re thinking about. While the above passage admonishes us to fix our thoughts on a very strict list of things (needs to be true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, and admirable) I think it’s safe to say that we don’t always do that do we? It’s not always a simple fix. However, if we can fix our minds on a juicy burger it actually proves the point we can- with choice, intention, and practice fix our thoughts on the right thing. 

How do we get there? 

While the former part of the verse is something that we often hear quoted, let’s not get quippy with ourselves. Fixing something the right way takes work- but that doesn’t make it impossible. You know what is so great about this passage? We’re given two beautiful encouragements:

1. This passage CLEARLY demonstrates God cares about what we think about. In fact, our Father cares enough to not only put this verse here, but he gives us a pretty clear filter what thoughts should run be allowed in our mind. We’re told to FIX our minds……and that might mean that they need to be fixed, and re-fixed until we get them right. Fixing takes time, but moment by moment and day by day repairs lead towards fixing our thoughts and renewing our minds. 
2. Keep putting it into practice. You know what this means? We probably won’t get it right the first time. In fact it might take a bunch of times, or a guhzillion times before we consistently get it right. Which is why we need to keep putting it into practice. As many times as it takes until we have our filter in place as a lifestyle, we learn to fix our thoughts. (No hammer & nail needed!)

If the goal of our lives is to know Jesus, and make him known, we have to be surrendered to how Jesus wants us to live. Spending time in his presence and in his word show us how to do exactly that. That means we need to be in his word, AND adhere to what it says. Our lives, including our thoughts, have to come in alignment with the supreme filter of what he says goes. 

So next time you notice your thoughts going astray, or spiraling….stop yourself and fix your thoughts on what he says. It takes time, effort and practice but the payoff will be better than a juicy burger. Promise! 

Much love, 

Joy