The Mind Connection: How the Thoughts You Choose Affect Your Mood, Behavior, and Decisions (20 page)

Perhaps it never even occurred to you that God thinks about you, but He does.

God’s thoughts toward us are found in His Word. His Word reveals His will. His Word is His thoughts written down for us to see. Psalm 139 is a beautiful psalm by David that teaches us a great deal about how God views us.

David declares that God’s thoughts toward him (and us) are so many that they are like grains of sand on the beach. They are far too many to count and they are precious! God never thinks bad
things about you! How awesome is that? It is highly probable that everyone we know occasionally thinks bad things about us, even if they truly love us. But God
never
thinks even one bad thought toward us!

I think that God has His mind on us all the time. Because He is God, He can think about each of us individually at one time, all the time, and yet it is still very personal.

I am sure He thinks about our possibilities more than our problems. I feel that He thinks about how far we have come, and not how far we have to go. David spoke of how God had created him and then declared that God’s works are all wonderful! God must think that you are wonderful! Don’t blush—just receive the good news! Yes, God thinks you are wonderful. Isn’t that great to get into your heart?

In the story of creation, after each day of creating, God looked over His work and said, “It is good!”

Actually, He said, “It is very good.” (See Genesis 1:31.)

In Isaiah 55:8–9, we learn that God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts. He thinks better things than we do; therefore, we should learn to think like He does. God not only has thoughts toward us, but He also has a plan.

I find it quite amazing that God, Who I assume is busy running the universe, has time to think about me at all, let alone have a good plan for my life, but He does. It is because you and I
are important to Him. Since you are here, God can use you—you have a purpose. There are things that you can do that nobody else can do exactly the way you can. He loves to hear your voice and when He looks at you, He smiles!

As you learn to think like God thinks, it will greatly improve your walk with Him and help you become more and more like Him. As you learn to think about yourself the way God thinks about you, it will change every area of your life. As a matter of fact, how you think about yourself may be one of the most important things you need to examine. Line your thinking up with God’s thinking, and you are well on your way to an amazing life, walking with God each step of the way.

• The Word of God is what defines you, not the opinions of the world, the accusations of your adversary, or your own thoughts and feelings.

• You are important to God, even before you accomplish a single thing in life.

• It’s not what other people think about you that helps or hurts you; it’s what you choose to think about yourself.

• When you learn to believe what God has done for you, it will produce daily fruit in your life.

• Keep your eyes on Jesus, not on yourself, and you will be surprised at what you can do with His help.

Did you ever think of thoughts as something you throw out into the atmosphere, waiting to see what they bring back? It is a new idea for me, but an interesting one. God’s Word backs it up when it says, “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7). We all know what a boomerang is. You can throw it in any direction and it comes back to you. Thoughts are like that. I can throw out one that says,
I am no good and I will never accomplish anything valuable in life
, and that is exactly what comes back to me. We behave according to what we believe about ourselves.

When it comes to Christian behavior, I think that any serious-minded Christian truly wants to behave the way God urges him to in the Bible. We are taught to be loving, kind, good, humble, gentle, generous, patient, and self-controlled. We are taught to bear good fruit in every area of life. Our behavior should preach our sermons for us, and we should use words only when absolutely necessary. As a matter of fact, words without behavior to back it up can do a lot more harm than good. A hypocrite is someone who tells other people what to do but does not do it
himself. Jesus had many heated conversations with religious people whom He referred to as hypocritical.

God’s Word says that we are to live as Christ lived, love as He loved, think with His mind, and feel what He feels. It sounds like a daunting task, and we often turn the task into a nightmare of frustration and failed effort simply because we try to be good while at the same time we have bad thoughts.

This Scripture makes it clear that sinful thinking precedes sinful behavior. We cannot change our behavior unless we are willing to first be accountable for the thoughts that we meditate on.

A walk consists of many steps. As we walk with God, these steps are decisions that we make along the way about many things. We should use our free will to choose God’s will. When we make right choices, God’s grace is always available to help us follow through.

God offers us a new life, but His Word makes it clear that we must completely renew our mind (learn to think differently) before we will experience the new life He offers. We need to learn to think as God thinks, and that means we think according to God’s Word. We are not to be conformed to the world and its ways of thinking and doing, but we are transformed (changed entirely) by the renewal of our mind (see Romans 12:2). This renewal doesn’t take place automatically, but it is something we need to choose to do. It is a process and requires a commitment of time and effort.

There are multitudes of people who believe in Jesus, but they never experience victory in their lives due to a lack of knowledge or an unwillingness to apply the principles they have learned. I spent many years as a Christian who attended church regularly before ever discovering that my mind had anything to do with my behavior. I lacked knowledge. Then after acquiring the knowledge, I still had to be willing to go through the process, and I am still going through it even to this day. We will never have a day in our lives when we don’t have to choose to cast down wrong thoughts and replace them with good ones.

The good news is that although it is quite a battle in the beginning, it does get easier as time goes by. We learn to recognize wrong and destructive thinking much quicker, and because we have learned the value of thinking properly, we can immediately choose thoughts that benefit us and help us enjoy God’s plan for our lives.

Declaring God’s Word is one of the most effective ways to renew your mind. As we speak it out loud, it begins to change us. We are learning to think differently. We also establish what we are choosing to believe in the unseen or spiritual realm, and it releases angels to help us and work on our behalf.

As I mentioned previously, renewing your mind in order to understand your identity as a child of God is important. We cannot behave in a way that we don’t believe is possible for us. If I think it is impossible for me to ever behave the way Jesus did, then I will never do so. When we receive Christ, God plants the seeds of godly behavior in us, and as we water them with the Word and spend time with God, those seeds grow and produce the fruit of godly behavior. Once we have a new image of ourselves and of our capabilities, our behavior changes without us struggling. We will need to make an effort, but it is an effort in and with the grace of God, not a struggle that produces frustration and failure.

I am going to include here a list of things for you to think and confess out loud about yourself. This has been compiled from God’s Word and is therefore true. Go ahead and read it aloud!

The more your mind is renewed by these things that God says about you in His Word, the more your behavior will improve.

Now, if you want to get an even greater benefit from the confessions I have just suggested, you can use them daily, and when possible take the time to look up each Scripture; read them and think about them for a few minutes. The Word of God has power in it to save our souls when we approach it with meekness (see James 1:21). You cannot change yourself, or force yourself to behave better, but you can ask God to help you, and He will use His Word to grant you the strength and discipline that you need. God changes us from one degree of glory to another as we study His Word (see 2 Corinthians 3:18). We have already seen that with God’s help we can choose to walk as Jesus walked (behave as He did). God’s Word transforms us into the image of Jesus, and our behavior changes for the better.

We renew our minds by studying, reading, and hearing God’s Word. We also renew our minds when we declare it out loud. The more we meditate on the Word of God, the more our minds are renewed (changed, transformed).