November 12th 2008
Philippians 4:8
“Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.”(NASB)
So many times I find myself having issues with this verse. Because my thoughts are not honorable or pure and a lot of what the bible tells us to think about. So my prayers recently have been involving these things. I want to think of lovely things. Who doesn’t? I find garbage crowding out my mind all the time and it makes me frustrated and upset and mostly unhappy. Just how I wrote about taking thoughts captive and how Jesus takes us captive, I need to let my mind go. I need to set it free so that I can meditate on this verse more often. Have you noticed that when you are angry or something and someone tells you something that’s good or noble, or just, you just want to shove it away, we want nothing to do with happiness when we dwell on the wrong things.
I’ve been dwelling on things lately that are unreasonable. If I told you, you would agree with “that’s shenanigans!” because it is. These thoughts do not make me happy, sometimes they do temporarily but they just leave me wanting more, not being satisfied with what I have.
If you don’t think on things that are bigger and better, naturally there will be nothing that is bigger or better than what you already have.
I remember when I was a kid, about 7 or 8 years old and how I thought that we lived in the biggest, best house my whole town, there couldn’t have been a better house. In reality, we lived in a very small double wide mobile home that was blue. Prettiest house ever? Not exactly, but in my mind, there was nothing else, because we did not have an alternate house, there was nothing better, we weren’t looking at better houses, the Lord had blessed us with this one and so we were happy with it.
What I am trying to get across is just that if we believe that our lives are the way they are for a purpose, which is so true, if we believe in Christ and His wonderful plans for us. We need nothing else. Our minds don’t need to wander to better things. This better thing is here and now. To take full advantage of what we have because we may not have it later and wish we did.
Still, when I go back to Washington and drive past that house, I sit and look and all I see is beauty. Our lives are like this. I want to look back and see the broken gates and chipping paint in my life and yet say “that’s beautiful” because that’s what the Lord gave me.
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Hey Jordyn
ReplyDeleteI think that's great you have a blog. I used to have one when I went to meet my biological family in South Korea, last year but it's in French. Maybe I should start one in English to let you know how it is here?
Have a Merry Xmas, anyway, Darling!
Elisa