“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.”
Philippians 4:8(NLT)
In Philippians 4:8, our Heavenly Father is providing us with valuable information that will help to shape and mold our lives. He has given us insight regarding the importance of our thoughts. Our minds are the grooming place of faith, and they produce the thoughts that help us move ourselves forward and upward in the things of God. This is one of the reasons the Father commands us in Ephesians 4:23 to be renewed in the spirit of our minds, because when we change our thoughts, we make a shift in the supernatural. This shift begins a manifestation process that can change our lives if we keep the faith and stay the course. When it comes to crossing paths with the person that will walk with us through life, we need to immediately arrest the negative. All doubt and anxiety must be replaced with promises of God’s Word.
Think about what is true
God’s Word is true! If God says something, then it must be so. We can’t have faith and doubt at the same time. One of them has to go. Jesus Christ said in Mark 11:23(NLT), “I tell you the truth, you can say to this mountain, ‘May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen. But you must really believe it will happen and have no doubt in your heart.” What is doubt? Very simplistically, doubt is the opposite of faith in every way. It is feelings and thoughts of uncertainty and not believing the Word that God has told us. Doubt demolishes the momentum of faith and therefore, doubt will not and cannot prove the perfect Will of God.
Jesus Christ has told us the truth in Mark 11:23, and it is our choice whether or not we will believe that through faith in him, we can do incredible things. Our faith in the Lord is what causes us to be led and guided by the Holy Spirit. Faith takes us out of the driver’s seat and places Jesus Christ in his rightful place as the head of our lives. So, when we think thoughts that are true, we ought to be thinking the same thoughts that Jesus Christ has. What are those? Jesus Christ said in John 8:29(NIV), “The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him.” Our Lord and Savior never did anything that did not please God. From the time he woke up in the morning until the time he laid his head down at night, he was either thinking or doing the Will of God. This is what is always on the mind of Christ. He is always thinking about ways in which he can please God. How about us?
Think righteously
The process of thinking the same thoughts, and not changing the way we think, is like watching the same movie over and over again. After we’ve seen the movie repeatedly, it is recorded and programmed in our minds. The outcome is the same every time, and it doesn’t change. The actors don’t change, the scenes don’t change, and the ending doesn’t change. So, if the movie is bad, the outcome is always going to be bad. If the movie is good, the outcome is always going to be pleasing to us. Many single women want different results, but they don’t change the movie that is playing in their heads and hearts. They keep doing the same things and hoping for different results. Life will not respond to this positively. God designed life to respond favorably to faith.
Our thoughts are like seeds, once you plant them, ultimately that seed will produce a harvest. We, you and I, strengthen the plant based on how much we think the thoughts that seeded it. Our minds are a powerful tool – so much so, that our Heavenly Father has instructed us on what exactly we need to think in order that our minds are fertile soil for faith. He tells us to think on whatever is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely and admirable. This is what it means to think righteously.
To have unrighteous or non-righteous thoughts is to think repeatedly about things that are not based on the truth. Some of us make the mistake of allowing our thoughts to be dominated by our lack of companionship or lack of a significant relationship with a good man. We think about how lonely we might be if we don’t have a man by a certain time. We think about the embarrassment of showing up at events without a partner, and we think about how much we dread feelings of loneliness. But what about thoughts of the righteousness of Christ and the hope we can have to measure up to God’s standard? Does this dominate our thoughts more than those of lack and loneliness? Are we allowing our minds to be breeding ground for more of the same? What about your blessed marital union and the things you’ll do as a couple to bless the body of Christ? Some of us don’t think of our lives in this way because we don’t plan on doing much more than what we’ve done. Yet we expect to be blessed for a harvest we haven’t even planted.
Excellent and Worthy of Praise
Psalm 100:4(NLT) tells us, “Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.” This is how we are to enter the presence of our God. Only He is deserving of our praise. He deserves all the praise, honor, and glory that we can give Him. Thinking about this is what it means to think high-level thoughts. It’s keeping our minds and hearts continually in that high place. We should come before God trusting and believing He’s taking us higher, and we should be committed to using our thoughts, words, and deeds to meet Him in the place that is deserving of His majesty. We can’t bring God down to the level of doubt and fear. Trying to do this is admitting we either don’t know who He is, or we are refusing to have faith in who He is. But when we are committed to give Him our highest praise and thankfulness, we are partnering with all that is good to please Him.
Gratitude and faith in God is the culture of heaven, and heaven is our home! It’s the place where our Father lives. We are God’s spiritual children, and we were born from His Spirit. His home is our home, and we need to represent home wherever we are. Whether it’s in the shower, in a classroom, at work, at church, at the hair or nail salon, in the grocery store, or at the dinner table. We ought to be thinking about God ALL the time, and we should be committed to having Him be pleased with our whole lives. If we continue to think like Christ, rest assured, marriage will come, and life will get better and better as we give God our whole lives and please Him with our thoughts and deeds.■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
“Do You Think About God Much?”, written by Kim Times, edited by Reverend Fran Mack, for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2021. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.