We’ve all had destructive thoughts from time to time, especially in prison with all the negative things around us. The things we watch, read, hear, illegal activities, or even someone who just likes irritating people. It’s easy for us to get pulled into the darkness and allow Satan to influence us away from our Christ-like walk. Keep in mind this: What the eyes see, the mind perceives, and the heart stores. Now, we can’t help what we see, but we can decide to think about it and store it in our hearts or figure out a way to replace it with wholesome thoughts.
To enjoy mental health and happiness, as well as spiritual growth, we must learn to train ourselves, test our thoughts, and screen out harmful things. Through our own will, along with using the power of the Holy Spirit, we can eliminate harmful wanderings and control our thoughts, through God’s own Word, His mind screening device.
Philippians 4:8 is the best way I’ve found to screen out thoughts in our minds: …whatever is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely and of good reputation, if there’s any excellence, and if it’s worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things. We have the ability to choose what we think about. Bad, hurtful, and impure thoughts will invade our minds every day, but God’s Word is telling us to only hold our attention on certain things. So, we must ask ourselves certain questions based on His Word, and in doing so, we can protect our minds from being spiritually static.
Is it true? Is it honorable? Is it right? Is it pure? Is it lovely? Is it of good reputation? Is it excellent? Is it praiseworthy? That’s what that scripture is asking, and that’s a lot! So, we can narrow it down to a few simple questions before we let our minds dwell on anything: Does this please God? Would God praise it? Is this something God would want me to be thinking about? With these questions, we can have happy, healthy, Spirit-filled minds, or we can go on to suffer mentally and spiritually if we so choose.
To begin to enjoy spiritual growth and mental stability God’s way, filter your thoughts through God’s mind screen and challenge yourself to only dwell on these things: Things that are true and real, things worthy of respect, things that conform to God’s Word, things that are morally pure, things that bring peace and harmony, things that speak well of other people, things that rise above the norm, and things that will bring praise to God.
So, to sum it up, quit dwelling on the things we can’t change, especially in this environment we live in. We can’t help what the eyes see sometimes, but we can choose to let it stay in our minds and store it in our hearts, or through God’s mind screen, we can filter it out. What will you choose to do? If you’re wise, you will start filtering with all the tools that God has given you!
