Whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things. — Philippians 4:8
This scripture is one of my favorites; in fact, God gave me this scripture for the title of my radio show. As each year goes by, I can understand this scripture more and more!
This thought is biblical. I did not really see what it was really saying until I read Hill’s book about 15 times or more, though Hill repeated over and over, “Thoughts Are Things.” The principle is easily seen in our world today. You sure can tell who is watching what they say by carefully orchestrating their words with a positive spin!
These positive people choose, with their own free will, to stay focused on those things that are right, noble, pure and lovely. They do their thinking much more on the positive side of this life rather than always thinking those dark and negative thoughts. For example, when someone makes a mistake, those negative thinkers will automatically declare that this happened on purpose rather than giving then the benefit of the doubt. There is quite possibly another reason why something happens.
Pessimistic and depressed folk tend to have negative attitudes towards anybody and anything, and they’re always choosing to think and dwell on the negative side, the way Jeremiah did. That’s why they called him “Weeping Jeremiah” — always crying about something! Jesus did warn us that we would go through many trials and tribulations. He said life is full of trouble.
However, there is a flip side to this coin. On the one side of the coin is the darker side of this life, but on the other side of this coin is the good, positive, and brighter side of this life. It is not all death, doom and destruction. Even in the worst case scenarios and situations, there is always a hope and a light at the end of that tunnel. However, those with constant negative thoughts think quite the opposite.
The difference between these two types of people is in their thought life. The people who are always happy, upbeat and positive have chosen to look on the brighter side of things, even in some of the worst case scenarios imaginable.
The negative person choses to think and dwell on all of the bad things that can happen or go wrong. No matter what good may come their way, their first thought is negative. As a result of all of this negative and morbid type of thinking in their thought process, nothing ever makes them happy or content because nothing is ever good enough for them.
The Bible is very clearly telling us in the above verse that we can all choose what to think about and dwell on. We do not have to become slaves to negative and pessimistic type thinking. In other words, we can choose to think about what we want to think about! Our thinking and thought process does not control us — we control it! Negative-type thinking can be broken.
Don’t allow negative thinking to take a stronghold on you! You can change the way you think, and you can do it the way the Bible tells us to in Philippians 4:8.
The Bible tells us that we can actually take “captive” what we think about. The verse that will give us this revelation says we have to bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Jesus. Scripture tells us: “As someone thinks within himself, so he is.” (Proverbs 23:7)
Lyndia Grant is the host of “Think on These Things,” a radio talk show on WYCB-AM, 1340, Fridays at 6 p.m. Contact her at 202-518-3192, via email at fanniestelle@yahoo.com or through her website at www.lyndiagrant.com.