I'm penning these thoughts now from the Indianapolis airport, and despite the rest and renewal that came from a weekend away with my Troy...serving and loving others with the word of God, my mind is already racing with the week ahead, the pressing deadlines, the unfinished projects, and the inevitable re-adjustments of returning home to our beautiful boys.
It's not enough to simply chill out and stop worrying. It's not adequate to just get rid of unproductive thoughts. My mind will fill up with something...and it takes intention to fill it with Truth.
This past weekend, I had the privilege of speaking before the women of the Influence Conference...where women are reminded that they have influence, right where they're at. The battle to live out the influence we have within our mundane moments (and even our extraordinary ones!) is most often an issue of belief and what we speak to ourselves in the midst of unsettling circumstances.
We have a choice:
We can either spin out of control with our web of deceiving thoughts, or bind ourselves to the Lord by weaving strong threads of truth around our anxious heart.
Here's what Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones says about it...
“Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking . . . yourself is talking to you! The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself.”
While the power is not in the practice...but the mighty grace of God, there are practical ways to advance our training to preach God's truth to our own hearts.
So I'm practicing what I preached this weekend, and taking thoughts captive, and replacing them with what Christ has done on my behalf, not what I can do for Him.
Join me?
(Here are some truths to get you started...
Meeting Life's Disappointments With Truth
Preaching To Your Anxious Heart In the Night
When We Feel Like We're Failing
When In the Obstacle of the Day to Day
Because of grace,
