Spit it out

Care to spit out your thoughts?

This is quite literally the challenge our worship pastor left us with as he closed his sermon yesterday morning.  He had placed little Dixie-type cups in the backs of the pews throughout the church and then asked us to hold them up.  As the congregants studied those little plastic cups in their hands, he explained:

Saliva.  Think about  how many times in the last hour you have swallowed down your own saliva.  You don't think about it at all.  What if instead of swallowing it, you spit it out in the cup?  Gross, right?  What if at the end of the hour I told you to drink up all the saliva you had collected in the cup?  Double gross.

Now what if instead of the cup holding our spit, it held our thoughts instead?
What if we examined our thoughts, like we would that saliva, and make a rational decision about whether or not they were fit for consumption?  What if instead of taking in the junk.... we toss it?

Pastor Steve talked about  how we examine ourselves each morning in the mirror and work on ourselves so we can look the way we want to.  We give a lot of self-care to our outer shells.  How often do we pay that kind of mind to our thought life.... to our perception of reality?

Romans 12:2 (NLT) says "Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is."


He pointed out how this verse doesn't speak of transforming our emotions or our circumstances, but our minds.... the way we think.  It's amazing how much is at stake in just the way we choose to look at a thing.


For his final challenge, Pastor Steve's pointed to 2 Cor 10:5 (NIV), "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."


Take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ.


So spit it out and see if it passes this test:


"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, 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." Phil 4:8 (NIV)




And so in the interest of renewing my mind in this way, I continue to join Ann and the rest of the Gratitude Community in counting the blessings.


#388-411


God's Word... oh how He speaks!
Holy Spirit making all things possible


new faces from far off places


how love can be comfortable and exciting at the same time


unexpected hugs


long-distance phone service


dishwashers


creativity of little people
creativity of big people
that there is no age limit on making cool stuff


a happy daddy


fallen golden leaves the size of your head


muddy, blackened-bare puppy feet romping through the woods


fog that softens twinkling city lights and blurs the moon
and makes me glad to be home


history making, touchdown-scoring Hail Mary 
this guy deflecting
this one being in the right place... at the right time


the work of the saints


memories


southern drawl transported fiber-optically


my minds eye, and 
the vivid things i see