What Occupies Your Thoughts?

What occupies your mind?  What has taken up residence in your thoughts?  Is it helpful or hurtful?  Worries, anger, negative thoughts, regrets, false labels, and anxieties can infest our minds like a parasite, going through each part of our thoughts making us sick, depressed, and  only seeing the bad in life.  What goes on in our minds can be an invisible invasion to others, but eventually, those diseased and harmful thoughts do spill out of us, in our words, our actions, our lack of caring about life.  

Guarding and protecting our thoughts is very important.  Recognizing when our worries have  parasitically invaded our minds and exterminating those thoughts and worries from our lives is essential to good health, a good attitude, and true joy.  

Everyday take time to examine your thoughts, and gather up those that are wandering away in a harmful direction.  Instead of complaining about something, find something to be grateful for and focus on the positive, not the negative.  If the news is overwhelming your mind, which it can easily do, turn it off, don't read about it, take a media fast for as long as it takes to calm your anxious thoughts.  If you are judging someone, find something good about them and focus on the good, not the bad.  We all make mistakes, we are all human, we all struggle.  Live in the present, not the future or the past, and be present in the day you are given.  Worries about what could happen, or what has happened, easily infest our thoughts and steal the joy of living today.  Today is a gift, don't waste that gift on 'what if's' and 'I should have's.'  

Life happens.  It's our choice how we react.  When we refuse to let worries infest our brain and stop them before they start, we can enjoy life much more, see the beauty around us, be grateful for what we have, and be a blessing to those in our lives.  When we take our thoughts captive, we live the life Christ wants us to live, and can set our thoughts on what is lovely, what is pure, what is Holy.  


Search me, O God, and know my heart;
    test me and know my anxious thoughts.
²⁴ Point out anything in me that offends you,
    and lead me along the path of everlasting life.  
Psalm 139:23-24

Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.  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 4:6-8

We destroy false arguments; we pull down every proud obstacle that is raised against the knowledge of God; we take every thought captive and make it obey Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:4b-5

I tell you not to worry about your life. Don’t worry about having something to eat, drink, or wear. Isn’t life more than food or clothing?  Look at the birds in the sky! They don’t plant or harvest. They don’t even store grain in barns. Yet your Father in heaven takes care of them. Aren’t you worth more than birds?  Can worry make you live longer?  Why worry about clothes? Look how the wild flowers grow. They don’t work hard to make their clothes.  But I tell you that Solomon with all his wealth wasn’t as well clothed as one of them.  God gives such beauty to everything that grows in the fields, even though it is here today and thrown into a fire tomorrow. He will surely do even more for you! Why do you have such little faith?  Don’t worry and ask yourselves, “Will we have anything to eat? Will we have anything to drink? Will we have any clothes to wear?”  Only people who don’t know God are always worrying about such things. Your Father in heaven knows that you need all of these.  But more than anything else, put God’s work first and do what he wants. Then the other things will be yours as well.  Don’t worry about tomorrow. It will take care of itself. You have enough to worry about today.  Matthew 6:25-34