Toxic Thoughts...two-step program

We all have continually-playing loops inside our heads.
The voices may change a little, but if we look back and listen very carefully, we can find the original voice.
It may have been a parent, a sibling, a school bully...
It may now have a different sound or a different face, but it carries with it the same old message...
"I will never be good enough."
"I am a fraud, they will all see through me."
"I’m going to screw this up."
"What was I thinking when I started this project?"

My personal one is, “You can do better.”
It sounds so innocent, innocuous and motivating... "You can do better.”
But this innocent statement was not accompanied by love; there was no specific goal, no end in sight, no reward. “You can do better.” The stick with no carrot.
But I digress…

We are hard-wired to repeat our internal messages over and over.
These need to be replaced with the truth. The truth is the living and active Word of God. God has prepared our hearts to be transformed by His Word. We must each identify and reject toxic thoughts, and replace them with the inerrant truth of God’s word.

Proverbs 4:23 tells us to carefully guard our thoughts because they are the source of true life.["Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life."](KJV)

Proverbs 27:3a, "For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he..."(KJV)

2 Corinthians tells us that our weapons have divine power...

["For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ...2 Cor 10:3-5](KJV)

The Greek word used here is dounimas, translated into our word dynamite.
Our thoughts are like dynamite!
We have the power to demolish strongholds.
Stronghold is from the Greek word acamora, meaning a prisoner locked in by deception.

People, we, run the risk of not becoming what God intends because we are locked in a prison of lies and deceptions

The scripture tells us to take captive every thought, and make it obedient to Christ! And, we must carefully guard our minds.

We must stop replaying the same old recordings that are simply not true.

The battle in the spirit world can be won or lost in your mind. You have a choice.
You must make a conscious choice. Isn't it interesting how we so easily wander, slide or fall into our favorite sins unconsciously? Not thinking, just reacting, following our baser nature and instincts?

We must make a conscious choice to reject what is harmful and embrace what is true.
You see it’s a two-step process. Simply putting aside that which is painful leaves a void, a vacuum which will be filled ultimately with the same old garbage.

Secondly, we must embrace what is true- what we know and can see to be true, and what God Word says is true.

Aren't you tired of the same old, same old? But we cannot do this alone. It requires God's help.

Jeremiah 12:3 says, God I want YOU to test my thoughts, and set the bad ones apart, and destroy them!
[But thou, O LORD, knowest me: thou hast seen me, and tried mine heart toward thee: pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, and prepare them for the day of slaughter. Jer 12:3] (KJV)

Identify and discard toxic thoughts, caste them out of your thinking pattern. Send them off to the slaughterhouse.

When you hear the toxic loop being loaded up, reject it with all haste, and all the power that God has given you! Replace that toxic input with God’s truths!

Phil 4:7-9, it is the power of God that guards our hearts and minds.
[And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you.] (KJV)

So, when those seeds of self-doubt and self-loathing start to sprout, douse them with the power that God has given you. Meditate on the good things, and God's truth, and let these things infuse your heart.