Today I read a chapter in Joyce Meyers book"Reduce Me to Love" that I think will change my life.
Chapter 5 is all about being led by the Holy Spirit in our thinking. She points out that unkind thoughts will affect the person we are thinking about ,and also affect our own attitude.
1. Satan tries to fill our mind with wrong thoughts.
2. It's our responsibility to cast down wrong thoughts and replace them with right ones.
3. We can minister life to others with good thoughts or death with our negative thoughts.
4. Negative thoughts become self-fulfilling prophecies.
5. Negative thoughts about someone causes them to feel negative.
6. Praying for someone to change will only work if we change our thoughts. Our prayers are useless and negated if we think they will never change. We are praying without faith.
7. To avoid negative thinking we must keep our thoughts and attitudes renewed daily. Ephesians 4: 23
8. The right attitudes began with a right-thinking.
9. We must look for the good and magnify it instead of their bad.
10. We must not wait to feel positive toward the person. Feelings will follow after the actions. We must purposely choose to think good thoughts about them.
11. As we judge others so will we be judged.
12. If we are Christians, we have the mind of Christ, but we must choose to use it.
13. The fleshly (carnal) mind is like a magnet pulling us toward negative thinking, we must cast down wrong thoughts and make a habit of thinking good thoughts to live in the Spirit.
14. As long as we think our own thoughts and speak our own words, we are not Spirit led.
15. Spirit filled living begins with our thinking.
16. Judgemental, critical, negative thoughts are not pleasing to God.
17. We have the freedom to choose what will control us, positive, or negative thinking.
I have judged others as lazy, time-consuming, opinionated, selfish or mean.
I need to look for the good in others and stop condemning them.
It is possible for us to sin in our thoughts of others. Look for the positive.
Jesus did condemn some people as hypocrites , snakes ,and foxes, but he tried to find the good in people and love them.
