Patsy Clairmont is a beloved speaker and one of the finest authors I know. When I told her about this study, she murmured an interested...hmm. So, I asked when she discovered her self-talk was damaging.
"So many people were saying things to me that conflicted with what I was saying to myself. One of us had to be wrong! So I had to stop and say, Everyone can't be wrong. Do I trust their judgment? Am I willing to receive what they are saying is truth? If I am, then I have to change the messages in me...the Enemy is a liar and a thief, and he comes in to set a lie in place and steal your joy."
AWAKE, MY SOUL. TUNE IN!
Here is a secret from my thought closet: I have an obsession...with the burners on my stove. I'm driven to keep them spotless. Now that I own a gas stove, this dysfunctional issue may not require therapy, but it wasn't always that way. I once hovered over the burners on my electric range---the pans, rims, and surface beneath were all targets of my compulsion.
Before you put me on your prayer list, let me explain. For the first 13 years of marriage, we lived in homes with cook tops corroded by years of careless cooking and half-hearted cleaning. I valiantly scrubbed but to no avail. I replaced old burner pans with new ones, but I was never satisfied because under those gleaming burner pans lurked the grimy gunk from decades of apathy and neglect. Then in 1999 we moved into a 20-year old home with a 20-year old stove.
Oh girl, thoughts about those burners filled me with dread. They probably hadn't been cleaned since 1979!
I had a responsibility to my obsession---I mean, my family----so I lifted the coils to inspect. When I felt the rims, the pans, and the surface beneath, I was stunned. There was another woman as obsessed as I was! Surgery could have been performed on that stove---spotless!
So grateful, I ended every cooking excursion by lifting the coils to clean them. I removed the pans and decontaminated underneath each time, even when I only boiled water. (OK, from my former obsession, though: Keeping something clean is easier when you tend to it daily.
The same is true of our thought closets. They need daily attention to keep them in the condition Christ intended!
What does the following verse say about your status now that you are in Christ?
2 Corinthians 5:17 (New American Standard Bible)
17Therefore if anyone is (A)in Christ, he is (B)a new creature; (C)the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.
When we are in Christ, we are a new creature...old thing are passed away and new things have come
ReplyDeleteI am a new creature in Christ. The old is passed and I should walk in a new way!
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