Find and Replace

I did it. No matter how hard I try not to, I managed to give my email to someone that decided to share my email with others. Sharing is good and all, but not my email address. Now several times a day, I get emails that I just don’t need. Emails letting me know I can refinance my home (I don’t own a home), offering me new credit cards (which I definitely do not need) and the most interesting is perhaps the ‘Meet singles over 50’. Now this one might be tempting if it weren’t for two things. One- Despite the gray hairs that have begun to grace my head I am not over 50, for a couple of months I am not even 40 yet. Can I please just deal with one decade at a time? Two- I am very happily married, so I am not in need of meeting any available seniors right now. When I see these emails, I do not even bother opening them. You never know, some of them might even contain viruses. Now I just automatically delete them. Why? Because I don’t need them and they are a waste of my time and storage capacity.

          There is also something else I have noticed that I need to be careful with or it will waste time and space, and that is my thoughts. I am amazed at some of the thoughts I can think. I guess in a way it is like those emails. If I let my guard down, next thing I know I get put on the spam thought list and the negative thoughts multiply. One bad thought leads to another bad thought which leads to another and another until my brain is just full of them. Instead of just deleting the first negative thought as soon as we see the subject line, we might think it is harmless to just open it up and take a look for a little while. It seems harmless, but it isn’t.  We need to realize that just as we can, go and delete or reject emails we need to delete and reject the negative thoughts that present themselves.

          That is not always easy, especially if you are someone like me. Positive thoughts just do not come naturally to me. If I am not on my guard, it is negative after negative thought that just kind of sneaks in. So what do we do? We find and replace. If you are writing a word document, and realize that you have a word that you have used throughout the document and you want to change it all to a different word, you can use the find and replace function. That is what we have to do with our thoughts.

          Philippians 4:8 says, “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.” (NLT). This gives a list and 8 guidelines that we need to use for our thoughts. If what we are thinking does not meet one of these criteria, we need to reject it.  One of the words in this list I find interesting is the word true. A big problem that many people have is worry. They think what if…what if…what if. Our imagination can give us some pretty big “what if’s”. What if my husband doesn’t love me anymore? What if my children never decide to follow the Lord? What if I lose my job? The what if’s can take up so much time and brain power and can cause so much fear that it can almost paralyze us.

          Instead of what if’s, we need to think, is this true right now? When you think what if I lose my job, you need to stop and realize that right now you have not, and if you do, then God’s grace is sufficient in that circumstance and He will see you through. Luke 12:25 says who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life? This chapter also goes on to say that God knows what you need and will take care of you. So when we begin to worry about our needs we can find that worry and replace it with Philippians 4:19 which says that our God will supply all of your needs through Christ Jesus.

          Think about what you are thinking about. Ask yourself if your thought is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, and admirable. Is it excellent or worthy of praise? If it is not, then search your Bible and replace it with something that is. Will this solve all of your problems? No. Will it always be easy? No, but if you learn to reject the thoughts that try and spam your brain, and learn to find and replace those thoughts with God’s Word, then you will not waste your time or mental storage space and you will be able to live a more peaceful life. So remember to make the choice to think about what you are thinking about this week.