Our Life is our Thoughts by Donna Watkins - The Herbs Place

by Donna L. Watkins

Love is a common theme in the Bible. We are also to walk in FAITH, not fear. These Scriptures come to mind as I ponder the power of God’s love for us and in us.

1 John 4:18 – “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.”

Seems to me the more we know God’s love for us, the more we can love others and love will “cast out” fear from our lives. Here are a few Scriptures to
ponder:

Psalms 91:14a – “Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him.”

Mark 12:30 – “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.”

Zephaniah 3:17 – “The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.”

When we love God, we can love others. We see ourselves in a new light when we see God’s love for us. To think that God rejoices over you with joy! God commands us to love others:

John 15:17 – “These things I command you, that ye love one another.”

John 13:35 – “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”

God has a way around fear in our lives. He’s made provision for it:

2 Timothy 1:7 – “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”

Psalms 119:165 – “Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them.”

When we love God’s law, people will no longer offend us, and we can simply love them right past their imperfections. We lose our defensiveness and focus more on God’s work in our own lives which enables us to see others as unfinished works in progress also.

Relationships can create joy in our lives which brings healing — or they can create bitterness and anger. We’re the only ones who can decide for ourselves which way it’s going to be.

Here’s some excerpts from the book, “Reduce Me to Love,” by Joyce Meyer about our thoughts and words toward others:

When God takes charge of us, we cannot think bad things about people not even ourselves.

We are not really living the life of the Spirit until we allow the Holy Spirit to control every area of our life. He will certainly never get control of our life until He has control of our thoughts and words.

As long as we think our own thoughts and speak our own words, we will never experience victory!

Our life is a reflection of our thoughts. It is impossible to have a good life unless we have trained ourselves to have good thoughts.

I am sure that many people have been controlled all of their life by wrong thinking. They think all their problems are caused by the devil, other people, the way they were raised as children, etc. but the truth is that in many cases the problem is simply a lack of knowledge or a lazy spirit that refuses to act on the knowledge available.

Thinking right thoughts will often resemble warfare. The mind is the battlefield on which Satan tries to defeat us. In the Bible we are told to “cast down” wrong thoughts, but what does that mean? It means once wrong thoughts present themselves to us, we are to refuse to receive them and turn them over and over in our mind. We are not to give them strength by meditating on them.

The real key to victory is not only to cast down wrong thoughts, but to replace them with right ones: “For the rest, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is worthy of reverence and is honorable and seemly, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely and lovable, whatever is kind and winsome and gracious, if there is any virtue and excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think on, and weigh, and take account of these things.” (Philippians 4:8 AMP)

It is virtually impossible to think two things at the same time. When a new thought comes in, the old must go.

Go ahead and try it! Start thinking about your name for example. Now begin to think about your address. When you changed to thinking about your address, you stopped thinking about your name.

We get rid of the darkness by turning on the light. In the same way, we rid ourselves of wrong thoughts by deliberately turning our attention to right thoughts.

Be determined to love God, yourself and others with your thoughts. Ask the Lord to reduce you to love. It is the only road to true happiness, and the only way we can be a witness in our world today.”