Transforming my thought-life
I am so lazy in controlling my thought life. You know why? Because they are my thoughts and nobody knows what’s going on in my mind except for me. As long as I don’t act on those thoughts, then I’m not causing any harm, right? At least that’s what I thought.
A few months ago I was having a lot of thoughts about a friend of mine that were not honoring to her, to me, or to God. Like I said, typically I would engage these thoughts, because regardless of whether or not they are good thoughts, nobody knows about them but me. But something was different this time. Like I said, the thoughts I was having were not honoring to this friend of mine at all, and I cared so deeply about this friendship. So for once in my life, even though I knew it would be incredibly hard, I was willing to fight. I chose to take every one of these dishonoring thoughts captive to the Lord because I did not agree with them. I refused to give these thoughts permission to remain in my mind, and refused to allow them to claim ground.
I have learned the value in taking every thought captive to Christ. God has given me so much deliverance in this battle, because the weapons he has given me to fight this battle are not weapons of this world. The Bible says, “For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:3-5). God also says that he will work things for my good and for his glory, and He has been so faithful in doing just that. Not only have I been able to fully surrender these dishonoring thoughts to him, I have also grown so much in my determination to surrender to all thoughts to him. I have become far more willing to give over every sinful thought, because I want to choose to be like-minded with Christ, and I’ve finally learned the freedom and pleasure of giving my thoughts to God rather than choosing to indulge them with the mindset that no one will ever know.
The importance of creating rhythms
It’s hard to maintain discipline and consistency in your life when everything around you is constantly changing. Even back in the states, it was a struggle to honor long-term commitments I had made to myself. So when I came on the Race and adopted a lifestyle that consisted of uprooting my whole life and starting fresh every month, my ability to remain disciplined in carrying out the behaviors that were important to me was completely wrecked. Here are some things that are important to me: spending time with God, learning to hear his voice, keeping my body healthy, expanding my mind, and honoring my relationships with my friends and family.
Some of these things are harder than others, but I want to remain consistent in all of them. So in order to maintain those disciplines, I had to treat them like they were important. In Vietnam, my teammates and I all made a list of rhythms that we wanted to keep up with consistently and posted them on our wall. Some of them looked like a weekly schedule and some looked like checklists, but they all had the same purpose: to remain faithful to our personal commitments and be intentional about accomplishing the things that are important to us.
In addition to this, we created lists of things we wanted to be non-negotiables in our lives. These were the reasons I was creating the rhythms in the first place. Though the list of rhythms were great to have in plain sight, sometimes it was easy to blow them off, but not so easy when I read my non-negotiales. For example, one of my “rhythms” was to contact at least one friend and one family member each week. The non-negotiable behind this was to not become too distant from those I love back home or to come across as cold or uncaring (something I can do quite easily). Creating rhythms became choosing to live my life rather than to let life happen to me, because if I’m practicing discipline and choosing each day to honor my commitments – things that align my actions with the person God has created me to be—then I’m also choosing each day to grow more and more into the person God has called me to be. Rhythms help me remain disciplined, self-controlled, and they help control the trajectory of my life.
“A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls.” -Proverbs 25:28
Feedback is a gift
Imagine sitting in a circle with the 5 people you have been doing life and ministry with every day, and opening the floor for them to tell you how they see you falling short of living out the life you are called to. This is what we call giving feedback, and it’s a daily routine. It sounds terrifying (and it can be), but at the same time, it has been one of the best tools for growth I’ve ever implemented in my life.
For example, early in the Race I was told by a teammate that I was a bold person, and quick to call others out on ways they can improve, yet I needed to realize that some people aren’t as tough-skinned as my feedback requires, which can result in people being hurt by the words I intend for good and perhaps make people not want to hear from me in the future. That was hard for me to receive, because when I call people out on things, it is genuinely for their good. I call out things in people so blatantly because I want to challenge them to weed out behaviors in their lives that don’t align with loving God and loving others to the best of their abilities. I do this because I want other people to do the same for me. But that’s exactly what my teammate was doing when she gave me this feedback. If I give feedback in a way that it makes it hard for people to learn from, then I’m not loving others and building God’s kingdom to the best of my abilities. It’s such a gift to have people in your life who love you enough and are bold enough to open your eyes and point you to the areas of your life where you may be unknowingly causing harm to yourself or others or when you could be choosing to love others and build the kingdom, yet for some reason you are not.
It has been so fun for me to get to share the good things and the hard things on my journey. Thanks for taking an interest in what God has been teaching me!Click here to read Things I Learned in Asia: Part 1
