Words name things and ideas.
Words describe our lives.
Words get our needs and wants satisfied.
Words express our emotions and experiences.
Words communicate with others.
Sounds safe, doesn’t it?
Words Are Sneaky
But words carry more than just meaning. Emotions connect to each word as we learn it, and reconnect us to the experiences surrounding the learning and using of it.
Words have context and emotion.
For me “Belt” is permanently connected to my father and the sound his belt made slapping through the loops of his waistband as he pulled it. I can sill smell the naugahide of the couch in our living room as I knelt with my head pushed into the back cushion waiting for the pain.
Words are just names.
But words create thoughts and images.
Your thoughts create the ‘you’ that is seen and heard in your daily life.
Thoughts result from experiences, input, and choice.
Thoughts come before every action.
Thoughts, in fact, create actions.
Control your thoughts and you can control your actions.
We cannot undo the lives that we have already lived. It is guaranteed that I will remember certain events from my growing up years. Some good; some not-so-good.
I can never undo the life that I have lived. So, regularly thoughts, memories, will jump up and say, “BOO!”
I can’t stop that from happening.
It might seem that words are the taskmasters of our existence - Reminding us of our past; shaping our future.
If this were the end of the story, life might be seen as uncertain.
Certainty
But, two things are certain.
1. I can choose how long a memory will stay on the stage of my thoughts.
2. I have complete control over what I am keeping on my Memory Stage today.
Each of us has stuff from the past that causes discomfort, if not shame. Those things should be re-located to the “Jesus Paid For This” folder. When such thoughts surface, recognize it as an attempt by the devil to discourage you, say the words (outloud or silently), “We put That in the Jesus Folder. Take it up with Him.”
That alone may not remove it from your memory, so plan ahead and be ready. Every smart phone is capable of holding a Bible app. Whip it out, open to a favorite Jesus-Promised text, and fill your mind with those Words.
That process completes both 1 (I can choose…) and 2 (I have control…) of the Certain Things above.
In my daily life I find that what I have recently put into my mind is what regularly shapes my spontaneous thoughts.
This fact suggests that I should regularly put good ideas into my mind.
The Bible qualifies as ‘good ideas.’
A habit of reading the Bible could only be good for combating the negativity of the devil’s assaults on my thoughts.
Gardening With Words
Thoughts are the seed stages of action.
I like to garden. Vegetables and Flowers. It is very pleasurable to me to take a dried old seed, put it in some nourishing soil, tend it with water and sunshine, and see it spring to life. The life was inside the seed all the time. It just takes the right conditions for it to reach its potential.
The wise gardener surrounds the seeds with the proper nutrients and environs.
Thoughts are like seeds.
Select the seeds carefully.
Cultivate only good seeds.
One more connection: the words that we speak resound through our ears and take up lodging in our thoughts. Don’t speak weeds into your mind.
You can be sure that the words you plant will produce a harvest.
With the Right Care, our thoughts will grow and bloom and produce fruit for Eternity.