What’s on Your Mind?

I couldn’t focus on what my friend was saying. I was troubled by her previous comment and felt I needed to say something in response but wondered what to say. She said, “It’s all misinformation. Everything those people say is wrong.” Her words raised a red flag in my mind.

I wanted to say, “No, how can you know what is true and what is false? You can’t say everything they say is false if you don’t really know what is true.” This week I read an interesting quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson, “A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.” If we only believe what we are told to believe by a group or organization, we don’t evaluate what we hear or determine its truthfulness. We mindlessly follow the crowd.

So how would God want us to think? One of the reasons I read the Bible daily is because Jesus and His Word are truth. Jesus tells us “I am the way, the truth, and the life,”(John 14:6) and, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”(John 8:32) We read, “For the word of God (the Bible) is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12)

So how can you know and align your thoughts with truth? By reading the Bible every day. God and His Word are the only absolutes in this constantly changing world. God’s Word becomes a grid, enabling us to pass all our thoughts through it to determine if they are consistent with His Word and truthful… or contradict His Word and are obviously false. This grid we form in our minds is called a “Biblical Worldview,” which allows us to evaluate everything in our world by the absolute truth of God’s word.

So the next time a friend makes a statement you are not sure is accurate, take a moment and filter it through the growing grid of God’s Word in your mind accumulated from reading and hearing His Word.  And if the friend’s words are wrong, ask the Lord for the ability to counter them lovingly without seeming rude or combative. It is important he or she is introduced to the truth as well.

As Benjamin Franklin says so aptly, “If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking.” And Oscar Wilde once said, “A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.” As you seek to live Your Refreshed Life, be a thinker, not just a follower.