Taking Every Thought Captive

How many times have you heard the concept, "take every thought captive"? How often have you wondered - HOW?? I was reminded of this again yesterday afternoon after suffering through at least 24 hours of not having done so. God is funny. In a good way. He knows just what we need exactly when we need it. If we'll just take the time to listen He will definitely speak. It may sound like a guy with an English accent but there's no doubt they are God's words.

Yesterday afternoon we listened to a cd by Graham Cooke (the guy with the English accent) called "Clothed in His Promises". One thing I love about this guy is that he talks about Holy Spirit with such joy and laughter in his voice, as if he knows something we don't know - that Holy Spirit IS joyful and full of peace. What part of Comforter do we not understand? In one segment he talked about taking every thought captive. He said to make it a game with the Holy Spirit, that for every negative thought we have God places a brilliant positive thought right beside it. The game is to reach out and grab the positive thought! How often do we actually think to have fun with negativity? or with God for that matter? This is revolutionary! I would much rather go through life drinking it all in - living it, even the bad times or sad times, than letting it drag me down to some depth of misery. Now to remember to do that is another story. But if I ask God to help me I figure I'll have a much stronger chance of reaching that goal. My friend Kathy told me a quote she'd read the other day. It goes like this: "Pain is inevitable but misery is optional". It's true. We have choices!! Sure there are times when we need to let ourselves go there for awhile, possibly to learn something we wouldn't learn any other way. BUT I am convinced that God does NOT want us to live there - to abide there. No! He wants us to abide in Him and He is all love and peace and joy. He is not misery. So maybe we need to give ourselves a time limit on misery. Say you're headed there and you know it, or maybe you just realize that's where you are - give yourself an hour or 2 or 24 to really feel it and then ask God to show you His love there in that place. Hey, I don't know. It could work. In Ecclesiastes 3:1 Solomon says there is a time for everything. He didn't say it had to last forever. I'm encouraged by knowing that God is there. And if He is, then so is love and joy and peace and Hope! There's just no getting around it. He's everywhere at all times.

All this to say I let misery get a hold of me Saturday and I didn't like it one bit. So I'm letting it go and choosing joy - again! AND Gratitude!

You'll love this. I just clicked over to see a new email I'd just received and, along with some VERY FUNNY photographs of food art was this quote:

Every sixty seconds you spend angry, upset or mad, is a full minute of happiness you'll never get back.

How appropriate!!

I want to add one more thing here. I am not talking about grief. Grief is it's very own cup of tea and we all do it differently. There is no time stamp on grief. I'm talking about letting the little or even the big things in life rule your life. If you can control it, by all means control it. If you can't, let it go. Don't miss the joy in each minute.