Thoughts are Powerful

Previous posts in series:

1. We Are What We Think
2. The Power of Positive Thoughts

Thoughts are powerful.  Reflect and you will realize how much your mind and what you’re thinking will affect your entire life.  When thoughts are dark and gloomy, you tend to feel bad.  When your thoughts are happy and go lucky, you will feel full of life and energy.  If a person thinks to themselves, I will never get a job, they are not likely to get one.  If you convince yourself that you are a failure, then you tend to make more mistakes than others.

This is the third in a series of posts on what I’ve learned in reading Joyce Meyer’s : Power Thoughts (ISBN: 9780446580366).  The topic for this post is simple, Thoughts are powerful.

Joyce gives us Romans 14:14 to focus her discussion around.

I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean.

The keyword in this passage is “thinks”.  In the Greek, this word is given as logizomai, which means to reckon, decide, to conclude.  This was more than a passing thought, this was a conclusion.  If the person that Paul was talking about in Romans, thought something was unclean, then they concluded without a doubt that it was unclean to them.  That doesn’t mean that there was anything inherently wrong with the item, but the person concluded that it was to them.

Joyce uses this to illustrate to us the power of thoughts.  The people in Paul’s day thought that certain foods were unclean and to them it was a spiritual stumbling block.  There was nothing physically wrong with the “unclean” foods, but the conclusion that they were unclean was enough.

How does this apply to our lives today?  Let me quote Joyce on this as I think it states clearly our problem today.

We can never move beyond what we think and believe.  Many people today don’t even bother to think rationally about what the believe and sometimes end up building their entire lives on beliefs that simply are not true.  For them, whatever “they” say becomes truth – and “they” may be the news media, a celebrity, a group of friends, or others who enjoy sharing opinions, but may or may not really have any idea what is true.  When we believe lies, our minds can actually limit us and even keep us from doing what God created us to do.  But, if we will contend for the truth, embrace the truth, and build our lives upon the truth, we will succeed in every endeavor.

How true that is.  How many times do we a celebrity talking on the news on a subject they have little qualification to be an expert on, yet we consider them an expert simply because of their star power.  What Joyce is saying here is we hold responsibility to find the truth and embrace it.  We will be bombarded from all sides with competing truths, the enemy of truth is clearly identified as a liar (John 8:44).

We need to take responsibility for our thoughts.  We have the power to resist the enemy by choosing to think on things that are good and positive.  We can be assured of a better life by thinking good thoughts.  Don’t let negative thoughts be your conclusion. 

Becoming a habitual positive thinker takes practice and time, but if you let God work on you in this area, the dividends that you will reap are tremendous.