Change the Way You Think

Have you ever heard the saying "a mind is a terrible thing to waste'? Our minds have so much capacity for good, to learn, create, think and grow, and it's a tragedy when we don't use them to their highest potential.

There was a time in my life when I allowed too many damaging thoughts to enter my mind, negative, tormenting, guilty, unforgiving, shameful and accusing thoughts. The problem was that I had no idea I could control my thoughts or choose which thoughts I focused on and believed in.

I didn't realize that if I was thinking something that wasn't true, I had the power to stop. No one ever told me I could win in my mind. Has anyone ever told you? If not, then I'm here today to tell you that you don't have to let your thoughts control you. You can choose to think and focus on God-thoughts!

Romans 12:2 says to "let God transform you, by changing the way you think." God wants to help you win the battle in your mind. But what does that look like on a practical level?

Here's what has worked countless times for me and what I know will work for you too: The next time you're wrestling in your mind, I want you to stop and find something specific that you can thank God for. Tell Him how grateful you are for His goodness and all the rich ways He's blessed your life. As you're diligent to do this, you will see your life begin to change and things will get better and better.

It's my hope and prayer that you will know the power God has given you and that every day in your thoughts, you will walk in the fullness of His love for you!

Prayer Starter: God, I want to experience Your power in my thought life. I choose to focus on Your goodness and Your love for me. No matter what negative thought comes my way, I know that You are so much bigger and better.


From Joyce Meyer

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what  is  that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. (Romans 12:2 NKJV)

Visit The Provision Room

Two amazing friends with one mission in mind.  Come check out their blog at The Provision Room and learn more about eating healthy, natural remedies, and  preparing yourself for incase of an emergency. This week is there final week of their launch party. Their 3 great gifts are Urban Homestead from a local store here in Pasadena, second gift is a 60 minute Swedish Massage from Samantha Lawrence and their last gift is from Venice Premium Biscotti (YUMMY). Don't miss out go to theprovisionroom.com.

Crown of Her Husband

Today my wife and a group of ladies are starting a 30 day husband encouragement challenge. What an amazing gift for us men to have our wives speak life into us. Proverbs 12:4- “An excellent wife is the crown of her husband.” Crowns relate to wisdom, they encircle the head. Wisdom, in effect, surrounds and protects the mind and brings honor to the “head” of the one who has it. This verse declares that the godly woman is a crown to her husband. She is God’s gift to her husband and he will benefit from God’s wisdom through her. This 30 day challenge is just that, a challenge. It is not always easy to encourage, withhold negative talk, to honor, or to even show love when we as husbands don’t fulfill our part as husbands. Or the wife can be just tired of having to do everything. I write this because I was there at one time when I was not engaged in the day to day thing called life. I did part by providing financially for my family, but after that I was basically a no show. It was my wife who chose to take the high road in a sense and didn’t necessarily start encouraging me, but she decided to stop saying negative things towards my lack of leadership in the home. This made a difference in me over time. Then when she started to encourage me, I started to respond by stepping into my roll as husband, father, and child of God.

There is something about our wives encouraging us as men. When my wife says she loves me, it’s special, but when she tells me how proud she is of me, my chest puffs out and I feel like I can conquer the world.  I know there are times we as husbands don’t deserve what you as wives do for us, but I just want to encourage you, that it makes a difference. See your husbands as God’s son, before you see him as your husband. Remember when you honor your husband, you honor God first. So I pray that God gives you ladies the strength, the patience, the grace, the respect, and the love you need for the next 30 days. And may it continue beyond and make a radical shift in your marriages.

On the lighter side I found this prayer to help encourage the wives:

                                    Dear Lord,

                                    I pray for: Wisdom, to understand a man.

                                    Love, to forgive him and; Patience, for his moods.

                                    Because Lord, if I pray for strength, I’ll just beat him to death.

Mark

Change Your Mind, Change Your Marriage

by Mitch Temple

Thoughts and attitudes are like the engine of a train and our emotions and behavior are like the caboose.

Thoughts help form and determine your attitudes toward marriage. They determine how you feel about your mate as well as how you feel about being married in general. Thoughts can inspire hope – or take it away. Changing the way you think is like a locomotive that switches tracks and heads in a new direction, taking the rest of the train – behavior, actions, and habits – right along with it.

Paul obviously didn't have a train in mind when he offered his heart-felt instructions to the Christians in Rome – but it's still a useful metaphor. Pleading with the Romans to change their thoughts and actions, he said, "I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. . . . Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. . . . Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment" (Romans 12:1–3).

The apostle is speaking about a major mind shift here. The word transform comes from the same basic root for the English word metamorphosis. As larvae go through a radical change to become butterflies, so must we sometimes radically change our minds in order to have a healthy faith and marriage.

When we do make this change, we will not think of ourselves higher than we should (v. 3), and our judgments (perceptions, beliefs, conclu­sions, attitudes) will be sober, clear, and accurate. Transforming our thinking can lead us to the right behaviors (vv. 9–21). The right behavior will then lead to the outcomes we want such as peace, intimacy, and oneness. The more we understand this principle, the more positive impact it will have on our relationships.

One of my good friends, Dr. Gary Rosberg, is one of the most spiritual men I know. When I grow up I want to be just like him. Whenever we're together, talk on the phone, correspond by e-mail, or chat after I finish a radio interview on his show, the last thing he always says to me is, "Hey Mitch, guard your heart, brother." This is another way of saying, "Be very careful to protect your mind from the wrong stuff. Put the right things in your mind. Protect it. Shield it from the bad influences." Just recently, after the birth of my first grandchild, Gary's message to me was: "Mitch, guard your heart, brother. The stakes just got higher."

I know Gary means for me to guard my heart in every area of life, including my relationship with Rhonda. Like a computer, if I put the right things into my mind, the right things will likely come out. Gary understands this. He knows that if my thinking is on track, then the rest of my life will be too.

Our Creator commands spouses – particularly husbands – to guard their hearts and thinking so that they do not forsake the wife of their youth (Malachi 2:14–16). God is serious about how we think and behave in our marriage. We should be too.

Sure, our actions may be due to "unthinking" habits we've fallen into. You may leave the bathroom messy every day without even thinking about it. Just part of the routine, right?

But if you really reflect on that habit, you may discover that there was a particular thought, belief, value, or idea that led you to the action – or at minimum maintained it. Maybe you thought at some time previously, I did this before I was married, so I should be able to keep on doing it. Or, What's the big deal? I'll clean up later, but now I'm in a hurry.

Sometimes, though, our distorted thinking can lead to consequences much more severe than squabbles about bathrooms.

From The Marriage Turnaround: How Thinking Differently About Your Relationship Can Change Everything

"I've Never Once Stopped Loving You"

Sometimes our lives are affected by unexpected and unlikely encounters. For Rich Frischkorn, one of these encounters occurred when he was a young man. Rich patrolled a neighborhood where a couple in their late 90s lived. He regularly parked his cruiser under a massive ficus tree growing at the corner of the elderly couple’s property. With its huge spread of branches, the tree provided welcome shade as he sat in his patrol car and completed his daily reports. If the elderly couple were out in their yard, they’d walk over to him and talk. As time passed, he noticed there was something very different about the aging husband and wife—the way they looked at one another and smiled … the way they worked in their yard together … the way their hands interlocked on their evening strolls. One day the young deputy sheriff observed the elderly man mowing a neighbor’s yard. Almost 100 years of age, he later told Rich that he was helping because the woman was “too old” to mow her own grass. Rich watched the couple pick up mail for neighbors who were out of town. He saw them drive friends to a store or doctor’s office. He anticipated their offers of cold lemonade or tea on hot afternoons. In Christ’s name He wondered about the source of the couple’s love and care. Over time he learned the answer: All was done in Christ’s name. Their curiosity about Rich’s spiritual condition touched him. They’d often comment that he was in a dangerous job and ask, “Do you know where you will spend eternity?” He’d answer that he’d probably end up in hell. And they would say that he could avoid that. One day when Rich was filling out reports, the elderly woman tapped on the window of his cruiser. She held a vase with freshly picked flowers. She told him to look at the flowers—really look. Then she asked if he thought the flowers could have been created by chance. “No,” she told the young officer. “God made these for us to look at, marvel at, and wonder.” All Rich could do was gaze at the woman with the lined face and say that she was right. Day after day Rich patrolled the neighborhood. He watched the aging couple pull weeds together in their flowerbeds, never more than an arm’s length apart. One would reach out and touch the other. They’d look at each other … smile and nod … and then go back to pulling weeds. Rich thought, How much in love. Rich and the couple became more than friends. They treated him as part of their family. He joined 200-300 people at their eighty-first, eighty-second, and eighty-third anniversary celebrations. He laughed to himself when he realized that their children were in their 60s and 70s and some of their grandchildren were in their early 50s. The phone call he didn’t want to receive As the years went by, Rich feared that the couple’s time on earth was short. He dreaded the day when one of them would pass away. At that time in Florida, if someone died at home a deputy had to come and do a report. Sure enough, one evening Rich received a phone call saying there had been a death at the elderly couple’s house. Wanting to be anywhere but their home, he pulled into the driveway. He knocked on the door of their two-story house with cedar siding. “Who is it?” the wife asked. “It’s the Sheriff’s Department.” “Rich, is that you?” “Yes, it is,” he answered. “Oh, praise the Lord; I’ve been praying a friend would come.” Rich stepped into the house and saw the elderly couple sitting side by side on the couch. She wore a faded, swirled-patterned dress and her husband had on work pants and a checkered, short-sleeved shirt. His hands were folded in his lap, his chin was on his chest, and he had a pleasant look on his face—as though he were in the middle of a good dream. “Can you tell me what happened?” Rich asked. She said her husband had been sick the last couple of weeks. That evening they were watching the news and he started having a little trouble breathing. She asked if he wanted her to phone the doctor and he replied, “No, everything is going to be fine.” But it wasn’t fine—his breathing got worse. She rose to call an ambulance, and he grabbed her hand with unusual strength. “You may not believe me, Rich,” she continued, “but he was a young man again. And his face was just glowing and he was smiling and he said, ‘Don’t go—sit here next to me.’” So she sat back down and she heard these final words from her husband: “In all these years together, I’ve never once stopped loving you. And I love you more today than all of the days gone by. But my Father is calling now and I have to go home. But we’ll be together again soon, and until then know that I’m waiting for you and know that I love you. Good bye.” With that, his head dropped onto his chest and he was gone. “He’s in heaven with our Lord and Savior and I will be, too,” she told Rich. “And one day you can be there.” The ambulance crew arrived shortly after their conversation. Rich remembers her telling them, “He’s home with the Lord. He’s home with Jesus.” Living color Although more than 30 years have passed since Rich’s life intersected with the elderly couple, their example was stamped in living color on his heart. Rich eventually gave his life over to the Lord and became a Christian. “They planted the seeds [of faith] in my heart,” he says. Whenever he talks about the elderly couple, he mentions their rock-solid faith and how they lived it day after day. “They were always witnessing and reaching out to others,” he says, “and yet they were never preachy, never pushy, it was just something I wanted to emulate.” The last time Rich saw the old woman she was more than 100 years old. She was on her hands and knees pulling weeds in her flowerbeds. “Every once in a while,” Rich says, “she’d reach out with her arm … smile and nod … and then go back to pulling weeds.” By Mary May Larmoyeux

Choosing Courage

By Roland C. Warren, President, National Fatherhood Initiative

Good films not only entertain, they speak powerfully into deeply personal issues or important social problems. Great films speak to both. On that measure, Courageous is a great film.

Courageous, the new film from the makers of Facing the Giants and Fireproof, draws you in with action and humor, but then, like Field of Dreams, causes men reflect on their relationships with their dads and their own children. It is one of the most emotionally powerful films I have seen in along time; it hits very close to home for dads like me who grew up without their fathers.

It also intelligently tackles the social crisis of our time--the widespread absence of fathers from the lives of our nation's children. Twenty-four million children--one out of every three nationally and two of three in the African American community--live in homes absent their biological fathers.

How does one film accomplish all of this? The answer is in the title. Not only does the film rest on the theme of "courage" in portraying the value and heart of fatherhood, but the film itself is also courageous in its handling of the father absence crisis we face today.

When I first heard about this movie more than a year ago, I thought that the title was strange. You don't normally hear this word used in reference to fatherhood. Frankly, you're more likely to hear it exclaimed by a sportscaster hailing a football star who plays through an injury. Or when a celebrity poker player goes "all in," despite having a poor hand.

Playing through an injury and making a well-timed bluff are noteworthy, but courageous? Hardly. Courageous the movie, on the other hand, frames the hard, self-sacrificing work of fatherhood around the idea that being a "good enough" father just isn't enough; we should strive to be great fathers, the kind children need and mothers long for.

This film has the potential to make millions of men realize just how critical they are to their children and challenges them to question themselves and their priorities. In fact, the film makes it clear that great fatherhood is really a choice between comfort and courage, which I have come to believe are opposites.

Consider this real-life example.

Some months ago, I heard a news report about a father's harrowing experience in Sierra Leone during the time when the brutal rebel leader, Charles Taylor, was terrorizing that small nation. One day, a gang of Taylor's thugs entered his community looking for men and boys that they could mutilate by cutting off their limbs. When they approached this father, they told him that they were going to cut off his arm and his son's arm. They wanted two arms and they were not going to be denied.

They weren't; the father offered both of his arms to spare his son. He chose courage over comfort.

While no one is threatened like this in Courageous, the characters face difficult challenges at home and at work. While the film grapples effectively with these deeply personal issues, it is also takes a broad view of how father absence affects entire communities, and thus the country.

Courageous asserts the uncompromising view that when dads disconnect from children, the results for the community are gangs, broken children, violence, drug dealing, lack of respect for authority, and a variety of other negative consequences.

Conversely, the film suggests that when fathers are connected to family, most of the serious problems we face can be eliminated. Few films have had the courage to place these ideas front and center in the story.

At a time when we face record levels of father absence and out-of-wedlock childbirths, cultural indifference to the idea that marriage and fatherhood should be linked, and the attitude that fathers are not important cogs in the family -- National Fatherhood Initiative's national survey of moms and dads found that 6 in 10 parents believe dads can be easily replaced -- Courageous cannot come at a better time.

For taking on this cultural indifference and not being afraid to challenge millions of men, Courageous truly is one courageous movie

Endurance

Hebrews 12:2- looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

If parenting is about imitating the Perfect Parent, we should be comforted in knowing God patiently endured as His Son was subjected to unimaginable hardship (curses, rejection, beatings, and death) on our behalf. There will be times when you will be forced to endure sleepless nights, frustration, anger, shame, and the scorn of others in your parenting journey as well.

In the middle of suffering, fix your eyes on Jesus. Recognize that as much as we try to avoid pain, it can be a pathway to wisdom and greater dependence on God. The love you express to your kids during times of struggle can draw them to a much greater love – the love of our Heavenly Father and the sacrifice he made through His Son’s life and death.

When you endure parenting hardships and struggles with patience, you reflect God’s love in a powerful, compelling way.

Taken from Parenting Daily Devotional