I Have Bad Thoughts

I had someone ask me the other day in a counseling session, "do you ever have bad thoughts?" And they asked it like my answer would be that I didn't. I laughed and answered; "yes I have bad thoughts ... but what I believe is even more important is what we do WITH those thoughts."

2 Corinthians 10:5 "We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ..."

Philippians 4:8 "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is fair, whatever is pure, whatever is acceptable, whatever is commendable, if there is anything of excellence and if there is anything praiseworthy-keep thinking about these things."

I explained that from my experience we all have bad thoughts from time to time ... even the holiest of people have bad thoughts. Though what is very critical in life is how we handle those thoughts, what we do with them when they come.

I guess being raised in church I learned the importance of the practice of the 2 scriptures above.

The Corinthians scripture encourages us to take every thought captive, and if that thought is contrary to "godly living" then we toss is out, get rid of it. Where I believe our "bad" thoughts become problems is when they're allowed to linger and live un-accountably (if that's even a word) in our minds and hearts. Meaning we have thoughts of lust, and we allow our minds to dwell on those thoughts, then we feed those thoughts with things that further agitate and even fortify the lust. Then ultimately we end up DOING what not too long ago we only THOUGHT about.

Then the scripture in Philippians talks about WHAT we should be thinking about ... things that are true, lovely, fair, honorable, pure, etc. And Paul wrote this knowing that that is the seed to our actions in life.

There is a quote I have heard before and it goes something like this; "Watch your thoughts, for they become words, watch your words, for they become actions"

We can't just allow our minds to think whatever they want to think ... we must control our thoughts or one day they will control us!