What you let yourself think about REALLY matters.

Some Background

To start, I’m going to relay two contextual experiences I’ve had in life then I’m going to jump into a third which will be my main point.

First, as a kid I can remember a handful of times when I’d lose something. My mother’s go to statement was generally “It will be in the last place you’ll look.”. In the moment, I would go around saying “Where’s the last place I’ll look? Where’s the last place I’ll look?” and it wasn’t obvious to me she was being both logical and sarcastic at the time. I thought she had the key to finding things and I was literally walking around with this logic of “My momma said…” and searching for whatever I had lost. It wasn’t until I was around 18 years old, driving somewhere that it hit me like a ton of bricks “DUH! Of course it is going to be in the last place you look…“

Fast forward closer to 10 years ago, I started an ordination program and one of the things that they had you do was take a Bible Quiz. It was ultimately a simple quiz and probably had ~70 questions focused fundamental bible knowledge.

• In what two languages was the Bible originally written?
• Who wrote the first five books of the Bible?
• Who was Adam and Eve’s firstborn son?
• How many books are in the bible?
• List the 10 commandments.
• Name the 12 Patriarchs of Israel.

I get the quiz and am thinking… “I grew up in the Church since I was like 2 years old… I have attended most every week if not 2 to 3 times a week... I’ve got this in the bag. “

You know… failing a Bible Test isn’t the worst thing in the world. I think I got like a 40 something (out of 100)…

I quickly realized I did not have head knowledge of the Bible. That’s OK – I knew I had heart knowledge / a relationship with Christ.

That failure, if you will, helped to motivate me to pursue a deeper understanding of the Bible and its wisdom, stories, context, and connection to being a story about Jesus Christ. It was another “ah hah!” moment for me that still lingers with me years later.

It’s important that I relay those two examples because this post is about the 3rd time in my life where that same “ah hah!” feeling has occurred.

Stinkin’ Thinkin’

At various points in my journey, I’ve relied on Friends, Mentors, Counselors, and Therapists to navigate various obstacles or struggles that I’ve had in life. I’m sure many of you have done the same or I hope that many of you start doing something like that too.

One time I heard a sermon from Alistair Begg that said something a kin to “Oh how great is it to be saved from something instead of out of something”. His emphasis was that some people never had to experience certain things – whether it be addiction, abuse, mental health issues. They are saved “from” having to go through them versus “out of the midst” of those things.

Not sure how I really feel about that because I personally have struggled with a lot of things that do not necessarily get blasted in the mainstream as acceptable, almost celebrated, struggles. I’m currently of the belief that there are many things people struggle with that you’d never see on any social media site and you rarely see a news article posted about “so & so overcame his addiction to <enter item> and is not getting tattoos about it on his arms“.

I digress.

As part of my journey, a year or two ago a close friend of mine told me about a Biblical Counselor named Tom. “Biblical Counselor” kind of takes the edge off Therapist 😉

I scheduled time with him and after our first meet-up he ended with “I think I can help you with this” and then continued to explain that he’s not like other counselors or therapists. His focus was to make sure my focus was on Christ. An example being “No where in the Bible does it say we need self-confidence – we’re supposed to be confident in Christ” .

He also talked to me a lot about Anxiety and that it’s rooted in the Fear of Man / Love of Acceptance pointing me to 2 Timothy 1:7 – “for God gave us a spirit not of fear (timidity) but of power and love and self-control (discipline)”. and 1 John 4:18 – There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

In programming there are things called “While Loops” or infinite loops. They continue to run while whatever condition or logic they have is set to true.

Here’s an example:

using System;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        while (true)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("blah.");
        }
    }
}

The while (true) part is where it keeps looping. If you throw that into the right compiler, it will print “blah” over… and over… and over… and over…

You get the point.

Tom helped me to realize that my mind was running an infinite loop on certain topics and issues. That my conditions, my logic, was off and that it was not Biblically centered.

One day I’m meeting with him, and he gives me the assignment to go listen to “Do you think like a Christian” by Lou Priolo (embedded at the bottom of this post).

From what I gather, Dr. Priolo was at a conference and he’s talking to the audience about thinking Biblically. He comes up with or simply uses a structure of about 25 questions. He has the audience answer each question personally using the below structure:

• (0) I always think this way
• (1) Frequently True
• (2) Sometimes True
• (3) Seldom True
• (4) Hardly Ever / Never

Each one carries a different weight (0, 1, 2, 3, 4). You keep track of your score and then, at the end, the higher the score, the more you “think like a Christian”.

So for example,

• “Do you think people are talking about you when you’re not in the room?” – Sometimes (2)
• “I’m a feelings oriented person rather than an obedience oriented person” – Sometimes (2)

I said earlier that I made a 40 out of 100 about Biblical basics and history… I forget exactly what I scored on this… but I want to say it was worse than the Bible test.

It was the third eye opener I can remember where the stars just aligned and smacked me in the face.

Tom helped me navigate the concept that Thoughts impact & create Emotions and that Emotions create & impact Habits.

That I needed to work on what I’m allowing to linger in my mind and to also challenge me in what I believed to be True.

2 Corinthians 10:3-5

For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.

The ongoing conversations I was having, that lesson by Dr. Priolo, and then 2 Corinthians really got me thinking about “Why do you think Paul is instructing us to ‘take every thought captive’”?

I started to realize that there is a theme in the Bible about controlling your thoughts, taking them captive, assuming positive intent. Not being foolish but also not being passive – there is an active call to managing your thought life.

Then in Philippians, the Bible instructs us on what to think about.

Philippians 4:8

Finally, brothers, what is true, what is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Ultimately, I believe, the Lord worked through my family, friends, Tom, and Dr. Lou Priolo to exit the infinite loop I had going on and to start working at disrupting my thought patterns and to really start practicing what Philippians says.

I started to see the pattern of when the loop would start and I could find ways to exit it.

A few things that helped me.

This has been a multi-year journey for me and the above is simply me trying to distill some of the highlights through it. Here are some ongoing practices and recommendations for those of you who may have similar things going on:

1. Listen to Dr. Lou Priolo’s lesson below about Stinkin’ Thinkin’
2. Read “When People Are Big and God is Small” by Ed Welch
3. Work to memorize some of the verses above, put them as index cards on your computer monitor or on your dashboard in your car.
4. Writing in a journal. I’ve found that sometimes I just need to put thought to paper. Sometimes I’m stuck at surface level in my head so I just start writing – write out the situation, ask myself questions, write out the answers. Keep going until I feel it’s resolved or detailed out enough that it no longer bugs me.
5. Figure out when you start to spiral or enter that infinite loop and find ways to exit it. Could be weekly coffee with a couple friends, could me journaling, could be getting up and taking a walk to get out of a situation.

Do you think like a Christian – Lou Priolo