We all know that our thinking determines who we are and how we live. It determines the atmosphere of our home. It determines how we relate to our husbands and children.
Left to ourselves, we are prone to low thoughts. Self-pitying, discouraging, despairing, doubting, and negative thoughts. It’s unbelievable how we gravitate to these kind of thoughts. But there is good news. When Jesus Christ died upon the cross, He died to not only save us from our sins, but from our debilitating thought life. If Christ dwells in our hearts, we have His mind.
Jesus Christ does not think low, negative thoughts. His thoughts are high thoughts. Isaiah 55:8, 9 says: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
And of course you know 2 Timothy 1:7 where it tells us that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of a “sound mind.” This is God’s gift to us through the cross of Christ, through the life of Christ who lives within us.
What does this “sound mind” mean? Let’s check it out. The word is “sophronismos.”
“Sophron” comes from two root words:
“sozo” meaning “to save, deliver, protect, heal, preserve, be made whole.”
“phren” meaning “to rein in or curb, fence or enclose; the mind or cognitive faculties, understanding.”
In other words, it means to have a saved, healed, and redeemed mind. Saved from what? Saved from our low negative thoughts. One translator says, “a mind saved from tolerating inferior thoughts.” Wow! Do you get that? The power of Christ within you enables you to be saved from tolerating inferior, second-rate thoughts!
Come on dear ladies, let’s rise up from our low, inferior thought life. Let’s embrace the mind of Christ within us and begin to think His thoughts. Fill your mind with His Word which are God’s thoughts, His high thoughts. Do not tolerate any longer the humanistic thought patterns that seek to overcome you.
Please be blessed as I encourage you, for this is what God tells me to do. When God tells the older women to teach the younger women in Titus 2:3-5, He emphasizes this word two times. We are to teach the younger women to be “discreet” which is “sophron” and to be “sober” which is “sophronizo” meaning “discipline, self-control.”
Rein in your self-defeating bucket thoughts. Yield to the Spirit instead of the flesh. Think God’s HIGH thoughts today. Proverbs 23:7 says: “As he thinketh in his heart, so is he.”
Be blessed,
Nancy Campbell