Week 4 Day 1: Think About What Is True

"Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.” Philippians 4:8 NASB

Not every thought that pops into our heads is true. Not every thought we sit and think about is true. So we need to discipline our thoughts and think about what we think about. So many of us struggle with life because we allow ourselves to believe lies and half-truths. When we start to become overwhelmed with negative emotions, we have to turn to God and evaluate what we are thinking about. When we seek His presence and His Word we will find the clarity and peace we need.

When we seek the One who created everything, we are able to look beyond facts and find truth. There is a huge difference between truth and facts. Facts are usually just a small symptom of the truth, and not having all the facts is usually deceiving. Some of the facts don’t tell us the whole truth, that is why we are called to dwell on the truth, not on the facts. Some will struggle with those statements but the truth is we don’t ever have all the facts. Sometimes we have most of the facts, but we are lying to ourselves if we think we have all of them.

Let’s say that while driving to work one morning, someone speeding through traffic dangerously cuts us off and continues down the road. Our first reaction may be “What a jerk!" When we allow our thoughts to dwell on the “idiot on the road” it ruins our entire day. The facts are the guy dangerously cut us off and scared us. 

But what we don’t see is this guy’s little girl lying next to him gasping for air and he's desperately trying to get her to the nearest hospital. The truth is there's always more to the story than the facts we can see.

If we would remember truth trumps facts and think about that instead of getting all bent out of shape when people annoy us, we will improve the outlook of our day. When people or circumstances oppose us we need to stop and pray for the control of our thoughts. That is how we keep a bad few minutes in a day from becoming a bad day, a bad week, or a bad life.

Truth is, bad things happen every day, but good things happen daily too. When we allow our thoughts to focus on something bad our mind will automatically begin to turn everything that follows into bad things. Negativity breeds and attracts negativity, and our minds are masters at creating negative thought patterns. 

When we connect with God, He often gives us a whole new perspective on how we should view ourselves and others. He helps us realize that we unknowingly do things to annoy, irritate and sometimes endanger the lives of others. We hope we don’t, but we are ignorant if we think it never happens.

The difference is that we judge our words and actions by our best intentions. Our intention is to not hurt ourselves or anyone else. But we judge others by their worst actions, even if we are only aware of one thing they did wrong. In our own little world of selfish “me, me, me,” we self-righteously condemn others. It ruins our day, it eats at us, and leaves holes that need to be filled. When we don’t allow ourselves to judge others or let our thoughts and emotions carry us away; we feel a sense of relief, joy and peace.

Do you see that the truth is more important than facts? What steps can you take today to learn to rely more on the truth than on the facts?

Meditate on "Finally, brethren, whatever is true" today.