Devotional for Monday, October 23, 2017
“The Habits of the Mind”
by Dona Hake
Today I would like to share something that is on my heart relative to habits in our life. All of us have good habits but we also probably have some bad habits which we should get rid of. A few days ago I shared the wonderful teaching in which was shared, “If you want to clean up your act, you must clean up your actions.”
A bad action that can affect us negatively is the decision to permit wrong thinking to go on in our heads. Our wrong thoughts will ultimately lead us into wrong actions. Let us look at the habit of wrong thinking. It can happen to any of us, and there are times we can have reactions to things that happen around us mainly because we have a rock solid opinion within our own minds about how something should be or how it should not be. If we respond to things based on opinions that are deeply rooted in our minds, we will ourselves into trouble.
Let’s look at the word habit. It is defined as an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary . An example would be when we were little we had to be taught to look both ways before we crossed the street. Once we understood the wisdom in this rule it became a habit and we do not even think twice about looking both ways before we cross the street. We just automatically do this, and this is a good habit that will keep us safe.
Now let us look at habits of wrong thinking. Over the years, we can have habits within our minds, and we do not even realize they are there. First we must seek the Lord to help us with this, and we must identify our wrong habits that have created wrong thought patterns and reactions. We must ask God for a break through which would be the work of His wisdom, guidance, and discernment. Praise God that He is able to help us in this matter when we humbly call upon Him for help!
I encourage you today to ask God to examine your heart and mind as to any habits of thinking that may be wrong within you. If you do this I encourage you to take action to rid yourself of those bad habits that could be hindering your walk with the Lord. From there we must purpose ourselves to set God’s Word as the standard for how we think. We must make it the goal for ourselves to think as God desires for us to think. I leave you with this translation from The Message Bible of Philippians 4:8-9. This is a wonderful portion of scripture to meditate upon to help us in continuing to conform our thoughts to the way God desires for us to think.