Tag: God’s truth

Can You Really Change Your Thinking?

I don’t know about you, but my thoughts come like rapid-fire. I will try so hard to think about “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable”, but my thoughts bombard my mind before I can stop them. Unfortunately, this stream of consciousness often leads me down a never-ending path of lies I believe about myself, my life, my relationships, or God.

This past week I listened to Tricia Goyer’s podcast. She interviewed Holley Gerth about her new book You’re Going to Be Okay. (Single friends, this is a must listen to! Please take some time to listen to it!) In the interview Holley talks about how we train our brains to repeatedly think thoughts that we think about the most. However, we can create new neural pathways in our brains when we consistently think new thoughts.

The lies we believe are holding us back from all God wants to accomplish in us and through us. When we believe lies instead of God’s truth, we are ultimately believing the enemy, the father of lies, instead of God. The one discipline that will completely transform our selves, our relationships with others, and our relationship with God is to do the hard work of retraining our minds.

It reminds me of muscle memory. Do you know how our muscles remember what we’ve trained them to do, so they automatically move in certain ways without us being conscious of them? The same is true for our minds. We must retrain them so that when they come rapid-fire they are God’s truth.

Today I am honored to be a guest writer at RebeccaHalton.com where I am discussing a common lie that single women believe.

Rebecca is a writer for several websites, a published author, the co-founder of TeamRedeemed.org, and a “redeemed adulteress”. She bravely shares her story of being a young woman formerly involved in an adulterous relationship with a married man as a ministry to other women. It is a great privilege to share writing space with her today. Please head over to her blog to read more about a lie single women believe.

This summer we’re retraining our minds!

Please join us this summer for an online Bible study where we will retrain our minds and replace the lies we believe with God’s truth. We will be reading Nancy Leigh DeMoss’s book, Lies Women Believe. Although purchasing a book will help you to go deeper into the study, you do not have to buy a book to participate! Please join us anyway! Read more details here! And please let me know if you have any questions!

May 15, 2014
When Godly People Do Ungodly Things

For several months now I’ve been struggling with reliving parts of my past. The memories come rapid-fire – so fast that I can’t stop them. And they come at the most insignificant times. Like standing in the check-out line at the grocery store. Suddenly I’m a 29-year-old sitting in my apartment texting that guy over and over again who obviously wasn’t “the one”. Or I’m remembering this most painful relationship or these that came afterwards. Each of these memories leave me with this anchor of shame that I can’t shake easily. The questions rise up, again, and one in particular. I ask, “How did I let this happen? How could I have done such ungodly things?”

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April 18, 2014
5 Bible Verses for When You Just Want to Be Chosen

I was a terrible person to break-up with when I was single. I had three significant relationships before I got married and in every one of them I did everything short of get on my hands and knees and beg the guy to choose me. Just think of the girl on The Bachelor who doesn’t get the rose, gets into the limo, and then hyperventilates through her tears. Yep, that was me. I was a broken girl. One day I’ll tell you more stories about that girl – stories that will shock you and embarrass me.

I’ve been thinking a lot about why I acted the way I did when guys broke up with me. It’s painful to think that I begged guys to choose me. But you know what? I’m still that broken girl.

Photo Credit

I wish I could say that I’m free from the bondage of begging to be chosen, but I’m not. On Wednesdays I go to Bible Study Fellowship (which I highly recommend to you). There are a group of “cool moms” there. They’re young, in their late twenties/early thirties, they wear leggings and scarves and knee-high boots, and they all sit together. I smile at them and they half smile back probably wondering why I have a big cheesy smile on my face. I so want to be a part of their group. But at 37 I’m just not. It doesn’t matter that I have a 15-month-old too. I sit there with a jealous knot in my stomach hoping one day they’ll choose me.

Then there’s the online crowd. Out here in blog world there is an in-crowd just like in “real life”. The Christian women bloggers who chat over Twitter. I’ll send a tweet to one of these ladies then check my phone every two minutes to see if they tweeted me back. But nothing. My heart sinks.

My desire to be chosen also sits closer to home. My mom passed away three years ago. Since that time I no longer have a mom-figure in my life – no one who is in my corner always. I hear these stories of older women going up to younger women and saying things like, “God just told me that I was supposed to be your mentor.” I wish an older women would choose me.

The stories don’t end there. For most of my life I’ve just wanted to be chosen.

Today is Valentine’s Day, and you may feel the same way. More than anything you just want to be chosen by someone. You want someone to reach out his hand to tell you you’re accepted and loved and special.

I know that feeling, and I also know the thoughts that accompany it. “What’s wrong with me?”, “I’ll never find anybody!”, “Nobody will ever just like me for me.”, “I’m going to be single for the rest of my life!”, “Maybe I’m too . . . (you fill in the blank).”

Sometimes I struggle with writing truth to you because I hate pat answers, and I don’t want to give you a roll-your-eyes, “that’s what everyone says” answer too. But in this case there’s only one way to say it.

Those thoughts you’re having about why you’re not chosen? They’re straight out lies from the enemy. Bold-faced lies to destroy you.

And it’s time to bind them up and throw them out.

If you have to sit and read these verses over and over to yourself tonight or this weekend or any day after this, then I want you do it. Let God’s Word sink in and transform your mind.

Because you are chosen. Chosen by almighty God himself. If you were the only person on earth, He still would have come to earth to die on the cross. For you. Just for you. He loves you that much.

Whether single or married or somewhere in between, there will always be times when we are not chosen by this world and the people in it. But if we remember God’s truth, then we will not make decisions out of the feelings those times bring. Instead we’ll stand up and say, “I’m not chosen by this world, but I’m chosen by God, and God is where my home lies.”

Bible verses so you know you’re chosen:

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” 1 Peter 2:9

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love” Ephesians 1:3-4

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” Jeremiah 1:5

“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.” John 15:16

“For you are a people holy to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.” Deuteronomy 14:2

February 14, 2014