Just Continue That Thought...

  A thought by Max Lucado, from his book,  Begin Again   (p. 13). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.  (Click on the book title to go to Amazon to buy the book.) Yes it is. Max says, " If worry is a burlap bag, fear is a trunk of concrete. It wouldn’t budge." He goes on, "How remarkable that Jesus felt such fear. But how kind that he told us about it. We tend to do the opposite. Gloss over our fears. Cover them up. Keep our sweaty palms in our pockets, our nausea and dry mouths a secret. Not so with Jesus. We see no mask of strength. But we do hear a request for strength. "'Father, if you are willing, take away this cup of suffering.' The first one to hear his fear is his Father. He could have gone to his mother. He could have confided in his disciples. He could have assembled a prayer meeting. All would have been appropriate, but none were his priority. He went first to his Father. "Oh, how we tend to go everywhere else. First to the bar, to the counselor,

  A thought by Max Lucado, from his book,  Begin Again   (p. 9). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.  (Click on the book title to go to Amazon to buy the book.) Max says, " The guide ahead of him had a machete and was whacking away the tall weeds and thick underbrush. The traveler, weary and hot, asked in frustration, 'Where are we? Do you know where you are taking me? Where is the path?' The seasoned guide stopped and looked back at the man and replied, 'I am the path.'" Max goes on, "We ask the same questions, don’t we? We ask God, 'Where are you taking me? Where is the path?' And he, like the guide, doesn’t tell us. Oh, he may give us a hint or two, but that’s all. If he did, would we understand? Would we comprehend our location? No, like the traveler, we are unacquainted with this jungle. So rather than give us an answer, Jesus gives us a far greater gift. He gives us himself. "Does he remove the jungle? No, the vegetation is still thick.  &qu

A thought by Max Lucado, from his book,  Begin Again   (p. 7). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.  (Click on the book title to go to Amazon to buy the book.) That is a very good question for some. Maybe you? Max says, " Though the answers are abundant, three come quickly to mind. "The first would be a person. Not just any person. You don’t need someone equally confused. You need someone who knows the way out. Someone you can trust. "And from him you need some vision. You need someone to lift your spirits. You need someone to look you in the face and say, 'This isn’t the end. Don’t give up. You can begin again. There is a better place than this. And I’ll lead you there.' "And perhaps most important you need direction. If you have only a person but no renewed vision, all you have is company. If he has a vision but no direction, you have a dreamer for company. But if you have a person with direction—who can take you from this place to the right place—ah, then you h

A thought by Max Lucado from his book, Begin Again   (pp. xii-xiii). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.  (Click on the book title to go to Amazon to buy the book.) And maybe that is what you need? Max says, " Sometimes all we need is a little hope.  "That’s all Noah needed. And that’s what Noah received." He goes on, "The old sailor stares at the sun bisected by the horizon. One could hardly imagine a more beautiful sight. But he’d give this one and a hundred more for an acre of dry ground and a grove of grapes. Mrs. Noah’s voice reminds him that dinner is on the table and he should lock the hatch, and he’s just about to call it a day when he hears the cooing of the dove. This is how the Bible describes the moment: 'When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf!' (Gen. 8:11). "An olive leaf. Noah would have been happy to have the bird—but to have the leaf! This leaf was more than foliage; this was promise.

A thought by Craig Groeschel from his book,  Winning the War in Your Mind   (p. 127). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.  (Click on the book title to go to Amazon to buy the book.) That is very true, isn't it? Craig says, " There are sad moments in life that we can get stuck in forever. They are not the moments we want to freeze-frame, but too often we do. Those formative moments can become the lens through which we view what happens for the rest of our lives. They form our cognitive bias, the frame we use to define our reality. We need to unfreeze our frames. We need to go back and rewrite the narrative we have been telling ourselves." He goes on, "So how do we reframe our past? We thank God for what he didn’t do. We look for God’s goodness. "Thanking God for what he’s done is easy for most of us. But I’ve learned to also thank God for what he didn’t do. "To discover those blessings can take a long time, but when you finally have that aha moment—wow!" He tell

  A thought by Craig Groeschel from his book,  Winning the War in Your Mind   (p. 121). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.  (Click on the book title to go to Amazon to buy the book.) Here are some steps. Craig says, " Experts in the psychotherapeutic world share steps that help us to reframe, to take control of our thoughts and overcome our cognitive bias, such as: Stay calm . If you react, you will probably react the way you’ve always reacted.  Identify the situation . What exactly, and truly, is happening?  Identify your automatic thoughts. If something at my house breaks and I know it will be an expensive repair, my automatic response is to panic just a little bit. But while I cannot control what breaks, I can control how I perceive it. So instead of just thinking my automatic thought, I identify that thought. I can take it captive and make it obedient to Christ. Then I take an additional step:  Find objective supportive evidence. I want to deal in reality, and so I search for object

A thought by Craig Groeschel from his book,  Winning the War in Your Mind   (p. 116). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.  (Click on the book title to go to Amazon to buy the book.) And that is so true. Craig says, " We could say a lens with a distorted view will make lies seem like they’re true. "I wonder how often you see what you expect instead of what’s really there—reality the way reality really is." He goes on, "Social psychologists have a name for our distorted lenses. They call it a cognitive bias. The term refers to a standardized, consistent pattern of deviating from reality in how we see and process things. If you have a cognitive bias, you create a subjective reality. That construction of your reality, not actual reality, will dictate how you respond and behave in the world. "That’s a kind of scholarly way of thinking about cognitive bias, but you don’t need that explanation. You see people with a cognitive bias all the time." He gives an example, "