Sitting with the Lord this morning and my thoughts were all over the place! I thought about some folk in my family and some my friends so I took the time to pray for them. I thought about the 2 million people in the world who are grieving for lost loved ones to COVID and I prayed for those families. I thought about the widows that I’m connected with and prayed for them. And I thought about my issues and concerns and put them before the Lord. But in the middle of my prayer time I was also warring against the negative thoughts that tended to creep in while I prayed. Resentment of how the pandemic has gotten so out of control. Anxieties about my life & issues. Fears of the unknown. It dawned on me how busy the enemy can be in our thought life if we allow it. The enemy loves attention especially negative attention! Negative attention is based on lies and fears. It is meant to distract and disarm us so that we are caught off guard and then become overwhelmed with despair, distrust and disbelief.

I purpose everyday to arrest those thought with truth!

I purpose everyday to expose my mind to truth. I purpose to spend more energy tuning into the Lord than trying to fight the negative thoughts on my own. The best way to arrest negative thoughts is to replace them with truth. The first negative thoughts that I had to replace with truth on my grief journey is how I viewed death and dying. We tend to think of death as final and tragic. Not to dismiss the fact that sometimes our loved ones die in tragic ways. The cancer that claimed my husband’s life was very devastating and traumatic! I still have memories of his suffering. They still haunt me sometimes. When those stressful thoughts start to overwhelm me, I remind myself of how my husband, Stephen, viewed death. He often said, that our ultimate destination is to go and be with the Lord. He wasn’t afraid to die. Yes he enjoyed life but he was never afraid of death. Then I start thinking about what that must be like for him now. No more pain, no more sorrow, no more death! Forever alive and forever experiencing God’s glory in real time, face to face. I picture him not walking but running down the streets of gold! No more concerns about the cares of this world! Completely loved! My thoughts then turn to joy. I’m reminded of the words of Jesus when he said, in this world we will have great struggles but we are to be encouraged because He has overcome the world! I hang on to that truth! He turned my mourning to joy! And those negative thoughts dissolve in thin air right before my very eyes. I didn’t have to fight them on my own. I only had to receive the truth, remember it and live by it. The truth arrested those negative thoughts. So now my energy and time are spent absorbing truth not on fighting negative thoughts. Truth dispels anxious thoughts. Meditating on God’s word, writing it, praying it, receiving it and living by it! The Old Testament in the Bible talks about writing God’s truth on your door posts so you can see it going and coming! The New Testament talks about hiding the truth in our hearts so we can live right! Truth in, truth out!

Sharing my morning musings to encourage us to spend time taking in the truth. Meditating on truth and living our lives based on truth. Choose at least one truth and let that be what you hold on to all day. My truth today is “Be encouraged, Jesus has overcome the troubles of this world!” He turned my mourning into dancing and my sorrow into joy!