thoughts that provoke derailment

have you ever noticed negative/hurtful/destructive patterns in your life? for example: starting things & not finishing them (getting inches from the "finish-line"), feeling lonely & go into hiding, over-spend money after working so hard to stay on budget, disqualifying yourself because you don't feel "worthy" of certain things, holding off worrying until something stressful comes & then sinking right back into the world of worrying, seeing someone/certain people that makes you feel bad for days, make quick/foolish decisions based on impulse/emotions, being "good" for an amount of time- then showing your true colors when the heat is applied, and so on.......

it's these cyclical patterns/trends that often define our lives. we often can easily recognize the cycles of the people around us. for example, i know a woman that can "behave/perform" for about 2 yrs, then she sabotages her whole life: she gets bored, needs drama, creates strife w/current husband, yanks kids out of school, stops hangin' out w/friends, blames friends for the void in her life, etc..... that's just one example of a cycle, but there's many different types out there. they vary from person to person. for some, they can be happy & even act happy for a little while, then "boom", they crash, get depressed, become a hermit.

the purpose of this post is to just touch on this topic a bit. a full discussion on this would take way too much time & space.

would you believe me if i told you that repeated destructive cycles are primarily related to 1 thing? the 1 thing is: what you think about/on! of course how we think is related to our emotional past (environment) & our brain wiring/chemistry/physiology. so, if we could look @ our soul & brain for why we act/behave like we do- we could actually alter how we think. as you know, we have to take every thought captive. okay, we'll do that, but have you or have you known someone that has to take an inordinate amount of thoughts that are overwhelming? to tell someone to just think positive- is like telling a child w/ADD that they just need to focus.

i'd like for us to think about why we repeat the same crap over & over again. anyone tired of repeating the same crap? in case you haven't noticed- your repeating of crap doesn't just affect you! it affects all those in our lives: family, work, church, scope of influence. the enemy just loves to feed off our "garbage" & watch us go into a tail-spin. we're like puppets sometimes. our circumstances get hard & the next thing you know- we're destroying our lives again.

i propose that if you investigate your thought life, you'll find some lies that you believe about you & the world you live in. for example: people can't be trusted, God couldn't love ME, i'm worthless, i'm stupid, people are stupid, i'm not good at anything, people don't like me, etc...

quite frankly, it's the lies we believe that shape how we think. how you think leads to how we behave. tired of behaving crappy? tired of being in your own skin, because you make so many repetitive mistakes? tired of causing drama & hurting people? we must change how we think by addressing the lies we believe. we ought to take some sort of "thought inventory" in order to sniff-out the lies. when we address the lies, then we can actually start learning how to view the world w/some clarity (God's desire for us). Jesus has the absolute truth about us & every/any situation we face. if we ask Him, He will tell us. we must clean @ the root of our being if any "lasting/fulfilling/renewal" is to take place. anything else is a band-aid. band-aids don't last too long. band-aids are temporal @ best. let's go deeper than that.

love ya,

jay