Thoughts make up attitudes and beliefs. (Note: In this context, thoughts include feelings.) Thoughts are the basic elements of mental activity. To control your thoughts is to be able to control your attitudes and your beliefs. Start with your individual thoughts and change them one-by-one if you want to effectively change your attitudes or your beliefs. Because Jesus’ thoughts were so strong and pure (undiluted by doubts), they produced the mind that all of us admire and covet — a mind that did not require changing from time to time. We should strive for our attitudes and beliefs to be comprised of thoughts so strong and pure.
How Do I Change My Attitudes/Beliefs?
This is an eye-opener to some. People ask themselves, “How do I really change my attitudes/beliefs? I have tried and it seems like I can’t get a handle on changing them,” they confess. Then do this: Break your beliefs/attitudes down into their individual thoughts and examine each thought.
Here’s How:
Example: You don’t believe God will take care of you, but you want to believe. Follow this path, narrowing your focus to change your belief.
- Ask: Why don’t I believe? The answer may be: It’s because I don’t want to give up my worrying. Worry can be comforting when you don’t know what else to do. At least you are doing something. It gives you a false feeling of progress.
- So, ask: Why am I worrying? If the answer doesn’t seem ready to reveal itself, remember: worry is generated by a fear.
- So, ask: What scares me?
- Once the worry or the fear behind the worry has been identified, then you can ask: Why does this scare me? What do I believe that causes me to be afraid?
- Once that thought is found, then examine its logic, likelihood, and emotions. Give it a thorough examination and detect its weaknesses.
- Then, look hard at the alternative positive ways you could think. Find an alternative way of thinking that you can accept and install it into your mind with constant reminders of its reasonableness and rehearsals of its benefits.
In doing this, you weaken the belief you want to replace with a more beneficial belief. Repeat with the other troubling thoughts that you can identify and soon you will have a growing, confident faith instead of your original troubling beliefs.
New Attitudes/Beliefs Are Comprised of Thoughts that Are New
I cannot emphasize enough how we must “work out our own salvation” when it comes to changing our thinking patterns and developing a pattern of thinking like Christ. God is not going to relieve us of a process that builds strength and resiliency into our lives. We must struggle our way to self-control.
Remember, self-control appears in a list of qualities that describe the fruit of God’s Spirit. Self-control is not God control! It is the self-effort that produces a mastery of self. And self-mastery is God-like. How do I know it is God-like? We are told it is in Galatians 5:22-23.
But the Fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Self Control Is Mind Control (Comprised of Thoughts)
Self-control is the result of mind control. And mind control is achieved with thought control. How can a person be the best they can be if they can’t control their thoughts and master themselves? When we control our thoughts, we control our attitudes and our beliefs.
So far so good! But next, let’s address the thoughts we cannot control.
Our first and most important task in a world-changing mission is to learn how to think straight (and teach straight thinking) and combat the insurgence of crooked thinking in our culture and in our world today. If we become passive victims of this crooked way of thinking, we promote it. If we remain silent, we also give it credence. In Who Am I?, the reader progresses from how we have become “crooked thinkers” to how to break out of this prison of the mind (which is enslaving us) to become instruments of change for a better world by recognizing from where our value as humans is derived. “Build a straight and powerful mind.” ~ Ray W. Lincoln
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