Stay Here: God's Plan to Restore Your Mental HealthSample

Overcoming the Battle of Negative Thinking

Do you know you have nearly six thousand thoughts every day? And many of those thoughts are conversations you have with yourself. You do talk to yourself, right? Everybody does. But what do you say? Is it all negative?

Here are examples of the kind of negative self-talk you might experience:

On your way to school or in a social situation, you say to yourself, No one will notice your new outfit, and if they do, they’ll make fun of it. You should just go back home.

No matter how much you’ve accomplished, at the end of the day you say, You didn’t get everything done. What a failure.

Dealing with money issues, you say, You’ll never figure this out. You’ll always struggle with finances.

Thinking about relationships, you say, No one really cares about you. Why should they?

And when you do something wrong, you say something like, You’re an idiot. You always mess up.

And the negative talk goes on. Worse is when you say the same things to yourself over and over and over, stuck in a loop I call stinking thinking.

What you say to yourself matters more than you can imagine. The first part of Proverbs 4:23 says “Be careful how you think.” Why? Because as the verse goes on to say, “Your life is shaped by your thoughts.” Psychologists call this the law of cognition. Essentially, this law says what you think impacts what you believe, which impacts how you feel, which impacts what you do. Your life moves in the direction of your strongest and most frequent thought patterns.

You are the most influential person in your own life, because no one talks to you more than you do. I like that. But sadly, you may be talking yourself into a life you hate. That’s why I want to help you learn how to end this negative loop. The world at large is becoming more and more negative, and chronic negativity has become an epidemic that’s poisoning people’s mental health left and right.

In many ways, negativity is a spiritual problem. But the good news is that by the power and grace of God, you can choose what you think about, and what you think about determines how you live. You’re not a victim of your negative thoughts.

The apostle Paul said this in Romans 8:5: “Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires” (NIV). He wasn’t talking about our skin. The word in the Greek for “flesh” is sarks, and it means “sinful nature.” Essentially, he’s saying those who live according to their sinful nature have their minds set on what the sinful nature wants to do.

What kind of impact does this have on us? Verse 6 in Romans 8 tells us, “The mind governed by the flesh is death” (NIV). It’s darkness. It’s destruction. “But,” the verse finishes, “the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.”

Think about it. The mind governed by the flesh is death. The news you consume, the TV shows you watch, the lyrics to the music you play over and over, the social media you consume that makes you feel left out or jealous or angry or less than, the people you spend your time around . . . they all create an inner script that helps direct your life.

If you find yourself feeling hurt, broken, or discouraged, could it be that your mind is set on the things of this world instead of on the things of God? Because when you set your mind on the things of God and the things of His Spirit, you’ll find life and peace in all that you do.

Prayer

Jesus, I want freedom from the cycle of negativity I’ve found myself in. Today I’m asking you to give me new thought patterns and a new lens through which I see myself, my situation, and the world around me. To remember who you are and what you’ve done for me. Help me meditate on your Word, and let it produce fruit in my life that drowns out all the negative roots I’ve let grow around me. In your name I pray, amen.