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OFFENSE VS. DEFENSE

Okay, we’ve crammed a lot of stuff into five days, and hopefully, you’ve already been experiencing some increased closeness with God, maybe a reduction in your own anxiety or negativity. It’s amazing how a few simple steps can lead to some pretty major transformation. Today, I want to leave you with one more shift in your mindset. The first part of this plan dealt a lot with playing defense. Essentially, there’s a tidal wave of media and influences coming your way, and it’s up to you to filter through them and try to avoid the worst of it. Yes, that is true but it’s not the whole story.

We can actually play offense in this battle for our hearts and minds. We don’t have to sit there frantically trying to fend off all these different things vying for our attention. We can proactively set our minds on the things God wants us to focus on. Here’s the secret to how this works: when you actively focus your mind on the right stuff, it makes it so you hardly even notice the wrong stuff. The mind is incapable of truly focusing on two things simultaneously (sorry, self-proclaimed multi-taskers). If you are actively focusing your mind on the things of God (which you’ll see a great list of in today’s passage), then your mind can’t simultaneously focus on all the other junk that’s out there.

Now, this can certainly be a minute-by-minute battle, because let’s face it, we are generally highly distractible people. I don’t know how many times I start out trying to pray or focus on something God wants me to focus on, and then without me even being aware of it, my mind has suddenly shifted to something totally different. It could be triggered by an alert on my phone, a banner ad on a website, or even just my own mind wandering off, but all of a sudden, I’m focused on all the wrong stuff. That’s okay, it happens to all of us. The trick is to catch it, refocus your mind, and get back on the right track. 

Today’s passage contains a terrific list of the kinds of things we should focus on. I would challenge you to take some time, get something to write with, and make a list. Write down all the keywords of this passage (true, noble, right, etc.), and then next to each word, start writing specific examples of things that fall into that category. So, you’d write “true,” and then next to it perhaps you’d list, “God’s unfailing love for me, I am uniquely created by God, my parents love me no matter what …” It could be whatever comes to mind, but I think you get the idea. Once you have your list all written out, save it, put it somewhere you can refer back to it again and again. The more you can focus your mind on everything on that list, the less you’ll even be able to see all the junk you’re trying to avoid.