Played on Repeat

 

    What do you play on repeat in your mind?  These are the words, phrases or sayings that you say to yourself.  Are they productive, life-giving, or negative?  The words that you play on repeat are the words that you are meditating on.  What you meditate on is what you will believe.

    Your mind is susceptible to the words that you use.  If you repeat God's Word, then your mind becomes stronger because you are feeding it to the truth.  It helps you see lies more easily.  Discernment is the fruit of meditating on the truth that comes from God.

    Words become thoughts and thoughts come together to become beliefs.  They all stream together to become what you meditate upon.  It is important to keep your thought closet stocked with quality words because these are the words that you ponder over.  When you ponder you converse with yourself which means you pay certain thoughts on repeat.  This is meditation.

    Take a minute to write down what you focus the most on.  This is what you are meditating on.  Does it bring life or is it tearing you apart?  Writing it down will give it clarity and help you organize your mental closet.

    When you meditate on God's Word you are transforming your thought closet to be more heaven focused.  You train yourself to think more like God.  Focusing on the present will only bog you down.  Commit yourself to God to find contentment.  It changes everything.  

    Meditation stores your thoughts to treasure them.  As you study God's Word, you ponder it.  When you need it, it is right there.  Allow it to take up space, so that there is no room for the negative self-talk.  Meditating on God's Word will elevate your thoughts giving you wisdom.

Psalm 19:14, 119:25-32, 41-48, 73-80, 145-152, Isaiah 55:8-9, Luke 2:16-20, Colossians 3:1-4

Cleaning out Your Closet

 

    The first step in cleaning out your thought closet is to stop the negative self talk.  You are not perfect, but you are not useless either.  You are you.  God made you to be you and no one else.  He knew you were not going to be perfect when He made you and He still made you in love.  Stop beating yourself up with guilt, hopelessness, frustration, or anything else that hurts you.

    Gloomy thoughts brings dirty clutter into your neat and organized mental closet.  It messes with your emotions and thought processes. Satan loves to tell you that you are not good enough, but God tells you how loved you are.  It is time to get a hold on your thoughts.  It is the only way to keep the mess out of your mind.

    Remove negative words from your thesaurus.  They only hurt your soul even if they are spoken about someone else and not yourself.  Other people are God's beloved creations too.  Negative vocabulary leads to insecurities, believing lies, and reminds you of failures that should have been let go of long ago.  They hide the truth about who you are with Jesus.

    Examine your mental closet. Where do you put your thoughts about yourself, other people, and God?  How is it organized?  What areas need cleaning out?  Organizing is easy.  You start with finding a home for one thing and work around the room until it is done.  The same goes with organizing your mental closet.

    Take out the storage bins full of your past hurts and damage.  Allow God to heal that area.  If you allow God to really heal it, then that area becomes stronger.  In the closet it become more sturdy to hold heavier items.  

    Without Jesus, the weight in your closet will become suffocating.  It will crash everything to the ground and you with it.  He brings in the light to really see the mess and hidden areas that need to be fixed.  He enables you to see clearly.  

    Once your mental closet is fixed, cleaned, and organized, you can maintain it by spending time with God every day.  He knows you.  He knows what you need.  He knows what you need to clean out.  You can trust Him to have your best interest in mind.  All you have to do is commit in trusting Him.  Together you can control your thoughts.

Psalm 10:1-6, 40:4-5, 56:5-8, 59:6-10, 92:4-7, 139:17-18, Proverbs 16:1-3, Isaiah 55:8-9, 65:1-5, Jeremiah 29:10-14, Romans 1:21-23, & Hebrews 4:12-13

Thought Closet

 

    Your thought closet is your secret place where you store and organize your thoughts.  It is where you dress yourself with your self talk.  When you are in your thought closet you need to be honest, real, and loving.  It is just you and the Holy Spirit.  You don't have to be perfect, eloquent, or put on mask.  All you have to do is identify yourself as the person you are to God.

    You are good enough because God loves you.  He pursued you.  You can accept His love and feel worthy.  The more you strive for perfection, the more you will struggle in your life.  You have messed up.  Guess what, you are not alone.  Everyone has.  Do not allow the sins that God has already forgiven and forgotten keep you from having a full life.

    In your thought closet store up what you read in God's Word to think about until you get a clear picture of what He is telling you.  Then you can move on to the next set of scripture.  This is meditation as God designed it.  

    In your thought closet look at yourself fully naked.  See that you were made beautifully.  You are a wonder of God's creation.  This is the truth.  Do not allow anyone else reshape your thinking to believe the world's lies.  

    When you are in your thought closet use your words to describe who God is telling you, you are.  Do the I am phrasing.  Your mind will believe you and give you confidence.  Only list the good qualities.  List what makes you different.  List why you have the friends that you have in your life.  They would not be there if you were not special or important to them.  Only speak kindly and lovingly to yourself.

    At salvation you get a clean slate where God starts pouring in love, truth, kindness, and hope into you.  Are you listening?  Are you willing to make changes in your life to preserve your clean closet and not allow the world to clutter it with junk?  Satan wants to keep you buried in lies and negativity.  It is time to break free.  

    The world will discourage and disappoint you, but God will make you feel cherished.  Spend time praying over your thought closet.  Clean out what is not bringing life into your life.  Only allow God's treasures to remain because you are one of His children.  

Genesis 29:31-35, Exodus 4:10, Psalms 86:1-7, 139:13-16, Song of Songs 1:5-6, & 1 Corinthians 15:10-11

Prayer Closet

 

    The words you use have power.  The words you say to yourself will shape how you see yourself.  God tells you who you are and how He sees you in His Word.  The Bible is His love letter to you.  Never insult the person He made you.  Speak truth into yourself.  It starts in your prayer closet.  It can be a literal room or a secret place tucked away in your mind.

    Reject the lies that Satan whispers into your mind.  Replace self-destructive talk with kind speech.  Pray for the Holy Spirit to guide you and teach you how to speak truth to yourself and other people.  No matter you circumstances, you can keep your soul healthy and alive.  The truth is not based on your feelings.  It is stable and unchanging.  You can feel negative emotions and all be well in your soul.

    The words you use in your thoughts matter, even if they are never spoken.  God used words to create, to bring forth life, and to destroy.  Words hold power because God gave them power.  Words bring life or death to a soul.  You can speak out of love, kindness, and peace to bring forth life.  Or you can insult, be cruel, and curse bringing forth death.

    Joy gives life to the soul.  Destructive words devastates the soul.  Either way you use your words, you reveal your heart.  They convey how you think, framing your thoughts into action.  Your mental closet is a storeroom.  Storeroom in Greek is thesaurus.  Your thesaurus holds all your words derived by abundance of words.  Fill your thesaurus with God's Word and it will become your prayer closet.  

Genesis 1:3-24, 24:24-35, 27:2-4, Proverbs 18:19-22, & Matthew 2:9-11, 12:33-37

Peace Makeover

 

    Can you think of someone you respect because they seem to have peace through everything?  This person seems to have their life put together and can handle everything.  These people are rare, but they are placed in your life for a reason.  They help you get to where you want to be in your relationship with God.

    You are able to be the calm in the chaos person.  It is possible because you like your role model are human.  Your role model struggles in areas just like you.  They just put their complete trust in God.  They practice what they learn in their quiet time every day.  They are willing to change and grow.  If you are able to do that, then you can be stable in life too.

    You need strong Christians in your life to help you gain real and lasting freedom from what is holding you back.  You may not be able to see what has a hold on you until someone points it out.  Find people that you trust to live completely transparent in life.  Find people that will be honest, kind, and loving while pushing you to walk closer with Jesus.

    It starts by turning to the Bible.  Pray over the people in your life and who God wants in your inner circle.  Pray for a mentor to be there with you in life.  These people may change as life changes, but you always will need one.  God is trying to give you are rich and satisfying life.  Will you let Him?

    It is the choses you make in life that make up who you are. Focus on the eternal, so that the day to day stuff doesn't become overwhelming. Speak kindly to yourself as you grow and change.  Your mind doesn't comprehend when you are joking.  It will believe what you speak.  Remember what you say to yourself is what you are saying to God's creation.  Learn to control your thoughts or your thoughts will control you.  This is how you give yourself a peace makeover.

Psalm 19:12-14, Ecclesiastes 3:9-13, & John 10:6-10

Secret Friendship

 

    Biblical friendship is a company of persons in close deliberation.  Friendship is meant to be intimate with consultation.  Friends assemble in secret meaning that they share their hearts with each other, but not the world.  They give each other good counsel.  The biggest secret about friendship is that you can have this with God.

    When you think of friendship what do you think about?  What is important to you in a friendship?  For a friendship to be intimate it needs to be someone(s) you trust, can depend on, and hold Philo love.  This is how you build intimacy.  These relationships are in your best interest.  They help you get through the hard times.  They no longer allow you to coast through life with only casual relationships.

    You need this kind of friendship with God to be able to grow and find true peace and love.  It takes strength and being brave.  You don't have the time to be casual or play around.  He sent you here with a purpose and He works with you to fulfill it.  It is a challenge, but all relationships are.  The only difference is that God will never leave you.  He is not in your life for just a season.  He is with you for eternity.  

    The thing with friendship is that you are not always the one going to God.  The Holy Spirit talks to you too.  Jesus is confiding in you if you are being a trustworthy and dependable friend in return.  God knows everything about you and still wants a real relationship with you.  

    God knows your joys, your duties, broken heart, rejections, and betrayals.  He walks through all of it with you.  He keeps your secrets, but will expose your sins like a good friend.  He doesn't do this to hurt you, but to free you.  True friends call you out when you are wrong, but in love not to shame.  A friendship with God will bring confidence into your life.  It frees you from confusion, anguish of questioning things, and loneliness.

1 Samuel 7:12, Psalm 25:11-15, 55:12-15, & Jude 24-25

Sacred Secrets

 

    Sacred secrets are quiet or discreet secrets.  God works quietly most of the time.  He is always working, but sometimes it feels like He is not doing anything.  That is why you can't be directed by feelings.  You have to remember His promises and look for the small things to be grateful for.  Sometimes it can take years praying over something before it happens.  You have to learn patience, so  that you do not mess up your blessing by trying to take over God's job.  

    Some quiet secrets are physical.  It could be pregnancy, growing up, healing, or something else.  These are a mystery that bring joy as you hold them close to you.  Here God is in control.  He reveals your future as it is playing out.

    Some sacred secrets are when you hide yourself.  This is where you love properly.  This is where you use self-discipline to keep yourself holy.  An example is waiting to have sex until you get married.  Your body is a sacred secret for your spouse to discover and cherish.

    You get to decide what is going to be secret in your life.  You can tell the world everything about you, but it will never appreciate it.  It is wise to keep some secrets to yourself.  Some secrets revealed to the wrong person or too soon can be dangerous, toxic, and dark.  If you want to live in the light, then turn all your secrets to the Holy Spirit in prayer to help you with what to do with them.  

    Secrets are a part of the maturing process.  Push too hard and you will miss opportunities to do great things.  You may suffer in ways where it takes years to get back to where you were or to heal.  Take the time to allow yourself to grow, so you can crush pride and find meaning to your message.  If you move too soon, then Satan will find your vulnerable spots and attack mercilessly.  Spend time in your secret place of prayer and your timing will be revealed.  

Genesis 31:25-30, Psalm 25:11-15, Proverbs 17:23-24, Matthew 1:18-19, 2:7-8, John 11:27-29, Acts 16:37, & Hebrews 4:14-16