8 Thoughts to Focus Your Attention On (Philippians 4:8)

i want to use scripture today to help you to align your focus and to set your focus so in this video what i'm going to discuss is eight thoughts to focus your attention on and i've spent quite a bit of time focusing on this passage of scripture in philippians 4 8 because to be really honest i didn't know what a lot of these words meant and in my journey of pursuing and experiencing mental emotional relational health in my life i've realized the power of thoughts are so incredibly important to understand and i really i got awakened when i realize i can set the gauge each day of what i focus on and we so easily get overwhelmed with all the thoughts and emotions that we don't want or don't want to experience or the stuff that we get bound under until i realized that i can set the compass and i began to realize that over the long term if i just continue to allow my thought grid to be built under what god has set for me and what he has said in a healthy thought way over the long haul i can experience the life and experience the transformation of it and so many of us get discouraged because we try to think different we try to think different than we we just give up and one of the things that's really helped me is learning to cultivate the focus muscle in my life i'm learning how to focus my attention because i i didn't have an attention muscle that was developed i responded to thoughts all day long i responded to situations and of course we got to learn how to respond but i didn't know how to set my focus and when god began to speak to my heart in this area of set the atmosphere in your life you need a new default setting and i began to realize wow i can set the grid in my life by focusing my attention on a new direction and so paul the apostle is giving us a grid of how we can set our thoughts the kind of thoughts because we go well how should i think you know we spend a lot of time on like okay i don't want that fearful thought that condemning thought that obsessive thought that guilt-ridden thought that shame thought that self-hating thought that rejection-based thought that anxiety thought that hate thought that self-hate thought you know the bitter thought get it out what are we filling ourselves with and i had to learn to fill myself with a new way of thought by setting my focus in the midst of when i was still struggling and that's kind of a tension that we all feel ourselves in right you expect that because you focus on a thought for 20 seconds all of a sudden everything should change what we're developing is we're developing a muscle and paul is in his writing coming into our thinking grid and said here's a gauge to set the primer to prime your thoughts into a new into a new way and i'm going to give you some thoughts to help you with it but let's look at the gauge that he gave it's basically eight thoughts eight kinds of thoughts to set the template for how you think in your life and it's found in philippians 4 8. and he says this he says finally brethren so whenever someone says that there's something important they're going to say they're bringing something to a close which in this case the apostle paul is writing a letter to the believers that are in philippi so he's writing to the philippian church body of people and so he's coming into a landing with a very important thing finally brethren and so we always addressed as his brothers and sisters saints of the living god and he's setting the template here saying if there's thoughts that have this to it i want you to focus your attention on it i want you to stop that thought and i want you to bring it into focus you see this is what we often do thoughts fly by and we focus on them based on how much emotion they stir up so if it stirs up a lot of anxiety we look at it a lot of guilt we look at it a lot we become obsessive if it stirs our addictions if it stirs lust if it stirs conflict we get stirred up and paul is saying if there's thoughts that fly by that have this to them i want you to pay attention to them and i'll be honest when i started really looking at this i realized the majority to seemingly none of my day is spent focusing in on these kind of thoughts and i realized i've got a lot to learn and i allowed myself to take the learning journey so let me get back to the scripture whatever things are true whatever things are noble whatever things are just whatever things are pure whatever things are lovely whatever things are of good rapport if there is any virtue if there is anything praiseworthy meditate on this in verse nine he says the things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me these do and the god of peace will be with you now what i want to do is i want to give you some observations i'm going to give you eight observations and then i'm going to share with you these eight words to give you some meaning to them so maybe we can find some application and find an adjustment in our thoughts to begin to move in better direction in our daily walk in our daily life the first observation that i is an honest one is that this this is definitely a scripture that gets lost in most christian application if you were to observe your daily walk and believers that you know we often don't spend our time focusing on these kind of thoughts we often don't talk about them a lot we don't talk about them enough and we don't really spend a majority of our day focusing in and looking for them because these kind of thoughts you have to actually look for they're not just gonna come to you all the time well they will many times you have to look for them and my second honest observation is a lot of times we don't even know what these words mean whatever thoughts are noble like what does that even mean what does it mean to to think on something that's of any virtue you know feel like is there any thought that is noble or virtuous you know it's like okay that's a nice scripture so think good thoughts thank you jesus go on with my day and so therefore there's not really a lot of application so i want to take a moment to kind of pause and to look at these words a little bit and highlight them in a way that could make them maybe a little bit practical for your life and i encourage you to do the same now one thing you need to understand is the writing of philippians paul was under some restraints meaning that he was either in prison or in some form of house arrest at the writing of this scripture so regardless he was under restraints or limitations and i think what's amazing in this passage of scripture in the whole book of philippians so much of what paul writes is the mindset of an overcomer you know there is i've learned whatever state to be in to be content be anxious for nothing the joy of the lord is my strength some of these powerful mentalities at some point lord willing in the creek don't rise i'm going to do a bible study on the book of philippians specifically targeted for mindsets of overcomers because paul in the book of philippians really lays that out and it's powerful because the setting he's in wouldn't lend to hey here's the thoughts we need to think about but when you're feeling limited when you're feeling like you look around you and there's atmospheric influences cultural national worldwide whatever neighborhood church influences that are drawing your thoughts down that are creating a lot of negativity guilt shame fear anxiety unbelief doubt it's time to reset our compass so you have to realize paul knows what it's like to be under restraints and to be under a place where not everything is like just making way for him so in this i think the invitation that you really need to understand that paul is bringing to us that he's bringing to the church is to think higher he's saying come up to a higher level there's a higher level of thoughts waiting for you and for many believers they don't take these thoughts and go higher because they don't see that in their identity because the words i'm going to share with you these virtue these lovely praiseworthy a lot of these words are character they talk about character about moral character moral excellence what they're leading us to is to see a higher level of identity we don't think higher and more powerfully because we don't see ourselves higher and powerful people and the new testament in jesus christ is an invitation to come up higher and to sit with christ in heavenly places that involves a new higher level of thinking and many believers don't take it because they don't see themselves in higher regard they don't go higher because they don't see themselves higher so they don't live higher because as you think so will you be so the thought grid that i cultivate in my life is going to infect my decisions and my decisions will infect in a good way i use the word infect where i go and where i head in life so when it comes to our journey you know sometimes we're so focused on god where am i going what's your will and god's focus is actually on i want to teach you how to think higher because if you think higher of yours of who i am in you of what's possible for you you're going to rise above the snakes you're going to rise above the swamp that the enemy wants to pull you into and you're gonna see from my level much of what these words are saying is god going i want you to see from here in fact didn't paul the apostle himself write think not on earthly things but on heavenly things he's not saying are you just floating in the clouds and you're just you're out of it and you know you're you're in another world of the land no you're in you're you're the invasion of heaven now has a influence on how you see things in this earth you're thinking on god's ways and so god is never he's never discouraged he's never taken out he never quits he always sees faith hope and love he's always giving us power love and the sound mind he's always working always shining a light in certain areas of the world and those who see it tune into it grow in that they'll saturate themselves with his ways so he said in another writing paul says faith hope and love remain the greatest of these is love and one of these words in this eight list of eight tunes us into the power of love and what it means to set our thoughts from a compass of love but i got to bring this up right at the front his call is i'm setting you higher so what he's doing is as you think it's going to shift your character it's going to raise you up to higher levels of your character and many believers don't take the invitation and if this is really important will you take the invitation to live in your thinking at a higher level so wherever you are today all your discouraging thoughts there is an invitation of god that says you can think higher today and you have to choose whether or not you will say yes to that invitation because you can say no and then you can be mad at god god why aren't you working in my life why isn't this happening but god is saying if you want to come to a new level you've got to think at what that level requires so number five that i want to i want to say just as a thought here and there's a number five my slides got messed up sometimes it gets little glitches in my slides but the fifth thing that paul is saying here is he's saying i want these thoughts to be a filtration for everything in your life so we say how do i think well first set the grid of what you detect and then the thoughts that are in this grid will stick to it and you're going to have a more effective mental health more effective emotional health more effective relational health many times people ask you know is mental health in the bible i think the bible is all filled with mental health because it's helping to outline how god thinks how it affects our relationship world and how to learn to manifest that in our life to enhance how we think how we relate you notice all this takes work though it takes intentionality i've got to say you know what i want this to have an effect in my life and i want to daily allow god so i believe god is very concerned about your relational world which your relational world your history your upbringing the family you come from your relationships you have that deeply affects your mental and emotional health and god is very very narrowed in that he wants you spiritually emotionally mentally healthy and wants to walk with you in a journey of that when i realized that it was like i read the scriptures i was like this is all mental health stuff it's all how to relate to each other how to frame things in a way how i the narrative i listen to the testimony that i that i live by all these things are going to enhance my mental health right so it's understanding that and really embracing it now i want to bring this point because in verse 9 he says he says the things which you learned and received and heard and saw that's a lot of things there which you heard received learned so learned received heard saw four things there we learned to apply these thoughts from our relationship examples learned received heard saw so why do we struggle with our thoughts well there's a lot of reasons to that but do we have examples of what it means to think in healthy and fruitful ways one of the most powerful things that paul gave the church was his example he said follow me as i follow christ he didn't say you know follow christ and and you know don't worry about me he said no look at me follow me i think sometimes we're afraid to say that today we might think that that's arrogance to say that follow me you know as i follow christ but paul said an example he said he said listen you're learning things from me not from just what i'm teaching you but from my life received whether directly or through the letters i write heard things that i've actually said that became a part of your thinking and most of all you saw it in me and the point that i want to bring home is that we learn how to think through our examples what are your examples in your life because many people say i don't have any many people say i have really bad examples i had many people that were teachers that told me how i should think and live and they didn't live it themselves how many people who treated me in ways that did not show the mind of god in the mind of christ for many things you need relearning because you learned it a certain way and your battles reveal man i need to start over and learn and what does paul say in that scripture he says he says take these thoughts this is your grid the things you learn received and heard inside me these things do and what do you say the god of peace will be with you so the manifestation of focusing on these thoughts is they're going to lead you into peace but folks we need some examples and so because i've not had as many examples and you not having had many examples we need to kind of tune into these words and learn what they mean so that we can develop what does it look like to live these things out so we can experience that greater peace so as you learn them paul says i want you to meditate on them to set your focus on them and sometimes it's going to take a pause maybe it's a devotional moment maybe it's a prayer moment it's it's your time out of the day to take these eight words i would encourage you put them on a piece of paper and just stare at them rehearse them look at them and say what would it mean for me to take these and put them on the template of my day what would that look like in the old testament now this is written in the new testament but in the old testament language many times the word meditate had a connotation meaning to murmur or to mumble and this was a meaning of someone who's just maybe by themselves and they're just murmuring and kind of mumbling through and they're pondering the meaning of a word because i find many times talking it out helps you to discover i take a word i'll write it out on paper i'll talk it out i'll try to talk it with someone else explain it i listen to them and because the value of words is getting lost we just throw words around we don't know what they mean and there's some rich words in here we just pass by and we don't pause and think and paul's saying take time to ponder and examine what they mean he says meditate on these things you got to examine you've got to examine what these words mean before you can then develop them into your thought grid that's why when i when it comes to reading scripture i don't just rush through and just read through and oh that was a nice story or i read three chapters or i read this i'll sometimes like i took this um this scripture in philippians 4 8 and i stopped on finally right because that's my habit i go oh interesting i'd notice he says finally why is he saying that here and it puts like things in perspective i notice he says brethren ah why is it so important that he says brothers brethren brothers and sisters why does he say that ah what does that mean oh i need to ponder that what does it mean to live in that and then whatever things are true and and then why is it that he shifts to if there be any virtue if there be any praiseworthy why in those last two he shifted and added if there be any i'll get to that in just a second so it's important that we pause things of the scriptures must be marinated over they're not things to rush through they're not things to microwave it's a nice slow cooking it's a smoking you ever smoke a good piece of meat oh it's amazing but it takes a while you ever put something in the crock pot and just let it sit for a while most good foods that we love take time to prepare and the revelation of the word of god is talked about as bread manna revelation that's fresh but it takes time to cultivate and develop do you take time to just meditate to think on something to focus in on it let me say my focus is all over the place i'm 80d i'm all whatever your diagnosis is or whatever your thing whatever your issue is or whatever it is that's not that's not i'm not worried about that what i want to say is wherever your focus is you can enhance it wherever you're at you can develop it by and one of the ways i do that is by learning to practice focusing on words like this or focusing on who god is quieting myself and learning because then i take on god's created power he's given us as believers to focus on how he thinks so this is this is amazing i haven't gotten to the words yet he says meditate on them because what you set your focus on is and and we let's use the word meditate whatever you meditate on it's what you notice the most it's gonna drive what you look for and what thoughts you welcome so for example i'm going to give you an example if i say to you hey what you know do you want to buy a car he said yeah i want to buy a car i want to buy a sports car and i want to get a red sports car when you go out and drive on the road and you notice cars what are you going to notice you're going to notice all the red sports cars why because that is a focus in your life in fact advertisers online they know this if you're focused on something because you're searching for it they will drive traffic to you in the ads that you see because they notice what you're focused on during this time and you will more notice that ad because you're in a season of noticing now if you're filled with negativity what will you notice negative negative negative in every situation if you're filled with positivity and hope you will notice the things that match up to the grid that's inside of you and you will invite more of it so if i this goes back to advertisers too social media companies they know what you're focused on by your patterns they notice what gets your attention how does a thought die in your life it just doesn't get that attention anymore and the thought begins to dissolve it begins to shrink actual neural connections in your brain begin to back off because a new thought is forming and another one is not being given stimulation anymore many of you have written to me saying man i really love your negativity fast and you've taken a negativity fast because you realize your thought patterns are not headed in a good way and what it does is when you set it negative you look for negative you welcome negative look for negative welcome negative look for negative welcome negative and then we're shocked when we're like why are we so toxic why are we so depressed worn out discouraged well one reason is we we haven't healed some areas in our life that need healing and two we don't know how to set the grid that takes daily exercise it takes daily learning takes daily growth in so before i even get to any of these words what are you setting your grid to so as i go through each of these words i'll take a little bit of time i could go a lot deeper but i'm just going to kind of give some perspectives and some observations i have pay attention to the one that sticks out to you that says this is the one i need to cultivate don't try to cultivate all eight at the same time start one at a time to recognize the power of them and what we can do to begin tuning our thoughts into a new direction so first on the list is the word true and many of us we could say well we know what the word true means it's it's not it's not a lie it's the opposite of lies right jesus said i'm the way the truth and the life so in many ways focusing on the truth is focusing on on who jesus is how he lived his life focusing in on his word his ways but this word true here has to do with loving the truth and many of us have to confront the reality that we get seduced by lies but when you love the truth you set your grid for knowing the truth so when you hear rumors and things that are potentially filled with lies you love the truth so you go hmm i'm going to wait and see if i can learn how to live in the truth but another part of this word is has an aspect of not concealing so what this means is when you love the truth you also understand the power of living in god's light what we need to know is that truth and light they work together because god lives in the light he has nothing to hide and he says i will work with everything in your life but i will not live in hiding so everything in your life needs to come into the light not of exposure where i'm gonna shame you but in my love because what does light do it drives out darkness and what is in darkness lies so if i come into the light and i allow my thinking this is this is really really important here if i allow my thinking to come into the light it has a much better chance of being shown is it true or not if i'm in hiding and many people live in hiding and they love hiding because the father of lies keeps them hiding in darkness just like adam and eve right they sin and then they're hiding themselves which is actually the opposite of what we need in our struggles and sin and brokenness is to come into the light bring it all out and put it all on the table and then we can look and go oh that's a lie many of the things that drive ourselves and drive our our our brokenness are not brought into the light and the work i do with people in one-on-one settings is will in love no shame kind of begin to see what's at the the bottom of the root system and many times it's i'm unworthy of love god is not really proud of me doesn't love me i feel separated from god that's there but they're not even consciously aware of it but when we allow the light to shine over our hearts what really motivates us comes to the surface that's why john who knew the love of god so powerfully spoken first john if we walk in the light as he is in the light we're going to have real fellowship and the blood of jesus is going to cleanse all our stuff so don't worry about it it's going to the blood of jesus there but it's in the light and that light is going to live how you do relationships to do relationship in the light why because going back to this word true not concealing and you love the light you love the light of god and so what does this bring about in your life because everything god does is in the light whatever you're going through whatever you're struggling with you can bring to him and he can reveal to you in his love what's a lie and what's true and if you love the truth if you really love it then you'll gravitate towards it if you love darkness love hiding meaning it's a part of your life you can get seduced by lies and so your thoughts will not be based on the truth i want to set my compass every day father i want to live a life in such a way where i am walking towards and discovering truth at a deeper and deeper level and you must realize you live in a world that is bound with lies under the prince of the power of the air bound by a lying spirit which produces all kinds of chaos confusion distortion and destruction i'm gonna be a person that wants to live in the truth find the truth discover to be a magnet of truth but that's going to need to be intentional and i'm going to need to do that by setting that compass in my own life that i'm living according to the ways of what truth is and not being seduced by lies i don't want to be under lies anymore so god i'm going to enter into your light bring everything to the table and let your word let you let good counsel show me where am i believing lies because any area that's infected by a lie is going to limit your journey it may feel right it may feel like it's right but it's still a lie so we have to align our grid i want my grid to be aligned and motivated by that which is true the second word he uses is the word noble and i kind of got stuck on this word a little bit because i'm like we don't really use this word and the translators using the word noble here are are are bringing out a word that this word noble if you look it up in the greek you look it up in the reference of scriptures it's where it's used in other places it's a descriptor of people that are leaders right it talks about mentors or deacons or elders or even their wives and and talks about what is called for because these are all areas of influence you're people of influence you influence other people and so the quality of nobility needs to be in your life and what it speaks of is it speaks of a honest respectable and honorable character and this is where there's a call in your life to say god is wanting to mature you he's wanting to grow you up and so when you look at your thought life how you respond to people how you respond to situations like maybe you know you hear the news about somebody and you hear that they got a divorce and many times the first thought is see i told you that marriage was crappy see i told you that that was they were going nowhere see i i i am that you know i i knew it we go judgmental that's the easy level thought that's the easy thought we can gravitate towards higher moral regard and respect and honor of character is looking at situations through a higher lens maybe you need to see it with greater mercy and grace to recognize hey wow i could get trapped in some of those same patterns too maybe i should pray for them maybe i should so see now you're going to the higher level and this is what nobility's speaking of it's speaking of higher honest honest but respectable thinking that if you took these thoughts take your thoughts that you're thinking on now and put them on a screen so everybody could see them would they be respectable and honorable and this is the stuff it's not the stuff you do publicly because you can look noble in front of people and live a different way privately what we're talking about is your thoughts so this is where no one's looking no one's seeing if you think on it no one's gonna see it right away maybe you'll see it in your actions down the road but this is where character counts the most because what i feed on is then what's going to come out later and the reason that christianity is often very judgmental harsh or we lose soundness in our thinking is we've just manifested in what we've been cultivating and paul says bring it up to another level then he uses the word just the third word he uses is the word just and this word can often be translated righteous or right and it can also be translated as it is here just it can also speak of observing god's way so it's like i want to see the situation the way god would see it words like this can have a judicial meaning speaking of like how we evaluate and judge things how do you evaluate and judge things do you send people to hell do you do you just judge them and body slam them do you look at them negatively a thought that is just is righteous it's right but it also has a sense of fairness to it has it has an execution of the heart of god of that which is right and conduct and action towards others like imagine a judge who is giving his evaluation or giving his verdict and there's just a sense of soundness and rightness to it he's not giving the judgment because he's just angry he's not giving the judgment because he's ignoring the issue he's looking at it soundly and this is something that is missing from many in the christian faith is we don't know how to judge with god's heart you know many times the bible says do not judge but there's places where it does talk about judging most of our judgment is like judgmentalism condemnation kind of judging which means to look at harshly accusatory to find fault and then to pass a sentence that's what condemnation speaks of you've got to find fault and a passage sentence on you that's a lot of how our judging is and jesus says when you do that just know the same kind of judgment that's going to be used to you so if you put a sentence on someone jesus says just so you know that's going to be how your life is going to be treated so that creates sobriety i'm like wait a second if there's a sense of judging a situation because many times leaders have to assess and judge something how you do that is how what's going to come back to you when we do that is there a heart sense of recognizing what's going on in the life of somebody and bringing about soundness to the situation that is in many ways what just can point us to so it's loving what is right and doing what is right even in how you relate to people and just relating to people in the way that god speaks of and relating to them that you manifest the fruit of the spirit that you do what is right not because just god will give you some cookies they do it's right because it's right the fourth word is a powerful word and one that is lost in modern culture and that is pure i actually sat down and for a while just read the definitions of what pure means and read the definitions of these words clean modest chaste in this word pure it also speaks pure from carnality another another way we could say is not being consumed with feeding on earthly lusts and and i and i just i said you know the word modesty is lost these days you know and i have up on my screen here and even the word clean what does it mean to to have thoughts that are clean i think you have to first love that which is pure and love that which is clean you know as a silly example if i get sweaty during the day or i'm out in the yard working full of dirt one of the things i just love is being able to take a shower and my wife and i we just we have this like silly thing we say to each other where like i'll i'll take a shower to being filthy or sweaty or whatever and i come on i go man it just feels good to take a shower just feels good to be able to come out and like there's just a refreshment that's there have you ever considered as a believer in christ to just pause and appreciate i am clean because of what christ has done in my life that i could see myself as clean we spend so much time trying to get that which is unclean out of our life and that's good have your thought of what it means to be seen as clean to really appreciate that i looked at the word modest which this word pure talks about modesty and it's one of the meanings is to avoid the encouragement of sexual attraction in others so it means as i'm interacting with others there's nothing i'm doing in my thoughts or my behaviors that's encouraging sexual attraction the motives of how i'm presenting myself the motives of how i'm conducting and living my life this isn't going to be an influence in your thinking unless it's loved see each of these words i need to have an affection for i have to treasure them modesty is not really treasured and modesty is being redefined now to whatever people want it to do what it's one of the definitions is in my life i'm not encouraging by what i can control what i can do people can have their filthy thoughts and filthy whatever but there's nothing i am doing and saying that's pulling it out in people and that takes self-awareness and discernment doesn't it it takes recognition i've sat down with people and said you know what i realize that's an issue in my life i trigger this by the way i conduct myself by the way i present myself appear and god's dealt with that in my life the word chaste means not having a sexual nature of intention pure in thought and it can also mean simple or restrained that's really cool that you have the ability god is saying you can have chaste thoughts towards others can you have interactions with the opposite sex and not get all infiltrated with sexual thoughts you know and and for many in our society we're not able to tune into this because our training is to go to those places and paul is saying set your grid set your grid you can do it it's available and i found i can't do that unless i love it unless i just love god i just love the purity and i know those who are pure in heart will see god so i'm going to keep my heart watch over it this isn't by this isn't by legalism you're not going to do this by legalism because you could you could be dressed totally modest but be filled with immodesty in your heart so it's not just an outward thing although the inward should reflect on the outward so god i give you my motives that my motives would be pure that my heart would be pure and i set my affection to lean into that the fifth word in this list is the word lovely and this one has had a profound effect on my life because it speaks of thoughts flowing from compassion it's it's that my thoughts towards other people about other people are influenced by love and this word in the original language is a combination of the word phileo which speaks of brotherly affectionate love and another word meaning to move towards so what it means is i'm cultivating a thought system in my life that when i think about you i want it to be seen with compassion and that compassion that affection will move me towards you now let's just now that love should be shown in our actions because our thoughts produce our actions but before this is why when people irritate you when people trigger you or people annoy you what we often want to do is it's an invitation for god to step back god is saying to us can you see this person with compassion and when my wife and i began the work of heart healing ministry and we're working in people's lives and we're influencing churches and community groups and things like that you run and you bump into people that just irritate you right and you're like how do i deal with this person what should i do and we would think about what should i do with the relationship what should i do and how i talk to this person should i talk to them should i not talk to them should i confront them should i do this should i do this boundary should i do that and here's the the thing that we began to cultivate let's pause before we do anything else and let's just ask god to give us compassion for that person to give us that brotherly affection that causes our heart to move towards them but and i'm not talking about you got to go over towards them right now because sometimes you have to use this to people that are toxic but you have compassion and in that compassion and that brotherly love that causes your heart to move towards them meaning i want good for them i want to bless them i want to see them do well instead of you being repelled and you being uh disgusted and getting bitter because see having a heart towards of thoughts of lovely towards other people doesn't mean you're going to go be their best friend or have to be around them but in your heart you wish them good as a brother would to a sister as a brother to another brother this word is really really powerful and i think that when we stir in thoughts that are lovely we think about other people in ways that are lovely and we focus not on what annoys us we focus on who god is and his compassion over them and doesn't it change everything doesn't it change the whole situation when you see someone through compassion even the broken toxic people that have wounded your life and have hurt you it changes the game when you're able to step back and see them through a perspective on that which is lovely and what it's meant to do is it's meant to move us towards each other not away from each other that the body of christ would lean towards one another in love and to set the compass this right here i feel like we need to park in and ponder in and really sit in and let god do a deep work in our hearts and in our lives on this area because we don't we fall into hate we fall into bitterness we fall and paul's saying just tune in to this word lovely so that it will cause us to move towards one another in love or even if you can't move towards them for whatever reason your heart wishes good for them i hope you're catching what i'm saying here number seven or what number am i my numbers off no yeah number six a good report now this word translated a good report is used once in the new testament it comes from a combination of two words i put it on the screen there the two words the first word means good well well done acting well and the second word means rumor fame rapport so it's basically meaning speaking or i'm sorry it speaks of spreading a report or a rumor of good will of good acts of good things done and we don't know that example we only know of bad news being spread rumors of gossip being spread have you ever thought about what it would look like to just cultivate a relational world where we're spreading good reports i want to encourage you as a family encourage you as people of god to spread reports of encouragement to see good things that are happening and call it out this is a word that's speaking of looking for the good you got to look for the good you set your compass to say i'm looking for i'm looking for i'm looking for it in the old testament isaiah said who's going to believe the report of the lord because for many of us we're believing the testimony of satan we're not believing the testimony of jesus because we're focusing in on the bad report i think more of our relationships would get so much better if we say hey give me some good news give me some good news because when we start us we start with the newspaper the newspaper would not do well and would not sell copies if it started off with just all good news they feed off of negative feed off of fear feed off of drama so you have to set your gauge i want good news so i would encourage you you want to set this template then set your day set your day with a diet of good news before you open your phone before you go online before you read whatever the world wants to tell you set your compass on that which is good now one of the ways that we do it as a family is we do gratitude journals we'll sit down and we'll just write everything we're great we're grateful for and we share it with each other the proverb writer in proverbs 15 30 says a good rapport makes the bones healthy and i want my bones to be healthy i also want to recommend a resource of if you're if you're constantly listening to negativity you may be listening to fear-based stuff all the time i think you need a good dose of what it means to detox the work of fear in your life and i would encourage my book i will not fear a strategy to overcome anxiety worry and fear based living it's going to give you a whole perspective and an overall viewpoint on how to live this out in a powerful way now let me get back to what i was sharing and get to word number seven virtue this word is like noble in that it's like a character word and this is where paul shifts in his writing he says if there be any virtue so i pay attention to little things like that what that tells me is that tells me i got to look for it i got to look for things that have virtue now this word virtue speaks of high moral standards moral excellence it means that just on a daily basis this thought process you want what's right you want to live morally in a high regard examples can be modesty could be purity it's it's a virtuous thought leads you into manifesting more of the nature of god virtue points us to possess and guard good values so i treasure in my family good values for example in my home i tell my children and ever i i tell them in in our interactions we fact we just had a discussion about this this week i value truth value the light we don't value lying and so we set it as a value if you're going through something maybe you did something wrong we value the light and if you walk in that we're going to point that out that we have virtues of kindness virtues of forgiveness virtues in our life and and and we've lost the beauty of what it means to have virtues that we're going to hold up in high regard moral character and mom and dad are accountable to those standards so if we fall short we need to admit that we need to deal with that and we're going to celebrate it so many times say well how can i do this in my life well take time to talk about virtues take time to talk about healthy virtues take time to call it out speak it out to value and treasure i don't care what the world says i don't care where things are going me and my family we will value things of virtue we're going to talk about them we're going to uphold them and one of the ways that the enemy is lowering the value of virtue is entertainment we're just our senses are just getting dulled and dulled and dulled and dulled this isn't they don't watch television don't watch movies kind of talk but it's just being aware of resetting your compass that god i don't want to be driven by the entertainment values i don't want to be driven by what the world says i want to be driven by your holiness and motivated by it propelled by the goodness of your love not hiding in fear oh my goodness or being condemned or legalism none of that you can't get any of these things in legalism sorry you only get him out of relationship relationship with god and who he is word number eight and close with this one and i'll say my own finally as paul says finally it's praiseworthy this word you'll see in the in the original speaks of something that's commendable and it also has a word in there laudation i'd actually look that up like what is lamination it's kind of it speaks of a like a commendation or a commendable thing it's looking for the positive it's looking for the thing that deserves a a recognition it's looking for that thing in modern terminology i think a lot of this speaks to things that are positive so for example god is praiseworthy he's worthy of praise so when you give him praise what are you doing you're expressing gratitude you're calling out who he is and you're declaring his ways amongst the people right so for example when we say let's praise god maybe we'll say a word maybe we'll clap maybe we'll lift our hands what we're doing is we are setting attention on god and his nature and who he is well paul is saying things that are praiseworthy so things that are causing us to praise causing to stir up praise causing us to be in a place that praises god but also calls out the good of what god is doing in people because sometimes we're like oh no it's not me this is god no we see god in you we celebrate that that's commendable i'm giving attention to this because it's great right now we i know we don't live for the praise and approval of people but for goodness sake we need to encourage one another in the things that are commendable in our lives we're always pointing out the bad but do you point out the good with your children do you point out that which is good and praiseworthy and call it out do you catch people doing good things i tell people i have this exercise with my children i do all the time and sometimes they're still like i'll go abby i need to see you for a minute and she'll walk in and go what did i do wrong i go nope it's what you did great and i appreciate it and she's like at first she's like what i said because i want you to get used to in relationship when i say hey can we talk for a minute that the majority of the time it's something good and you can get excited about us interacting because i want to call out the good things in you because what you pay attention to grows what you call out grows what you reward grows right i wrote this when i was preparing this it has to do with the word praise praise leads us to magnify god whereas the world system and negativity will seek to magnify our problems praise reminds you you're connected to a kingdom that cannot be shaken but it calibrates praise calibrates your focus to look for god in every circumstance reminding you that he's always near to his people no matter how things look no matter how bad things can be when you have a focus of praiseworthy thoughts you intentionally look for what god is doing in every circumstance most people are stuck in focusing on what they think is not happening praise involves declaration you're using your words you can't experience the fullness of a thought that is praiseworthy unless it hits your mouth and brings forth a declaration that's why when we think of praise we often think of praise music and singing out because the praises of god are well declared they're meant to be declared to call out to bring attention to so to experience praiseworthy thinking you got to get your mouth moving into the direction of praise this will lead your thoughts to focus because i find when i start talking my focus has to get into alignment with the words i'm saying so using my voice is a great way i can enter into praise and one of the greatest ways i can enter into praise is with thanksgiving the bible says we enter his courts with praise so when i start my day off with gratitude i'm making way for thoughts that are praiseworthy so i land with this set your primer every day with gratitude and that which is praiseworthy and move into a good report and move into appreciating that which is pure and virtuous and cultivate thoughts that are in the realm of love and loving compassion let that set the template for your day i hope this was helpful to your life and to your journey and i appreciate you letting me just marinate and share some of my marinations and i pray that this resource will bless you and bless your journey share it with others send me your feedback and comments on what helps you maybe you want to get a book a copy of the book i will not fear to help you detox areas of fear anxiety stress and all that negativity in your life maybe you want to take a negativity fast which is found at markdejesus.com there on the side when you go to one of my articles you'll see it on the sidebar there taking a negativity fast and there's some free downloads and things you can take advantage of there's even an online course that goes further if this has blessed your life in your journey continual one consider a one-time donation or become a monthly supporter of any amount because this is listener and viewer supported i'm so grateful to be able to be a blessing to your life and journey and look forward to seeing you in future resources keep thinking on these things because it will produce faith hope and love and life in your heart and your relationships god bless you

Channel: Mark DeJesus

Views: 3,877

Rating: 4.9130435 out of 5

Keywords: Focus, Thoughts, Think of These Things, Meditate, Philippians 4:8

Id: QJkBUAYDxmk

Length: 55min 33sec (3333 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 15 2020