Spring Cleaning for Your Thought Life

Do you need spring cleaning for your thought life? I have some encouragement and practical tips for you today.

Spring Cleaning for Your Thought Life

Prefer to watch/listen? Here’s the video:

My friend, Amy Elliott, recently wrote a post based on my book! I was so honored that she did that. She loves the picture of the junk drawer that I have at the beginning of the book. So I thought I would read a little portion of this because she said that we need to clean our thought lives out just like we need to clean our junk drawers sometimes. Let me just read a short portion of my book, Transforming Your Thought Life, to you.

Cleaning Out the Junk Drawer

“If my thoughts were visible and I had a magnifying glass to peer into my brain, I’d probably find my careless thoughts also look like a junk drawer, crammed with every imaginable thing from various sources.

I just opened my real-life junk drawer. Its primary function is to hold pens and pencils, where many dozens reside. But other flotsam and jetsam from the past two decades have ended up in the drawer too. Here’s what I found:

A light switch for the wall
An unsheathed razor blade
A long distance calling card, circa 2002
Several keys to who knows what
A tube of lip balm that’s missing a lid…into the trash it goes!
Microcassettes for a voice recorder I used during college lectures
A jewel-shaped, ten-sided die for some board game
Replacement plastic flowers for my hummingbird feeder

These items represent many of my unexamined thoughts. Some thoughts are out of place, like the light switch. Others are downright dangerous, like the razor blade. Some have outlived their purpose, like the calling card. Some thoughts are disgusting, like the lip balm.

Why don’t we tend to our thought lives? It’s because they aren’t seen by anyone else, same as the junk drawer. We keep hiding messy thoughts away because we think they don’t matter.

We undervalue the importance of our thoughts. Our focus turns to our problems without realizing the roots of the problems exist in our ways of thinking. Our thoughts turn into actions, whether good or bad. When the majority of our thoughts are negative, our quality of life suffers.”

This excerpt is from the Careless Thoughts chapter of my book, Transforming Your Thought Life: Christian Meditation in Focus. The whole point of this chapter is based on the scripture, 2 Corinthians 10:5,

“We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

3 Tips for Spring Cleaning for Your Thought Life

So, how do we spring clean our thought lives? I have three tips for you.

1. Let it sit.

My friend Sue Donaldson was recently talking about a real-life cleaning tip. If you spray something on a surface, let it sit for a while and do its job, rather than scrubbing, scrubbing and scrubbing and wearing yourself out. Let the chemical do what it’s supposed to do, and it cuts your work in half.

When I used to take off my nail polish, I would just simply rub, rub, rub really fast. But I learned if I let it sit on the nail polish for 10 to 15 seconds, and usually I count, it comes off so much easier. So that tip really does work.

But how does it work in our thought lives? Well, if you take a verse of Scripture and apply it to a thought life problem that you’re having, let it sit. Get yourself in a quiet place. Repeat it several times. Focus on different words in the verse. Let it really sink in. Let it take its time. Do this for 30 seconds, one minute, two minutes. Do it over and over again, and you’ll see how it will become more and more effective.

There’s a verse I’ve used to do this:

Set a guard over my mouth, Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips.

Psalm 141:3 NIV

The more I meditated on this verse, the more the Holy Spirit would bring it to mind right when I needed to guard what I was about to say. The more I let that verse sink into my thoughts and get down into my heart, the more effective it was at helping me control what I was going to say. So, it really does work if you let God’s Word sit on your problem for a little while.

2. Pair Tip 1 with a real-life cleaning activity.

What I do every morning is make the bed and use that time to forgive my husband. If I keep a short list with him, then resentment doesn’t build up.

I often think about the verse, “Do unto others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:31 NIV). I would want him to forgive me, not hold things against me, not build up resentment against me. So as I am literally pulling the sheets up, straightening out the blankets and fluffing the pillows, I’m forgiving my husband every day.

Maybe you still hand wash your dishes every day. Perhaps there’s something else that you like to do. Maybe you’re into cleaning the bathroom – I think you’re awesome, because I certainly don’t like doing that job! Pair that meditation time for that stubborn sin, that stubborn thought life problem you have, with meditating, praying and being intentional about cleaning out that area of your thoughts.

3. Repeat.

If you just meditate on a verse once, that’s going to be effective in that one moment. But the more often you do it, the more effective it is going to be. Like I said, my meditating on verses of forgiveness every single day really helps clean my heart out toward my husband.

My meditating on that verse about guarding the words that come out of my mouth has helped me become way more self-controlled. I had a tendency just like the disciple Peter to put my foot in my mouth over and over again. It seems like that’s happening a lot less because I’ve been meditating on that verse so much and putting it into practice.

So, you’ve got to get into God’s Word every single day, because the Holy Spirit will bring other verses to mind, not just the one you are choosing to meditate on in the moment. He’s going to work all things together for your good (Romans 8:28). He’s going to help you conquer those places that are full of stubborn sin.

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Transforming Your Thought Life

Whatever your sin problem is, whether it’s anxious, regretful, fearful, or guilty thoughts, you can use God’s Word to address it. You can find verses I’ve pulled out in 17 different categories of thought life problems in my book, Transforming Your Thought Life: Christian Meditation in Focus.

Also, I have more general help for you on a printable in my Library for subscribers. It’s a printable called Christian Meditation Verses for Spring Cleaning. Verses on making your heart, mind, and self clean before God. You can use these verses when you want to clean out a stubborn area.

Make sure you sign up in the boxes below for Tea on Tuesdays, where you’ll get instant access to printables like this one. I also have other spring printables in my Library, including an updated one for Holy Week. You’ll find printables for every season in there.

I pray that these three tips will help you, and I pray that you will be intentional about focusing on God’s Word so you can have spring cleaning for your thought life.

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