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The Promise of a Sound Mind
2 Timothy 1:7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
A sound mind. Is there anything more important to us as individuals? Some would say health, but without emotional health, life loses its passion. Many things affect our mental and emotional health. There are legitimate medical causes which can affect our emotional well-being, but this book will focus on the causes and effects we can control. Plus, many physical causes begin with our attitudes and state of mind.
It’s a medical fact that stress can cause physical problems. It has been directly linked to ulcers, high blood pressure, strokes, heart attacks, breakdowns in our immune systems, and many other symptoms. If we treat the symptoms, but never address the root cause, we are fighting a losing battle.
Stress is like juggling. Almost anyone can keep one ball in motion. Most people can keep two balls in the air. A few people can coordinate three. As each new ball is added, it requires more skill and concentration from the juggler. Some performances are mind-blowing. There are jugglers who can keep twelve balls up, but those types of coordinated people are rare.
However, even the most skilled juggler has limitations. Toss in one ball too many and what happens? Do something which overloads the juggler’s concentration and what happens? What would happen if the juggler wasn’t allowed to stop? Eventually the balls are coming down. It’s not if; it’s when. It will either be a graceful ending, or a collapse – and all the balls will be bouncing in every direction.
What if something unexpected comes in and rams the juggler? There isn’t enough skill to keep juggling when someone is unexpectedly knocked off their feet.
This is your life. You may be skilled at multitasking. You may be someone who can handle a lot of stress. Or you may be the one ball juggler that doesn’t have the mind-set to handle stress at all. Whether someone’s endurance to stress is great or small, everyone drops the ball when mentally overloaded.
A nervous breakdown occurs when our mind reaches the breaking point. And yes, we all have a breaking point. Once our mind reaches its endurance level, we are one event away from a collapse. The sad reality is that when we reach the breaking point, we don’t just drop one or two balls, we usually drop them all. During a breakdown, people have little ability to deal with life – even everyday life.
Recovery depends on how much we are able to rest our minds. For some it can be a slow and painful recovery. Think of your brain as a muscle. If a muscle is overexerted, it becomes sore and limited in its strength. A day or two of rest and it’s strong and healthy again. A sore muscle only needs a few days of rest, but a pulled muscle may need weeks to recover. A torn muscle may need months to recover. Some injuries never fully recover.
This can be observed in the world of emotions as well. What you train your mind to do, it will reprogram its way of thinking to perform more efficiently. A negative person becomes adept at negative emotions, and this comes out in their personality. The same is true for a positive person. In both cases, the individual is training the mind to be skilled in the areas where it is exercised. Yes, you exercise your mind every day. Every thought is an exercise.
Patterns become behaviors and behaviors become part of our personality and character.
Some patterns of behavior put the mind under constant stress. When we feel stressed, we often look for something to blame. We want to blame other people, work, problems, or our bodies. While these may be contributing factors to our stress, we also must realize that if we are stressing our minds with negative attitudes, each problem pushes us closer to the breaking point.
A positive attitude can endure much more stress because the bad attitude is already stressed. Since negative emotions must be juggled constantly, there are few mental resources left to handle real problems when they arrive. And this is a certainty. Problems will arrive.
This is why some people have little capacity to deal with problems which others overcome easily. It’s also why some of us think we have more problems than others. The negative attitude does indeed have more problems, but most are self-created. Negative attitudes amplify little annoyances into perceived problems.
Though our minds may become efficient at negative emotions, this does not make us stronger emotionally. It makes our minds more likely to respond with a negative reaction. The strengthening is in the pathways of the mind. A positive person is stronger at processing every situation in a positive way. A negative attitude trains the mind to process situations in negative ways. Then the mind begins looking for an escape rather than a resolution.
Negativity takes more energy because it creates more stress. It also creates more problems which then demand more attention. Not only do we have to deal with the new problem, but anger is introduced into the situation. Also add in a heaping measure of frustration to top off the crisis. Many times our attitude creates a conflict with other people, which then compounds mental stress.
As we can see, a negative attitude invites problems in from many directions. One little problem can then appear to be a mountain of issues. Oftentimes a negative mind creates a problem where none exists. But to the negatively trained mind, a false perception then creates a false reality. The simple fact that life doesn’t always play out to meet our expectations will then seem like a string of problems.
Since the world doesn’t revolve around our perceived needs and desires, every person must learn to respond to their ever changing environment, instead of trying to reshape the world around them through self-centered demands.
The person holding to a negative attitude spends most of their energy dealing with unnecessary spin-off problems, and then has little if any energy left to address the real issue at hand. It’s no wonder the negative person becomes overwhelmed. And most of their efforts are nonproductive. By the time they finish fighting all the internal and external conflicts, they are emotionally spent and life seems out of control. The original issue has been lost in the cloud of their emotions.
At times we all are this person. Some more than others, but we all must learn to get ourselves out of this selfish state of mind and into a healthy mindset. We must also learn to recognize when we are the author of our stress, and learn to adapt, rather than beat the air with the fists of our complaints.
The good news is we can retrain our way of thinking. In fact, the Bible spends a great deal of time teaching us how to do this very thing. We all have weaknesses and a bent toward negative behavior. However, we have the power to overcome these things, and the scriptures teach us how. This is something which applies to everyone.
In truth, there are medical reasons why our brains get out of balance; however, even people with physical causes can benefit from healthy emotions and healthy ways of thinking.
Many cripples have trained and competed in marathons. Some have been miraculously effective and have overcome disabilities to the point where it no longer affects them. This is the attitude I want you to have while reading this book. My hope is you’ll miraculously recover from damaged emotions, but even if you need medical assistance, the principles the Bible provides can benefit you as well. There is no situation where God’s promises can’t benefit – except for the one who resists God’s call to change.
You may even find the physical cause of your condition goes away when your attitude changes, and the constant drain of energy has been removed.
Think for a moment upon the scripture that opened this chapter. God has given us a sound mind. Something greater than you backs up this promise – it is God who gives you power, love, and a sound mind. In Peter’s epistle to the church, he stated, “We have been given all things that pertain to life and godliness through Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Don’t look at the troubles of life as hindrances to victory. The Bible says our flesh and the Spirit God has given us are at war with each other, and will always be so until we are fully redeemed and stand before Him. Until then, we live in a fallen world. We live in bodies corrupted by the sins of the flesh. This includes our emotions and human ways of thinking.
The Apostle Paul, the man whom God used to write two-thirds of the New Testament, lamented over his struggles. He made the statement, “Sin in my body wars against my mind, trying to bring my mind into captivity.”
This also applies to our emotional struggles. The flesh (our fallen way of thinking) wars against our minds; however, we have been given the tools to overcome. All things that pertain to life and godliness are within our reach, but we have to make a willful choice to apply these principles, so we will have the power to resist the flesh. The flesh is the source of human nature, which causes each of us to crave sin, resist God, and act out in destructive ways.
I’ll warn you up front, living in the sound mind is not easy. I don’t know why, but it’s true. We would rather be miserable than happy. Intellectually we know better, but when it comes to applying ourselves, the truth of this statement surfaces far too often. You don’t think this applies to you? Have you ever hosted a pity-party? We all have. We didn’t get our way on something or we feel we have been wronged, and we throw a party for one. There’s no music, no dancing, no laughter, and no presents. It’s just ourselves, sitting with a sour look on our face, waiting for someone to notice and give us sympathy.
Does it work? Very rarely. And when it does, people tire of it quickly and our sulking begins repelling others. Instead of people rallying around us, it begins eroding relationships. No one wants to go to the pity-party. People don’t enjoy being around the pouter. If anything, it annoys others. When we sulk, we don’t benefit in any way, we are just ruining life for ourselves and others. Self-pity doesn’t work. It doesn’t have any benefits. But it does have consequences. Yet we continue to try to affect our world by creating a wall of sadness around us. Joy is within reach, but we have chosen to be miserable.
The sad reality is our sulking behavior strips life out of everything. How does this make sense? I’m mad because something didn’t go right; therefore, I’m going to make sure nothing goes right. Our human nature is willing to sacrifice the hundreds of good things in our life because of one thing we feel is wrong.
Illogical? Yes, but it’s the reality of a life rooted in the flesh. It’s easy to be sad. It takes no effort to let our minds brood. To sulk, all we must do is allow ourselves to sink into self-pity. This is why we’d rather be miserable than joyful.
Everyone has problems, frustrations, and discouragements. Everyone has enemies, or at least people with whom we have conflict. It takes no effort to allow ourselves to be pulled into negative emotions through the things we don’t like.
There’s a saying, “Any dead fish can float downstream.” To be carried by our emotions, all we must do is let ourselves go and drift where emotions carry us. If you let your mind wander, chances are it will land on a hurt or something negative and begin brooding.
It takes life to swim against the current. Look at the contrast between bitterness and love. These are two opposing forces. One is rooted in the flesh, and one has been given to us by God. Have you ever met a bitter person? Someone who always talks about how they have been wronged, or the things that are wrong in the world? If you spend much time around a negative person, you will adopt negative attitudes. Does a negative person have life? No. Bitterness is a life-sucking emotion.
When anger is allowed to rule, it gives birth to bitterness and hatred. These emotions serve no other purpose than to search and destroy. While these may be born from a specific offense, they cannot maintain a single target, and begin attacking our own hearts and minds, and then begin targeting those around us.
Negative emotions attempt to rise up, war against our minds, and bring us under its bondage. They are weeds in the garden of our mind. Positive emotions are like fruitful plants, but they cannot thrive when they are being choked out by these weeds.
I’m a gardener. I love growing fresh vegetables on raised beds. Few things are better than taking something from the plant and have it on your plate minutes later. There is an interesting parallel between gardening and emotions. The fruitful plants have to be cultivated. Weeds do not. If a garden is left to itself, weeds choke the vegetable plants so they become unfruitful or even die off completely. At a minimum, weeds compete for the nutrients and water the plant needs. Instead of thriving, beneficial plants are fighting for survival.
Some weeds are very invasive. My greatest garden enemy is the Red Sorrel. This monster spreads secretively. One day the garden is weed-free, and the next day these destructive plants are popping up everywhere. The Red Sorrel doesn’t originate in the bed. If it’s growing near the bed, it sends a root through any crack or crevice. The root spreads underground and sends new roots out in every direction.
It’s there, even when the leaves are absent. When the time is right, the roots begin sending up shoots and in one day my perfectly weeded garden is covered with weeds. I pick out the weeds, but as long as the root survives, the weed will come back. It’s a constant battle. To stop this weed, I have to dig out the roots and find the source. Not only do I have to be concerned with my own garden bed, but I have to remove the weed outside of my garden or it will keep coming back. This is exactly what we are dealing with in our emotional life. Look at Hebrews 12:15
Looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled.
One bitter person can defile many. Bitterness spreads. Like the weed in the garden, the root grows under the surface and when it springs up, it attempts to threaten everything around it. Even so, what springs up is the symptom and not the whole problem.
You don’t have to cultivate bitterness. Just allow it to grow and it will take over. It will take over your life and then spread to the relationships around you. We all have two choices in our emotional health. Either we rule over our emotions, or our emotions will rule over us. To be ruled, do nothing and allow them to take their natural course.
This was the case in the first murder in the Bible – when Cain killed Able. Before committing the murder, God gave wise instruction to Cain when He said, “Sin crouches at the door and its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.[1]”
This is the same command we have been given. The sin that crouched at the door began as anger, grew into bitterness, and came out in the form of hatred. It was Cain’s out-of-control emotions that drove his actions and destructive behavior. In his mind, he felt justified. Bitterness became the gatekeeper of his behavior, and its desire is to rule and then destroy. Since negative emotions ruled, Cain committed murder because his feelings persuaded him that he was justified in his hatred.
The emotions which are influenced by our flesh desires to rule over us, too. It crouches at the door of our hearts and waits for the opportunity to launch its attack against our mind and bring us under its rule. But we have the power of God to overcome with the love God has poured into our hearts. Instead of frustration, we can live with a sound mind.
To rule over our minds and emotional health, we must take what God has given and tame the flesh. Emotions don’t have the right to rule us, but they will if we allow them to reign unchallenged. The picture I’m hoping to convey is that negative emotions are a part of life. We can’t deny the reality of their existence; however, we can control whether they dominate our minds, or whether we rule over them. One of the key passages to winning the war of our minds is Philippians 4:4-8
4 Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!
5 Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand.
6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God;
7 and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
8 Finally, brethren, 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 report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy — meditate on these things.
Where is the battle won? Is behavior changed by our determination to no longer worry? Or to stop being angry or bitter? The victory is already yours, but it is not through human effort. The promise is that God will guard your heart and mind through Christ. Jesus began His ministry with this message, “Repent and believe the gospel.”
To repent is to turn from my ways and toward God. I then receive God’s kingdom by believing the promises – the gospel. The gospel is not only the call to receive eternal life, but it is also the message of living life in the kingdom of God. The above passage is part of the gospel. You are being asked to repent – or turn – from your own human efforts, and toward the commands and promises of God.
Chances are your own ways aren’t working. Look up ‘stress’ in any bookstore. How many titles are dedicated to this topic? Frustration and stress are thieves of peace and joy, and the destroyers of lives and families.
Yet the simplicity of the gospel is to repent and believe. This applies to every command and promise of God. God commands to rejoice always. How do you define always? Is it possible to rejoice and complain? Problems are real, but rejoicing puts them into the proper perspective. If I believe God is directing my steps, I must learn to rejoice in the good and the bad. I say ‘bad’ from the perspective of human reasoning, but the truth is that nothing is bad if we are walking in God’s plan.
I’ve never met a defeated Christian who purposed to rejoice always. Yes, we all have problems, but what makes one person a defeatist and another person optimistic? It all centers around attitude. This is the purpose of rejoicing. It forces our attitude in the right direction by acknowledging the Lord’s hand of providence.
This is something we’ll explore as we move through this book, but even if we don’t understand God’s reasoning, we can still rejoice. Rejoicing is looking at God’s eternal purposes and praising the Lord as He moves us toward the goal of inheriting His kingdom.
The next principle in Philippians above tells us to be anxious for nothing. Can you stop the anxiety simply by being told not to be anxious? Most of us cannot. This is why the command to not be anxious is given along with the application of God’s principles to our lives. We lose anxiety by approaching God in prayer through thanksgiving. It begins with an attitude that rejoices – even when we don’t understand why and can’t see the end result. In fact, you will seldom know the end result until you reach the end of a problem.
Most Christians never see God’s completed work in their lives because they cannot trust Him when the going is tough.
We naturally want to escape problems and hardships, and often turn back before the victory has been revealed. It may be a short trial or a long hardship. If we believe God and trust Him, we’ll always stand amazed at His power to bring good out of every circumstance. If we don’t believe, we don’t see the reward, and never find the good. Life is hard, but harder when we miss the goodness of God. The promise is only assured to those who trust Him enough to remain faithful until the Lord reveals His purposes.
Through prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, we make our requests known to God. We’ll delve into thanksgiving in a later chapter, but understand that thankfulness is the foundation all prayers must be built upon. Let me repeat this for emphasis. Thanksgiving is the foundation all prayers must be built upon. Otherwise we are seeking our will and asking God to conform to our ways. A thankful heart trusts the Lord while walking through the valley of difficulty. Praying, “God, get me out of this,” is not a prayer of faith.
A person who becomes internally focused will never have peace. ‘Woe is me’ is internally focused. ‘God give me,’ is an internally focused prayer. ‘Why is this happening,’ is internally focused. The more I focus on my problems, the bigger they become. The more I focus on myself, the more desperate I become to satisfy my selfish will.
Have you ever met someone with deep-rooted emotional problems? I have, and each time ‘me’ is at the center of their world. ‘I’ didn’t get treated right. ‘I’ was offended. ‘I’ didn’t get the respect I deserved. ‘I’ have this problem, that problem, etc. When we withdraw into ourselves, it becomes a dark pit with little hope. But when we begin to look outward, we then have the opportunity to put our life into a healthier perspective.
For example, when people go to third-world countries and see the desperate conditions and poverty in which people live, they no longer feel deprived because they don’t have some of the luxuries that once seemed important. When we see the pain and needs of others, our petty problems lose significance.
This is but a glimpse of what it means to look outside of ourselves. As each of us begin to learn what it means to look to Christ, the Author and Finisher of our faith, life truly begins to gain perspective. In light of eternity, does it really matter if I didn’t get that promotion? When I see the promised inheritance to the faithful, does it really matter if someone didn’t follow through with a promise on earth? Does this world have significance when it comes to my gratification? As the Apostle Peter said, “Seeing all these things will one day be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness?”
It’s a daily effort to live for eternity and not for this life only. If something doesn’t have eternal significance, it is petty, and should be viewed as such. You and I must begin each day by recognizing our natural tendency to become internally focused, and we must do something to change this. Each time self becomes the focus, it’s a reminder to turn from ‘me’ and adopt an outward perspective.
If nothing in this life matters in light of eternity, how ought we to live? What should we live for? What things deserve significance? We have the answer – pray with thanksgiving as we make requests known to God and look to Jesus as the finish line so we are not discouraged in our souls.[2]
When faced with His most difficult trial, Jesus said, “What shall I say – Father save Me? It is for this purpose I came into the world.”
This is the eternal perspective. You too have a purpose. Each of us are being led toward God’s plan, yet we tend to be so focused on our comfort that we miss the purposes of God. While we are crying, “Save me from this trial,” God is trying to show us the real goal – eternal significance. It’s far too easy to be distracted by meaningless cares and then to miss the real purpose of our lives. Jesus warned that many will allow their lives to be choked by the cares of this life and other things coming in to distract them from eternal value. These are the people whose lives become unfruitful.
We must take steps to not allow meaningless cares to become overvalued, and recognize God has eternal value in mind. When our perspective includes the eternal, this gives us the heart to pray with thanksgiving. And as we do, we stand upon the promise that He will become the guard of our hearts and minds.
This is the life of faith. Do you believe God? Do I believe God? If we do, then claim the promise of peace which has been given to each believer. There are times when we’ll have to look beyond our circumstances and say, “I believe your word, Lord. I will rejoice and be thankful, and I receive your promise of peace which goes beyond my understanding. I submit to your will and receive your promise to guard my heart and mind.”
It is God’s work. Your job is not to guard your heart and mind from anxiety, fear, and trouble. It is God’s job to do this. Your job is to turn from your way and believe God. It is your job to reject the call of anxiety, fear, anger, and other negative emotions. As you surrender in obedience, you will experience God’s peace and protection. But we can’t have God’s peace while living for our own ways.
The final thought given in the passage above teaches us how to train our minds. Meditate on these things: whatever is true, noble, just, pure, lovely, of a good report, and anything of virtue and praiseworthy.
Don’t expect peace through gossip. The mind won’t be guarded if we meditate on our anger, lust, lies, bad reports, or any other negative thing that plagues our minds.
Sadly, each of us has the tendency to dwell on the sinful and negative, but then we want to experience peace. The first step of peace is to submit our minds to the pure things of godliness and turn away (repent) from the things which are contrary to God. The promise of God is a sound mind. Believe this, claim it through obedience, and let’s explore the ways to root the thieves of peace out of our lives.
Life Applications
- When self-pity begins, stop and evaluate what’s important in life:
- Ask yourself if what bothers you has life-long or eternal significance?
- Ask yourself if this disappointment is important enough to cast off the rest of life’s good things?
- Is robbing myself of joy a benefit or will it lead to any benefit?
- Self-evaluate: what attitudes or behaviors are choking out positive things in my life?
- Am I cultivating bitterness?
- Memorize Philippians 4:8.
- Spend a few minutes each week to identifying things that fulfill Philippians 4:8.
- Spend time each morning thinking upon at least one thing that fulfills this passage. Don’t allow your mind to wander away from positive meditation.
- Meditate (or think upon) something that fulfills this passage while you are waiting to fall asleep each night.
Make this a daily morning and evening practice and a life-long habit. Even if you don’t feel like it, discipline yourself to think upon these things.
[1] Genesis 4:7
[2] Hebrews 12:2-3