Purify your Thoughts

Recently, my daughter called for me into her bedroom at night.  “Mom” she said. “I can’t stop thinking about that scary story, and it’s really bothering me!”, she confessed.  

Most children at some point will complain about negative thoughts or memories troubling them when they get quiet and wind down before bed.  And I’m certain it’s not just children, but adults as well.

For a long time, I simply redirected them and encouraged them to dismiss and ignore them. 

Which obviously is easier said than done.  

I found that most secular clinical experts recommend just that.  Using cognitive behavioral therapies to teach children to identify thoughts for what they are and provide methods of coping.  

But I soon found that unlike clinical methods, God provides us a way to get to the root of these thoughts.  

If you’ve taken any basic course in psychology, you’d probably remember Sigmund Freud’s iceberg diagram. The one that divides the mind into two parts, your conscious and subconscious mind.

The subconscious is biblically represented as your heart. One of its main functions is to store acquired information and memories, long term. 

Simply put, I like to think of it as a large cup that permanently stores everything you ever learned. Both the good and the bad.

Let’s say clean water and dirty water.

Now all water that flows out and over the top of the cup are stored thoughts from the inside the subconscious (the heart), that made their way to the outside, the conscious (the mind). 

Surprisingly, all of this is biblically confirmed.

Daniel chapter 2, tells a story about a very troubled king. 

Daniel reveals to him that the thoughts currently troubling his mind directly flowed over from the heart (subconscious).  

As for you, O king, thoughts came to your mind while on your bed… that you may know the thoughts of your heart. (vs.29-30)

Now you can’t control what thoughts flow over the top of your cup, the good water or the dirty water.  The good memories or the bad memories.  

But you can purify your cup (heart) by continuously filling it with clean water (God’s word). 

It will eventually cleanse and crowd out all the dirty water (all the bad thoughts and memories).  

…first clean the inside of the cup…, so that the outside of it may also become clean. (Matt. 23:26 NASB) 

Thus, only clean water will flow over, only good thoughts.

The thoughts of the righteous are right…(Pr. 12:5)

 

“Whatever we plant in our subconscious mind and nourish with repetition and emotion will one day become a reality.”

-Earl Nightingale

 “The conscious mind may be compared to a fountain playing in the sun and falling back into the great subterranean pool of subconscious from which it rises.” 

-Sigmund Freud

 

 

 

Supporting Text

The thoughts of the righteous are right…(Pr. 12:5)

Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening? (Ja. 3:11)

You prepare a table before me…My cup overflows. (Ps. 23:5)

Come near to God and he will come near to you…and purify your hearts,…(Ja. 4:8)

In other words, purify your subconscious

I will bring evils upon this people, the fruits of their own thoughts: because they have not heard my words,… (Jer. 6:19)

In other words, because you didn’t take the time to place my words in your heart and purify it, evil will come to you as a direct result of bad thinking