Toxic Thoughts

Craig Groeschel from Life Church talks about what we need to do to renew our minds and reject toxic thoughts. We have all been told lies growing up and over time we start to believe these lies about ourselves, we start to treat them like truth in our minds. Maybe someone told you that you were ugly, a failure or unlovable when you grew up and over time you started to believe these lies. Many years later the lies will still stick around in our minds, until we decide to renew our minds.


We combat the lies in our minds by responding to them with truth. When a lie pops up in our minds we can choose to respond to it with truth. In the beginning we might not fully believe the truth we are speaking to ourselves but over time it will sink in and the lies will no longer have power over us. If I for example have been told that I'm ugly by others I can combat the lie with God's truth and say to myself: "I am beautiful and unique because I was made by God." The renewal of my mind is not going to happen over night but over time I will no longer believe the lies in my mind. The lies in my mind will never fully disappear, but they will no longer have the power to persuade me and get me to believe them.


It's important that we take the time to combat the lies in our minds because these "toxic thoughts"  have the power to make us really unhappy. If I for example believe that I'm ugly I might spend my whole life trying to loose weight, buy more beauty products to fix what's wrong with me, and maybe even do a few operations to make my nose smaller and my butt bigger. I will do all these things because I believe a lie. I will work really hard to change my body when what really needed to change was my mind. If we take the time to renew our minds we can live more joy-filled lives and save ourselves from a lot of pain in life that comes from self-destructive behaviors.