CHANGE YOUR THINKING

We are told to set our minds on things above not on earthly things. We do this by letting the Words of Christ richly dwell in us.

To change our thinking we need to consistently be focusing on both important and new Christian principles. We focus and think about our list of great verses for fighting porn and we add a new idea: To “Rejoice in the Lord always.”

Today I am thinking about my new projected habit of being content and I am dwelling on increasing in wisdom. Proverbs 9:10 says "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.

Today I am thinking about and practicing my new habit of praising God all the time and I am dwelling on something new from the Bible – 1 Peter 1:13 Which tells us to “Prepare your mind for actions.”

Today I am thinking about and practicing my new habit of giving thanks and dwelling on a goal of purity.

So, we should focus on the Bible, but do we have to focus on it 24 hours a day?

Philippians 4:8 -
"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things."

We don't focus on the Bible always but all of our thoughts should square up (line up) with the Bible. Whatever falls short of this grid is unacceptable.

It is wise to take any and all means necessary to change our thinking. Notebooks, Google files, sticky notes, 3 by 5 cards. We need reminders of what we should be thinking about in the locations where we are tempted. You may need to develop a code if you don't want others knowing what all those notes are about.

Over time you become what you think about. Change your thinking and change your life.

 

2 Timothy 2:22 ESV

So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.

Flee means, “Don't do it, and run with all your might.” Flee means you are blocking the TV screen with one hand while you forward fast with the other. Flee means, you drop everything and run to scripture when tempting thoughts keep harassing you.

There should not be one minute in the day where we are not completely ready to flee.

But many try this but fail to pursue righteousness. Righteousness is important because sin almost always leads back to our main addiction. A focus on righteousness brings us into the light. We can fight addiction in the light.

So flee and then pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace.

 

Daniel from the Bible was like Joseph – he was determined to fight sin always.

Got questions at iblp said: “However, you must choose to walk in that victory. Daniel “purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself” (Daniel 1:8). Every believer needs to make that decision as well. God promises, “If from thence thou shalt seek the LORD thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul” (Deuteronomy 4:29).”

Daniel was determined to think right and live right. To increase your determination to do that, set an alarm every hour and say, “My plan is to think right and live right today.”

When you get home from work or school, be like Daniel – seek the Lord in prayer.


Iblp continues: “In the war against impure thoughts, you may lose some battles. These losses should only increase your determination to win the war. If you expect to win the war without ever losing a battle, you will become discouraged.

God can redeem each defeat by revealing the root cause of each failure. Ask Him for wisdom and help as you discern the root causes of your impure thoughts and actions.

Keep these truths in mind:

• You will never face a temptation that is impossible to overcome. (See I Corinthians 10:13.)
  
  The Bible says that “By the fear of the LORD men depart from evil” (Proverbs 16:6). One aspect of having a proper fear of the Lord is a moment-by-moment awareness that God is watching and weighing every one of our words, thoughts, actions, and attitudes.
  

A sincere Christian cannot enjoy sensual thoughts unless he temporarily blots the presence of a Holy God from his consciousness. If you walk in the fear of the Lord and consequently realize that God is evaluating every one of your thoughts (and He is), it will help you quickly reject impure thoughts.”

• 
  Memorize Proverbs 16:6 “By the fear of the LORD men depart from evil”
  
  Then pray: “Father, help me to fear You so that I can depart from evil.”
  

 

You don’t recover from an addiction by temporally stopping. You recover by creating a new life where it is easier to stop. If you don’t create a new life, then all the factors that brought you to your addiction will eventually catch up with you again.

The following strategies can help you approach troubling situations positively.

• De-catastrophize. Do not overreact to events. Ask yourself: What is the worst that can happen? How likely is it that the worst will happen? What can I do even if the worst happens?

• Use hopeful statements. Be kind and encourage yourself. Pessimism (always thinking the worst) can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Tell yourself: Even though it is tough, I can handle this situation. I can change.

• Forgive yourself. Everyone makes mistakes, but they are not permanent reflections of you as a person. You can learn from your mistakes.

• Stay on task. Focus on what you need to do. Taking action will make you feel better.

• Focus on progress. Focus on the positive changes in your life. For example, what has gone well recently? What do you like about yourself? What personal skills have helped you cope with challenging situations in the past? If you find it difficult to cope with troubling situations, do not get discouraged. Instead, consider them a challenge or sign to practice new, realistic thinking patterns.

Challenging Distorted (Addictive) Thoughts

This four-step process can help you assess your addictive thinking and learn how to create a new recovery belief system.

1. Listen to your thoughts. What are you saying to yourself?
   
   
2. Identify the addictive thought
   
   
3. Challenge the addictive thought
   
   
4. Replace the addictive thought with a recovery belief — a more realistic and accurate self-talk statement. For example, consider the self-talk statement, “I can look for a bit.” Ask yourself: 1. What am I thinking? 2. Is this a distortion? Yes, it’s an addictive belief. 3. Is it true? No, it’s not.
   
   A new recovery belief: I can’t look at all. If I do look, I’ll keep looking, so I won’t look. I can cope without looking. My week will be way better if I don't look.
   
   
5. Pray: “Father, help me to change my thought patterns. Give me the faith to believe what you say.”
   

 

Forgot to quote them. From the Mayo clinic except for the last few sentences. https://lifering.org/wp-content/upl...urges/Changing Addictive Thought Patterns.pdf

 

Today I am thinking about believing the Bible. Believing that every command is good to follow. Believing that God knows exactly what is best for me.

Proverbs 28:9 ESV
“If one turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer is an abomination.”

After David repented he always wanted to hear the law, and the law changed his thinking back to the way it was when things were good.

The Bible says that “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled.”

Memorize this verse. When we focus on this verse our prayers start to gain in power.


God's ways are always best. When we focus on Jesus we can stay in the light. The more we hear the Word, the easier it is to live the Word. The more we live the Word, the more we get filled. The more we get filled, the easier it is to quit and have a great life.

 

Satan advertises lust and porn as something spectacular that you have to have. God tells you in His Word that something dies or partially dies when we give in.

When I was a kid I was told repeatedly that sex before marriage was a sin... a horrible sin. I believed my parents. Avoiding that sin leads to increased happiness later.

I was almost never told that looking with lust was a disaster. I only figured that out after I was completely hooked.


There is an almost perfect parallel between how often you hear about what God says about lust and how easy or hard it is to quit.

Give me 30 Engineering students who are Christians who have memorized the verses for quitting, and you will likely see 30 students who have a sharply lower rate of porn in their future.

Give me 30 Bible students who read an occasional verse about lust, and who want to quit twice as badly as the Engineering students, and I will show you 30 students who struggle with porn for decades.

Why! We all know that Bible students are praying more, have more Christian friends, and are also attending classes on the Bible. But... the Engineering students are hearing directly from God about their habitual sin. They are getting all the information. Receiving power directly from God almighty about the sin that is plaguing them.

The good news is, you will memorize them by accident. If you are like I was 15 months ago you will be overwhelmed by lust all the time. If you fight temptation like Jesus did (with the Bible) you will know these verses. You will believe these verses, you will have confidence in these verses making your life better.

Porn kills you physically (with stress and less sleep), mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

Proverbs 5:3 For the lips of the adulterous woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil; 4 but in the end she is bitter as gall, sharp as a double-edged sword. 5 Her feet go down to death; her steps lead straight to the grave.

Verses about lust (https://www.openbible.info/topics/lust) heal you physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

Satan advertises lust and porn as something spectacular that you have to have. Jesus will tell you that purity and scripture are what you have to have.

If we hear Jesus' words as often as we hear satan's temptations, life will start getting great.

 

When something bad happens, sometimes people use that as an excuse to live the way they want to live (sin). In the past I used to think thoughts like:

1 God is not giving me a fair shake

2 How could God let this happen

3 This is way too much to handle

4 Everybody is against me

5 My life always goes bad

6 Why did God let this happen

Should we ever think of any of these things or anything even close to these thoughts? Never! The Bible tells us what we should be thinking about: Things that are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

If we think wrong we will (99%) do wrong.

How To Think Right

Consider, copying and pasting new things to think about based on NoFap articles, Bible articles, sermons, etc. Have a file of things you should be thinking about. When you start thinking wrong, grab that file every time. At some point, you will start to make it a habit to think right. If you think right, you will do right.

 

Today, something important went bad. To fight back I decided to "Rejoice in the Lord" since the Bible tells us to do that. When I started doing that I had less stress, and I kept at least some of my joy.
It is hard to rejoice when things break, when people rip us, when finances fail, and when 100 other bad things happen.
Why did I write about how Paul rejoiced (when bad things happened) for 2 days in a row? Because we all have bad things happening, and most of us have the habit of turning to wrong things when things go bad. Here is an example of a bad thing. The car brakes go bad and the bill is $999. Ouch! Consider praying:
"Father, I rejoice that my brakes went bad. I praise You today. I will keep my joy." Then pray it about 10 more times. Why? Because, God told us to react that way, and if we react that way, someday God will do even more through us. Then... our joy will increase even more.
Make it a habit to "handle" bad things. It is a key to quitting.

 

Many people's emotions go up and down, because of negative thoughts.

John H Prin in his book Secret Keeping notes:

“Millions of people with habits, who have negative self-definitions (which are reinforced by negative self-talk) have learned how to live cleaner saner lives using positive self-definitions... They've revised the words they tell themselves.”

Consider writing down negative comments that you often say to yourself. Then write out what positive comments you could replace them with. For example, John Prin writes:

“Change, I'm a loser, to, I'm a winner.

Change, I'll never be somebody, to, I will be somebody.

Change, I'm incapable and undeserving, to, I am able and deserving.

Change, I don't matter much, to, I matter a lot.

Change, life is out to get me, to, life has blessings for me.

He recommends that you repeat the new phrases, or ones you make up on your own aloud for thirty days, once in the morning and once at bedtime. If you listed, my opinions don't matter, then say aloud, my opinions do matter, and so on. Remember, keep your thoughts positive because they become your words. Keep your words positive because they become your actions. Keep your actions positive because they become your values. Keep your values positive because they become your destiny.”

I got four: Change:

My life stinks, to, the more I do things God's way, the more I will be blessed.

Change, I can't handle this, to, If I allow God to start to help me, He will start to help me.

Change, I need a miracle, to, when I go through this, with God's help, then I will learn how to help others.

Change, I can't resist this short-term sinful fun with added destruction, to, I will think long term and my joy will start to grow.

 

Your thinking leads you to the road that you will travel. That is usually bad. Why? Because 95% of our thoughts are either evil, or promted by God. To succeed we must intentionally feed our minds God's thoughts.
The first step is to recognize where the thought came from. If it is a lustful thought it came from darkness. Then we need to know if the thought is a lie or truth. Satan said to Eve, "The (prohibited one trees) fruit is special." When we have a lustful thought, we think it is special, and exciting. Satan's lie to us is that this thought will make our life great. We need to recognize this thought as a lie. We need to remember how it turned out for Adam and Eve.
#2 We need to reject the thought "In the name of Jesus." When a lustful or sinful thought hits consider praying:
"Father, I reject this thought in the name of Jesus Christ."
#3 Replace the thought with scripture. What scripture verses will you read every day this month so that you are prepared to "Replace the thought with scripture?"
When we hear a great preacher, we think, oh, what a talent. No! A great preacher has replaced his thoughts with scripture. When he preaches... truth flies out.
#4 Rejoice in the Lord. Learning how to rejoice is a top 20 technique for quitting. Making it a habit is part of your key to freedom.