Do you often stop do consider your thoughts? Thinking about thinking, now there’s a deep concept. As Christians, we seem to most often consider our thoughts within the context of sin: Sinful thoughts of one sort or another that drive a wedge between ourselves and God. Thankfully the Bible doesn’t simply leave us there, it also tells us what to think about. In Paul’s letter to the Philippians, he says, “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.”

So we know generally what God wants us to think about. Under that banner is something I like to call “my personal highlight reel.” If you have ever watched a recap of sports events, you’re familiar with the collection of highlights, or brief films of the plays deemed significant for that particular day. They’re entertaining because they contain the most action, and often illustrate which plays led to a win or loss. I believe each of us have highlight reels that we have racked up, ready to play at a moment’s notice. There are positive and negative highlights that each of us carry around. What I’m suggesting is that we increase the impact of the positive highlights and decrease the impact of the negative. Let’s say you’re a singer, and during a performance you hit a wrong note. Everyone hears it and you’re embarrassed. You might play that episode over and over again in your mind. Your replaying of it may hold you back because you’re afraid to step out and sing solos. Let’s turn the same situation around and say you were in excellent voice that day and got lots of compliments as a result; You would hope to play that back often enough to help encourage great performances in the future.

We can’t guarantee we won’t have bad days. We can’t always hit home runs. But we can take what lessons, if there are any to be learned, from negative highlights and decide not to give them unlimited air-time. We can also use positive experiences to give us the confidence we need to perform well. Our prayer should be to ask God to help us limit the impact of negative highlights. Where healing needs to occur, we should seek help as it is needed. Learn, with God’s help, to control which highlights get played, and how often. Ask God to give you His perspective so that your life’s events are given their proper place in your mind.

For as he thinks within himself, so he is… Prov 23:7