Encouragement

What You Think About You Become

by Ernesto Aragon
10/30/17
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What You Think About, You Become

Did you know that whatever you think about all day long, that’s the person you end up becoming? For some people, this is a great thing, but for many of us, this is a very sad reality. When I was a young child, I experienced control and manipulation from the people around me and being that I thought it was normal, I never did anything about it. As I got older, I continued to allow people to control and manipulate me, and I often took on a victim mentality when these types of things happened.

Finally, in my early twenties, I got so tired of being controlled and manipulated by people that I started to fight back. But the way I fought back was by controlling and manipulating people so that I could protect myself from being controlled and manipulated. Of course, I didn’t know I was doing that. Whenever someone told me that I was controlling or manipulative, I always defended myself by telling them that I was only defending myself, and I wasn’t going to be taken advantage of any longer.

Unfortunately, many grown adults still do this, and they call it “wisdom,” but what it really is, is a childish self-protection system created so that they don’t have to feel pain. My thought used to be, “I will never be like ___,” and my motivation for who I wanted to become was always focused on who I didn’t want to become. Doing this is extremely unhealthy because thinking and focusing on what you don’t want will never take you to what you do want to accomplish.

I used to struggle with lust, anger and being controlling, and whenever I tried to not do those things, that’s when my struggle became even greater. Jesus eventually set me free from all these destructive addictions, but my deliverance didn’t come from focusing on trying to not do those things, I just simply focused on how much Jesus loves me.

When my focus shifted to Jesus and how much He loves me, I was no longer motivated by punishment, fear, or self-protection, but I was motivated by the love of God. When a husband decides to not cheat on his wife, it’s not because cheating is a sin, but it’s because he loves his wife and doesn’t want to hurt her.

Yes, it’s true that cheating is a sin, but if your significant other told you, “The reason I’m not cheating on you is that the Bible says so,” I don’t think you’d be very happy to hear that. The reason we avoid sin isn’t that it’s the good Christian thing to do, but it’s because we’re so in love with Jesus that we would never want to do anything to hurt our relationship we have with Him.

When our focus shifts from trying to not do the wrong thing to just doing the God thing, that’s when Heaven comes to Earth and we become everything God created us to be.