This is a story that’s been with me all day — and continues to plague me.
Kamloops pastor Steve Johnson was unhappy that his congregation saw the simple, hopeful billboard many years ago proclaiming “Reinventing Yourself.”
He saw it as an assignment to break with negative thoughts, and to remember the things we want.
So, Johnson has taken the idea one step further.
He’s set up a counter for people who are thinking about self-improvement.
“Create a positive list — not of who you should be, but of what you want to be,” Johnson wrote in his column in the Kamloops Daily News.
“A positive list has more to offer the heart than a negative list,” he wrote. “That’s because the whole process of thinking positively is an exercise in change. Just changing your thought pattern is a very powerful thing. This is why even though negative thoughts are often not based on truth, they are particularly dark.”
Take his follow-up post:
Self-help is not only about undoing thoughts you’ve created. There’s also a deeper inner process, something I call transformation. Every day you either reinforce an old thought or rewrite it to focus on your positive aspirations. Or you change it or lift it from your mind so it cannot lead you astray. As you think about it, any little metaphor, image, or sound that resonates with your thoughts can help you move that way. You can create a different kind of environment for yourself. So to undo a negative thought and improve your outlook go into that corner of your mind where you can pretend, you can escape that little time warp, and adopt the new thought. The process is very powerful.
I know, I know. But a child of God was taught by Jesus that walking away from one’s troubles means playing Russian roulette with God’s mission.
About the messianic theory of redemption, Matt Etter said to a crowd gathered in Philadelphia:
“Jesus Christ is not in the church, in the pews, in the pews. He is above the pulpit. He is beyond the church. He is beyond the village, he is beyond the city, he is beyond the city of the living, he is beyond the synagogue, he is beyond the temple. I will stand behind my Lord with my family.”
If you are concerned about rising anti-Semitism in America, read How Low Can You Go? Has Anti-Semitism Begun to Invade Your Community?
And please share this story with your readers.
Please click on Johnson’s post for more.