We love living in Virginia Beach (actually we live in Chesapeake which is adjacent to Virginia Beach, but unless you're from around here, who's ever heard of Chesapeake? So I always tell people that we live in Virginia Beach. It's a whole lot simpler and it's only about four miles away.) Anyway, as I was saying, we love living in Virginia Beach. As Sharon puts it, "Spring comes early, and Winter comes late."
There are a couple of negatives, however. One is the bugs! Now if you live way south of us, I understand that you've really got bugs. But remember, we spent most of our adult life in upstate NY, so we're not used to bugs like we've got down here. (Let me be perfectly clear...I would take Virginia Beach bugs any day over Rochester snow. No contest!) Today, we noticed that we have a small invasion of ants coming into our home. I've learned from previous years that ignoring them doesn't work. They just go get their buddies. So I got out the ant poison to suggest that the little buggers might find a more welcome home elsewhere. (BTW, Virginia Beach is home of PETA...you won't snitch on me will you?)
So, while I had ants on my mind, I was reminded that ant is also an acronym for automatic negative thoughts (ANTs). Taking defensive action against the little crawly ants is an occasional thing while taking defensive action against ANTs needs to be an ongoing activity. Yes, it's a little hard at first, but with practice, it becomes almost second nature. As Andrew Wommack, one of my mentors, says, "I ain't there yet, but I've left."
A little background is probably in order. Scientists report that we have somewhere around 60,000 thoughts a day. Whew! That's a bunch. That's about one a second every waking hour. But here's where it gets interesting...95% of those thoughts are not new. In fact, you had most of those same thoughts yesterday...and the day before...and likely last week, last year, etc. Scary, isn't it? Talk about creatures of habit. Now this wouldn't be so bad if those thoughts were serving us. But, research shows that for most of us, a full 80% of those thoughts are ANTs!
To add fuel to an already raging fire, negative thoughts create stress and poison our whole system. Kind of like ant poison in reverse, i.e., the ANTs are poisoning us. Positive thoughts, on the other hand, calm us down and tend to make us happy. As you can see...I'm back on my happy kick again. (Check out our archived DGs if you're interested.)
Now, observe that the Scripture verse quoted above is in the form of a command. If you believe the Bible (as I do), and if you believe in a good God (as I do), then you can conclude that a good God would never give us a command that we cannot carry out. That means we were designed with the ability to take our thoughts, every one of them, captive. We are never a victim to our thoughts. We can't necessarily control the thoughts that come into our head, but we always have a choice as to what to do with them when they appear.
So actually, today is a setup. I would like to take the next couple of DGs and offer some suggestions about what to do with ANTs when they appear in your head. See you on Wednesday!
