Feeding Our Minds

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “You are what you eat”. If we eat healthy food, we’ll be healthy, but if we eat junk food, we won’t be healthy. The same is true with our minds. We feed our minds with the things we listen to, watch, and read. What we feed our minds with effects our thoughts, and our thoughts effect our actions. In other words, what we feed our minds on is what shapes who we are. This can be a good, beautiful thing or it can be a bad, ugly thing depending on what we are using to feed our minds. When we read the Bible and meditate on Scripture, we become more like Christ and become beautiful to God. However, if we are reading books, watching movies, and listening to things that stir up wrong thoughts, we will eventually start acting in a way that displeases the Lord. The Bible says we are to take every thought captive (2 Corinthians 10:5). That starts with what we are using to feed our thoughts. If we control the types of things we are listening to, watching, and reading, we will be able to better control our thoughts. Does this mean we shouldn’t read anything except the Bible? No. We just need to be aware of what causes us to sin in our thoughts and stay away from those things. We can also give ourselves a standard or guidelines to help us decide whether we should feed our minds with a certain book or movie. Something that has helped me in this area is a standard that is found in the Bible. Philippians 4:8 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”. While reading a book or watching a movie I can ask myself, “Is what is happening true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, of good repute, excellent, and worthy of praise?” If the answer to the majority of these is “no”, then I probably shouldn’t be reading or watching it. I admit I don’t always hold things up to this standard or put them away when they don’t measure up. However, we all need to be striving to take captive our thoughts by controlling what we are using to feed our minds.