SELF-CORRECTION AND GROWTH

 

Our emotions can lead us astray, but so too our worldview biases. To a great extent, we are what we think and believe. If we believe our mailman is trying to kill us, this one belief will affect everything—our thoughts, feelings, decisions, and even our lifestyle—and this is true of many of our beliefs.

 

Therefore, it is of utmost importance to think and believe accurately. It’s like driving a car. If our eyes do not give us accurate feedback, we will crash. However, correcting our thought-life is far more difficult.

 

How then can we see and evaluate our thoughts and emotions correctly? It’s like learning a new language. You first must learn its vocabulary and grammar. If you simply try to learn it on the street, you will make many embarrassing mistakes and acquaintances will eventually lose patience with you.

 

We require accurate instruments to guide and correct our misguided thoughts and feelings. One of the Kennedys had been navigating his plane during a cloudy night. It is reported that he had trusted his intuitive senses instead of the instruments on his panel and crashed.

 

I later learned that without resorting to the instruments on his dashboard, the pilot might not even be able to perceive if he is flying upside-down. This is the way we live our lives—blindly trusting in our thoughts and feelings without the correction of a trustworthy panel of instruments.

 

For the Christian, the Bible, as we are guided by the Holy Spirit, is our corrective. For example, I used to be governed by hatred. When I first reluctantly began going to church, and people greeted me at the door, I felt confident that they all were hypocrites. However, God began to show me that I was no better than anyone else, as I had wanted to believe, and that was painful and humbling. However, understand myself and my weaknesses opened my mental eyes and enabled me to begin to understand others better. I had to go through this painful process in order to feel and think more accurately.

 

We are the lens through which we see and understand all else. If our lens is clouded, so too our thoughts and feelings. What we think determines all else. Therefore, Jesus continues to sharpen our minds:

·       I made [You] known to them…and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” (John 17:26)

 

To know God is to love Him and to become like Him. Returning to humility—the Bible teaches us that God’s thinking is so far above our own (Isaiah 55:8-9) that it is rational to distrust our thinking in favor of His:

 

·       Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil. (Proverbs 3:5-7)

 

Consequently, I have had to learn to distrust my own evil thoughts and feelings in favor of His. Therefore, it is no longer difficult for me to understand that as our thought-life is corrected, so too the rest of our lives:

 

·       Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2)

 

Seeing the errors of my own ways and their consequences, I now only want His ways!