I heard someone say the other day that 77% of our thoughts are negative. My immediate thought was, “Now how would they know a thing like that? Do they have a special thought-meter the researchers attach to you and every time you have a positive thought it goes 'ping' and every time you have a negative thought it goes 'Boom?' Somewhere are the numbers recorded and tallied and 77% comes out?"
I know I couldn’t give an accurate count myself of my place on the negative-positive scale. I think 77% is a little high.
This world is a negative place, filled with “man’s inhumanity to man,” economic disasters, oil spills, emergency rooms, wars. Unfortunately, due to the media, we are inundated with all this mess in a way we never have been in human history.
It’s hard to remove oneself from all that. It’s a little like being in a full swimming pool and not getting wet. It’s hard, in Bible terms, to be “in the world, but not of the world.” We can do little to change the world; we can change ourselves, with God’s help.
Philippians 4:5says, “finally, brothers, whatever is true… noble… right… pure… lovely… admirable… excellent… praiseworthy - think about such things.” Do you see anything negative in that list?
I grant you this is hard to do, but it is a commandment and, therefore, not optional. I’d like to introduce you to a man you may already know, from Psalm 73.
He’s having a hard time of it. His world doesn’t look as good to him as the world of others around him does.
These “seem to be free from the burdens of man.” STUFF doesn’t get to them like it does to him.
Not only that, but they exhibit all sorts of undesirable traits- pride, iniquity, malice, etc. They ask, “How can God know? Does the Most High have knowledge?” Our friend sees them getting away with this.
He has trouble with all these negative thoughts. He says his feet had almost slipped, “I had almost lost my foothold.”
He has tried, but “surely in vain I kept my heart pure, in vain I washed my hands in innocence.”
He says that trying to understand all this has been oppressive to him.
But then he begins to understand. If he had kept on thinking like this, “I would have betrayed the generation of your children.” He would have let God down.
Full understanding comes to him: “I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny. Surely you place them on slippery ground.”
Further, “When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant . . .
Yet I am always with You; You hold me by my right hand. You guide me with Your counsel, and afterward You will take me into glory.”
Hope is the Great Antidote to negative thoughts. And, after all, “This world is not my home’ I’m just a passin’ through!"