Reform your thought process -- By Simmy Joshy

Your reward depends on how well you can fix spiritual pollution 

 “What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them,” says Mathew 15:11 in the Bible.

  It is crystal clear from Jesus’ words that he expects his believers to be purified or sanctified from inside. If sanctification happens from inside, none of the things in the external environment could even affect us, leave alone the matter of defilement. According to the scripture, Jesus is trying to fix the spiritual pollution, which forms the root cause of almost all serious afflictions or ailments affecting mankind and so the issue has to be addressed on a daily basis.

   To be frank, this issue goes unnoticed and continue to adulterate or pollute human minds and is driving us away from the loving Lord. This is primarily due to the fact that majority of the Christians including me are rather concerned only about our worldly image and reputation. As the world judges by the outward manifestation of a person, a person polluted by evil thoughts can even put up a righteous image in public through good external deeds and actions. But only if we realize the simple truth that the Lord understands the motives and rewards everyone based on the purity of our inner man, we would rather think of getting sanctified at this level.

  A major cause for this spiritual pollution is the evil thoughts that attain diverse heights and levels in each individual. So it is high time that we take serious note of the way we think or how and where our thoughts direct us. Such assessments are important as our thoughts lead us to decisions and actions and everyone needs to understand clearly how to keep their thoughts under control. We should surrender ourselves unto Lord to get our thoughts refreshed and reformed.

  Polluting thoughts come from the evil. Any worldly thought could incite sinful nature in you and needs to be listed in this category. That is, when we are affected by any negative life situation like an ailment to your child we would most probably think, “why did this happen to me and my child?” If you continue to think along this line the situation would overpower you and you would not be able to overcome the situation either mentally or physically. To come out of that you need to look up to the Lord and at the same time, need to reform your thought process constantly.

  There are 86,400 seconds in a day and if we praise or thank God at least a 100 times, how much better our life would have been. All these times how many thoughts might have adversely affected or polluted us? If we recognize this pitiful state of our thoughts, we would most likely opt for reforming our thoughts.

 Practical tips for reforming the thought process,

* Think about the blessings the Lord has showered upon us and start thanking and praising god for the blessings in life, even the little ones

* Reading, studying and confessing the word of God

* Contemplating God in all our activities

  We can do all these activities except studying and reading the Word of God while we are still engaged in our routine work. If we take these conscious steps every time an evil thought comes into our mind or a worldly thought overpowers us, we can gain control over our thought as well and this would be a major step in OUR WALK TOWARDS THE LORD.

 Once we start practising this, wonders and miracles would happen in our lives. We can lead a peaceful life, unaffected by what is happening around us or even in the midst of a disaster we could stand tall in Christ. 

(The writer is a marine biologist based in Cochin)