Thought Life.

I have been practicing the presence of God for several months now. This wraps many scriptures into the idea on how to wrangle your mind under the obedience of Christ. I wanted to write something to give a general idea of my thought life!

I started with analyzing my moods before I was Christian, this is a process that is referred to in psychology as Cognitive behavioral therapy. The idea is that we have many varied thoughts all throughout the day. The great majority of them can be negative or sinful as we are fallen creatures. When we realize that we are having a sinful thought we can then recognize it as such and ask the Lord to take that thought away. Effectively ‘nipping it in the bud’, funny how that saying can be applied to being in the vine and asking the Lord to trim away the sinful thought before it grows into a strong desire and then an outward sinful action.

Take lust for example, as we go throughout our day as males in America we are constantly assaulted with visuals of scantily clad women through ads on the internet or tight fitting clothing. Instead of staring or fantasizing, I look away and then ask the Lord to take away any thoughts that may be sinful or lusting. The thoughts then go away!

It started out as 1 or 2 of the stronger more noticeable thoughts that I prayed for Jesus to remove. Then it turned into thinking about the Lord every 10 minutes. I remember being bored at work and making a mental note to acknowledge the Lord every time I looked at the clock to see how much longer my shift would be going on for or when my next break was. In popular psychology there is a ‘mind hack’ that made its rounds around the internet that said to take a 5 second pause every hour to re-center yourself in the present. I would take this idea and use a 5 second pause in my work day several times an hour to acknowledge the Lord!

This turned my faith in God to such high levels that I started trusting that he was ACTUALLY inside me and able to guide me  REALLY believing it. I started to ask him to guide me around and what I should do, then I obediently went and did what I believed he wanted me to do. I had extremely good success in doing this. I called them God wanders. I'd go for a walk in my downtown area and ask him if I should turn left here or right. I would ask him if I should talk to this person or not. If it felt like the answer was yes then I would just simply do it. I would always follow and pursue righteousness in the conversations I would have with people.

These experiences would end up with beautiful faith building conversations with others. Sometimes I'd be in the right place at the right time with the right things coming to my mind to say something that profoundly affected the other person I was talking to. As if the Lord gifted me the perfect holy thing to say to that individual in that moment.

Over time these two exercises led me to think about the Lord and commune with him all day long. Effectively answering the call to pray unceasingly. The massive amount of experiences that I can only explain as divine leading or moments of supernatural timing and “coincidence” has increased to be a daily experience. The Lord literally makes people cry tears of joy and lifts them up to eternal joy from the pits of despair when I ask him for what to say. 

It is so simple and profound that I cannot brag because I did not come up with the words to say. I literally just pray for the words to say and then force myself to start talking even though it seems awkward. Then I pray several times in every pause in the conversation or when listening to others. You can pray and listen at the same time!

I used to have severe clinical depression and anxiety and Schizoaffective disorder. I've been in a large Psych Asylum for 3 months in the past. Picture me rocking back and forth on my bed all day replaying on a loop every anxious thought I had for 16 hours.

This is all gone now. I am no longer on medications and I no longer have fear or anxiety of any kind. I've had guns pulled on me and it was not even scary because I know that when I die, it is the good Lord's time for me to die, and that specific moment was a trust building moment in my walk that cemented that I have a high faith in the Lord.

If you have trouble believing any of this because you don't have similar experiences, then you should simply pray to the Lord for it.