Act and React

What goes in is what will come out. Healthy spiritual food  will nourish our spirit just as healthy physical food will nourish our body. 

“Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for a tree is known by its fruit. Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” Matthew 12:33-37

You speak what you think.

What we allow our mind to dwell on comes out in our lives. Words that seemingly slip out of our mouths demonstrate what is going on within our hearts. The thoughts that we think we can hide from the world eventually creap out of our mouth and shape who we become. The solution isn’t to limit the warning signs but to reshape our heart as we see the effects of what is happening in our heart coming out of our mouth.

Being is doing instinctively.

We are human beings, which means that we are defined by who we are more than what we do. However, what we do repeatedly shapes who we become. A person who would not formerly consider himself to be an alcoholic becomes one by repeatedly doing what an alcoholic does. An athlete becomes an athlete by continually doing what an athlete does. A Christian, as well, is someone who instinctively does the activities of a Christian life.

If you allow someone to control your reactions they can control you.

Our reactions are how we train ourselves to act without thinking. When we allow someone else to control our reactions, we allow them to control who we are. We don’t have to be at the mercy of our circumstances and we don’t have to be under the control of others. We can choose to control how we react. “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” (2 Timothy 1:7). Fear gives someone power over us by stimulating our reactions, but a sound mind gives us power to act from the basis of a sound mind and out of love.