Don’t “Just Think Positive;” Think Truth.

It is generally good practice to think positive thoughts. They can help to enhance our mood, change our perspective, help us better handle difficult situations, and influence how we view and treat others. However, there is no supernatural force or power in positive thinking in itself to change future outcomes or to rewrite our reality. But it is a common belief among many in the world that the thoughts we think can literally create our reality. This is also a growing belief among many Christians of which, for many years of my Christian walk, I was one.

I had heard teachings within small groups, Bible studies, and from tele-evangelists I esteemed highly concluding that our positive thoughts had the power to manifest what we desired in life. And to the reverse, that thinking negative things would attract negative outcomes to our lives. So then, we could have bad experiences in life not as a consequence of anything we did wrong nor as a normal part of living in a fallen world, but simply as a consequence of thinking about or acknowledging those negative things. I probably would have never accepted similar teachings from any other religious group, but these were Christians teaching us secret revelations about mature faith or “the force of faith.” And the phrase “just think positive” was often replaced with “Just have faith” but both still had the same meaning in application.

One of the scriptures often quoted to explain the consequences of our thoughts was Job 3:25, “What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me.” To begin, chapter 1 spoke of how Job would give burned offerings to God on the mornings after his children would host a feast for themselves, just in case they sinned against God in their hearts that night. Verses later, Job received a series of bad news that he had lost all of his 10 children, his properties, livestock, and servants, all in one day. Then shortly after that, Job became sick with terribly painful boils on his skin. Now in chapter 3, Job starts to lament and grieve and eventually makes that statement in verse 25, “What I feared has come upon me…”

Over the years I heard many teachings that concluded that: Job’s statement in verse 3:25 was proof that his fears from chapter 1 attracted all those calamities to his life; that Job opened a door to the devil’s attack; that God had no choice but to allow satan to attack Job because Job’s fears gave satan legal rights to do so anyway. So you can imagine how hard I worked  to resist  negative thoughts from settling in my mind or negative confessions from slipping out of my lips. More so, I was somewhat responsible for other people’s thoughts about me. If someone said something, even jokingly, that implied a negative outcome in my life, I had to openly reject it less it comes to pass. For example, one day while visiting a family with a new-born baby at the hospital, the baby began to cry and another guest who was carrying the baby at the time said, “aww, poor baby, don’t cry.” Almost immediately a relative visiting the baby said “He is not poor in Jesus name, and he will never be poor. He will be rich.” I also remember, on many other occasions, feeling a sense of nervousness if I did not cancel a negative word or joke a friend, especially one who was an unbeliever, would make about me. If the joke implied suffering, me failing a test, me not getting married, me tripping and falling, things that made for most jokes, I would start canceling and rejecting those words in my mind and thinking up positive things I wanted to see happen to replace those things I did not.

But how I thank God for allowing me to go through many hardships in life from which my thoughts could not save me. He used incident after incident, lack, heartbreak, losses, ER visits, medical debts, and the helplessness I felt seeing my loved ones suffer, to strip me of the idol of self. Oh I knew that God was sovereign, but I never really understood what that meant. Under these teachings, God could do anything but only to the degree that we gave him permission through our thoughts (backed by our words, works, and financial giving), otherwise, His hands were tied. But I thank God that He is God and I am not. Surrendering to his sovereignty brings me more peace and freedom than I had ever known before. His ways are higher than my ways and His thoughts are greater than my thought, and He is still merciful and good and just even when I neither understand nor like what is happening.