The first time a car drives down a snow covered road it moves slowly and carefully and it creates a track. The next car will very likely follow the track made by the first car, it’s easier to navigate than attempting to create a new one. The third car will quickly find the track and travel down it. As the track becomes more obvious, eventually, every car follows. The ease and pace of travel down that track increases with each car pass, and the track gets a little deeper and wider.
Once on the track a car will have a very hard time getting off. The wheels will not easily jump out of the deep track. The snow is hard packed and can be as deep. It takes a lot of effort to get up out of the track and onto fresh snow where the car now has the difficult task of starting a new track.
Our thinking works the same way.
A thought that is thought and re-thought and re-thought, reinforces that line of thinking in our mind. Just like the tracks car makes in the snow, the thought track becomes deeply entrenched in our mind, and gets us to our destination faster.
Well-worn tracks in our thinking can take us to destinations we’d rather not be. Negative thinking, holding grudges, carrying hurts, poor self-image, anxious thoughts, worry; those thoughts will take us to a destination of abysmal self-pity and depression. The more practiced we are in this thinking the harder it is to stop. The more we think and dwell on the negative, the harder it becomes to change our thinking, we’ll end up in an emotional-pit in our thinking.
BUT If we continually think faith thoughts, worshipful thoughts, thankfulness to God thoughts, bible verses, then those tracks take us to a destination of greater faith.
When we pay close attention to something, the closer we listen, the more understanding we will be given—and we will receive even more (Mark 4:24NLT). If we are paying attention to God and all that He says about the world we will train the tracks of our thinking right to God and all He wants to do in us, though us, for us…
Are you paying attention to your thinking?
Related post: Our Lazy Brain
