The Change Your Brain Challenge

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked . . . but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. Psalms 1:1-2

I usually look for the easy way to do everything. When I had to go to treatment, I didn’t look for the best program, I looked for the shortest one. If someone offered me a skinny-pill, I’d be interested.

It’s no surprise then, that I try to do the same thing with my faith. When I get frustrated with my obsessive thoughts or recurrent destructive behaviors, I seek transformation, but I want it to be easy. So, I cling to passages that promise that I am a new creation. In my laziness, I interpret such passages to mean that God does everything and that I just sit back and do absolutely nothing.

In such a misguided state, I change nothing, and nothing changes. Today’s passage then, challenges my apathetic interpretation of the Christian life. In the passage, the author describes what following God looks like. The one who walks with God seeks to live by His word, ingesting it and meditating on it continually.

I can recall a time when I struggled to find my Bible once a week. I didn’t point myself at God and my life reflected that. Now, though I don’t do it perfectly, every morning, I get up, read, pray and begin a 24-hour cycle of meditating on the day’s passage.

This process has revolutionized my thinking. It’s not that I don’t still have obsessive, destructive thoughts. It’s just that now, I have something constructive with which to redirect my brain, allowing God to transform my mind.

Because this blog is about my struggles, I rarely tell you what to do. If, however, you are not daily reading and meditating on God’s word, I challenge you to do so for the next week. Take just five minutes in the morning to read until you find a verse that means something to you. Then, commit to thinking about it all day. If, like me, you struggle with cyclical, miserable thoughts, you will see what God does when you choose to meditate on His word.