Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking. 2 Peter 3:1 (NIV)
After 15 years of following my appetite for drugs, the consequences piled up to the point where I became desperate enough for change that I was willing to do anything. In my disaster, I went to God, asking what I must do. I understood him to say that I daily must make a genuine effort to abandon my way, pointing my life at him and his will. What did that look like? To start, I began getting up early every day to read, pray, and write.
I must put a Bible verse in my brain every morning, giving me something to think about all day. What does this passage mean? What is God saying to me? This discipline has revolutionized my thinking and thus, my life. I don’t do it perfectly, but when I’m struggling with thoughts of bitterness, resentments, anger, pride, greed, or lust, I’m still learning to turn my mind from those self-destructive thoughts to God’s word and my relationship with him. My mind naturally drifts to the unhealthy, so it requires discipline to turn it towards that which is healthy. This has changed the course of my life.
Writing my meditations down stimulates me to think about the passage today, so I have something to write tomorrow. Writing helps me process my thoughts, causing them to take shape in my life. I began this process while in treatment in 2014 and two years later, I launched the blog, taking my writing public. I’ve missed some days of publishing since then, taking a few breaks, but I never miss a day of my own personal time with God. I must daily get up early to point my mind in the right direction.
That is the point of the blog. First, I do this because I must daily spend time with God. Whether I publish or not, I still read, pray, and write daily. I do publish though, because secondly, I have a desire that my life mistakes and experience may be used to point others in the right direction. This was Peter’s message in today’s passage. In it, he said he wrote to his audience to stimulate them to wholesome thinking. They had a responsibility to consume it, but Peter did his part by sharing it.
We all have a thousand voices speaking into our lives each day. How can God compete with social media? This is our responsibility. If we want to experience the lives for which we were created, we must daily choose to listen to that which is healthy for us.