Broken Self-Talk
The Mind – Part 1

Scripture Reading: 1 Corinthians 2:9-16

Key Verse: 1 Corinthians 2:16

“For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

For the next few days we are going to discuss an activity that all of us participate in continuously: self-talk.  We all have this ongoing dialogue with ourselves.  If someone actually starts verbalizing it, we call them crazy.  Most of us keep this self-talk to ourselves.

Unfortunately, too many of us have very negative self-talk going on the majority of the time.  This causes the kind of damage to us that you could imagine happening if someone was actually with you 24/7, constantly verbally abusing you.  We who work with hurting people know that many of them have lived with a parent or a spouse that did just that—verbally abused them!  When we become Christ followers, God wants to transform our minds so that the verbal abuse that we do to ourselves stops!

In our suggested additional reading for today, the Apostle Paul wrote: “For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? (1 Corinthians 2:11a).  Each of us has thoughts that never get expressed to even our closest loved ones.  We are the only ones that are involved in these internal “conversations.”  If the majority of these daily, moment by moment, thoughts are negative, it will not be long before our behavior and relationships with others will be affected in negative ways, but God has a plan to make “new creations” through His Son Jesus.  (Continued)

Father, help me to be aware of my self-talk today.  I will surrender the negative to your forgiving grace.  In Jesus’ name, amen.