The Mind Connection: How the Thoughts You Choose Affect Your Mood, Behavior, and Decisions by Joyce Meyer Page A

without thinking and that is, perhaps, one of the most dangerous things we can do. Thoughtless acts bring mental and emotional pain, and deterioration and destruction to relationships as well as many other areas. People say thoughtless things to others, causing pain and perhaps ruining their day. We do things without thinking, like saying things at inappropriate times, making impulsive purchases, making various commitments without seriously considering whether or not we can complete them. We quite often practice what I call “mindless eating,” eating without being fully aware that we are doing it. We stop to talk with a coworker who has a dish of candy on her desk, and while we are talking, we mindlessly eat three pieces of chocolate candy. We walk past a dish of cookies on a table in a furniture store of all places (this happened to me) and without thinking we take one and eat it while we are shopping!
    We have many “thoughtless actions,” but this book is about learning to not only think, but also to do so purposely and correctly.
    How often do you need to apologize to someone, and say something like this: “I am sorry I hurt you—I just wasn’t thinking.” Our lives would be so much better if we did form a habit of thinking before speaking or taking action. I imagine it will take a lifetime of continued discipline to ever accomplish it completely, but at least we can start moving in the right direction.
    In his book
The Spiritual Man
, Watchman Nee said a lot about the dangers of a passive mind. It was from his teaching that I first began to realize that we could do our own thinking instead of just passively meditating on whatever happens to fall into our minds. Some thoughts are not necessarily good or evil; they are merely useless! We will call them gray thoughts. They come from something we noticed, or recalled, or perhaps we can find no source for them at all. There are also what I will refer to as bright thoughts and dark thoughts. The dark ones are thoughts that do damage—they are very destructive and usually negative. Thankfully, there are good thoughts that let the light into our minds and give us good feelings and positive energy.
    For example, if I am riding down the highway in a car and I think,
There sure are lots of birds sitting on that electric power line
, that is just a gray thought about something I observed. However, if I am riding down the road and I think,
There is no way that God could love me after all the things I have done wrong
, that is a dark lie injected into my mind by the devil, who is hoping to prevent me from ever receiving God’s love and forgiveness. If I am riding in the same car, on the same road, and I think,
Good things are going to happen to me and through me today. God loves me and gives me His favor all day long
, that is a holy, pure, good thought that lets light into my soul.
    Try to always find the good, bright thoughts!

The Battlefield of the Mind
    Many Christians today don’t want to hear anything about the devil. They think it’s an unpleasant topic of conversation, but thinking like that will open the door for deception and error. The devil is alive and active on planet Earth, and we may as well be aware of him and learn how to deal with him aggressively. The basic truth is that the devil is a liar, and he uses our mind as a battlefield to do warfare with us. He is the source of dark and harmful thoughts. His goal is to prevent us from enjoying the good plan that God has for us, and he is successful if we never learn to recognize how he attacks our minds. Scripture teaches us that our mind is a battleground where a war is being fought.
    For though we walk (live) in the flesh, we are not carrying on our warfare according to the flesh and using mere human weapons.
    For the weapons of our warfare are not physical [weapons of flesh and blood], but they are mighty before God for the overthrow and destruction of strongholds, [inasmuch as we] refute arguments and