We are constantly bombarded in our culture by negative and toxic experiences, which are basically garbage. Again, I’m not discounting medical treatment, but a daily diet of scripture or the Bible is a powerful way to defend or guard our hearts and minds from external toxicity. While there is a multiplicity of psychological options and treatments available to us for our mental health, some of which can be effective, God has provided us with powerful methods of guarding, protecting, cleansing and detoxing our cranial activity. Our mind, body, and spirit need constant TLC. They are easily damaged by what we see, hear, and experience. However powerful our minds may be they aren’t indestructible. The whole body is like a nuclear power plant, and what scientists and physicians have learned is only the tip of the iceberg. Okay, I’ve gotten off track a little bit in my wonderment and amazement of God’s incredible creation, but it’s important to understand the power of the brain, mind, heart, and soul. It will never be what it was before, but it’s amazing how far it has come. Well, I’m a believer now because my hearing has slowly and methodically improved with hearing aids. At first I didn’t believe it when audiologists said that things may sound funny now, but it should get better as your brain adjusts. Over the last two years my brain has been adjusting to hearing aids. I’ve experienced it with my hearing loss. It really is incredible how powerful the brain is. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” ( Matthew 6:22-23 NIV) The same can be said of what we hear and experience.Įverything we experience is absorbed like a sponge. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. Jesus understood this when He said, “The eye is the lamp of the body. Hopefully over time they fade, but for those who have seen and experienced traumatic things, it’s really hard to delete or erase that from memory and it does a lot of damage. There are things that we can’t un-see or un-hear. Like that annoying song, there are images or things that we have seen that won’t go away. It gets imprinted on our minds and it’s hard to get rid of especially if you’re trying to. We have a mental image of just about everything that we see. Most of the time it’s not a song that you really want to remember and don’t want to have dancing around in your head as an endless loop for days on end. For those of you who like me now have that song stuck in your head. Before I got out of my office, I unconsciously started humming the above-mentioned song. While working on this devotional, I decided to go to lunch. A great example is the song that you can’t get out of your head. Usually it’s the things that we don’t want to remember that we remember the most, right? It’s weird that way. I had to study like crazy memorizing everything methodically. It used to really annoy me when some of my fellow classmates, who apparently were either smarter than I was or had photographic memories, didn’t really have to study as hard for exams. Some people have a photographic memory and have the ability to recall vast amounts of information while others like me tend to forget things a little more quickly. Anything that we see and hear is downloaded or saved to our internal hard drives, our heart and soul. William Shakespeare said that the eyes are the “windows to the soul”. However, the idea that God is “watching over us” or “hovering” violates our desire for independence and right to privacy. It’s not a negative thing that God is watching out for us. He doesn’t want anything bad to happen to us physically or spiritually. He doesn’t want negative thoughts and behaviors to cause us harm. His constant presence is for our protection. The verse says that He is “looking down in love”. The idea that God is “looking down” on us may sound like a foreboding scare tactic, but God cares about us. It was a great way to teach kids about guarding their hearts and minds from exposure to negative things. There were hand motions and everything that went with it. The 2 nd verse is basically the same except it says, “O be careful little ears what you hear”. O be careful little eyes what you see, O be careful little eyes what you seeįor the Father up above is looking down in love Do you remember the children’s song, “O Be Careful Little Eyes”? Whatever we “put in there” will come out in one-way or another. “Garbage in garbage out.” Most of us have heard this old saying that is used to express that whatever we are putting into our brains will manifest itself in outward behaviors, attitudes, speech, etc.
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