those with minds fully braced, upheld, and supported by truth and trust in God will be kept in perfect peace. The mind feasts on what it focuses on. What consumes my thinking will be the making or the breaking of my identity. Will

The mind feasts on what it focuses on.

On the other hand, when I change to a growth mind-set, I don't chain my identity to my insecurity. Instead, I chain my identity to the Word of God that breathes hope and powerful potential back into any situation.

In other words, they had seen a lot. They had heard a lot. But they had not personally applied what they'd seen and heard. Their hearts were not tender to the reality of Jesus. Their hearts were hardened. Access without application will not equal transformation.

I can make the choice to leave the cookies in the bakery case and the chips on the grocery shelf, I could make the choice to walk away from that remark. That's what the apostle Paul was talking abut when he said, 'we demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.' (2 Corinthians 10:5)

After all, I will never be able to control what other people have going on in their heads or in their conversations. But with the help of the Holy Spirit in me, I can absolutely learn to control how much I allow the fear of their opinions to have access to my life.

I'm not who that guy says I am. I'm not who that girl says I am. I'm not who social media likes and comments say I am. I'm not who the grades, to-do lists, messes, and mess ups say I am. I'm not who the scale says I am or the sum total of what my flaws say I am. I'm going to stop flirting with the unstable things of this world so I can fall completely in love with You. I am loved. I am held. I am Yours. I am forever Yours.

It's not the "how to" I'm missing. It's the "want to" . . . really wanting to make changes and deciding that the results of those changes are worth the sacrifice.

I can't control the things that happen to me each day, but I can control how I think about them. I can say to myself, "I have a choice to have destructive thoughts or constructive thoughts right now. I can wallow in what's wrong and make things worse, or I can ask God for a better perspective to help me see good even when I don't feel good.

if we will remember to return often to our Instructor . . . our Creator . . . we will discover His loving hands still pulse to continue making us. Tweaking us. Molding us. Filling us. And daily completing the good work He began in us.

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world — the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does — comes not from the Father but from the world" (1 John 2:15 — 16).

We consume what we think about. And what we think about can consume us if we're not careful.