THEARTOFCHRIST — Issue 06: Positive Thinking Think on What Is True How Christ brings about life, and how He supplies it more abundantly. The world sells positive thinking as a tool. Adopt the right mental attitude. Focus on the good in every situation. Expect the best possible outcomes. Watch your thoughts, replace the negative with the positive, practice mindfulness, surround yourself with bright people, care for yourself — and the benefits follow: confidence, creativity, motivation, better coping, healthier relationships. The promise is always the same: the mind properly managed can save you. The herald announces a reckoning. The mind is not a lamp. It is an eye. A lamp generates its own light. An eye receives light — and sees only what the light shows. Positive thinking commands the mind to generate brightness. Scripture commands the mind to receive truth. The question is not how bright your thinking is. The question is what your thinking is fastened to. Anchor: The True Object Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute — if there is any excellence, if anything worthy of praise — dwell on these things (Phil 4:8, paraphrase). Read the order. True comes first. Then honorable, right, pure. The world's version inverts the list: whatever is pleasant first, and truth optional — the facts of the situation may be sacrificed to keep the attitude bright. Scripture puts truth at the gate. The mind is commanded to dwell — but only on what is true. Here is the movement. The mind has an object. Apart from Christ, the object is the circumstance — and the command is to brighten it. In Christ, the object is what is true — and the truth does the brightening. Apart from Christ, thinking has no anchor. Man is alienated from the life of God (Eph 4:18). His positive thinking fastens itself to outcomes: the job, the diagnosis, the relationship, the best possible turn of events. But the things which are seen are temporal (2 Cor 4:18, paraphrase). Outcomes die — every one of them. The optimist is a man who has learned to paint, laying brightness onto a scene that is passing away. The feeling is real, and the scene still passes. Positive thinking is the flesh whitewashing the tomb: hopeful on the outside while death sits inside. Notice what the world's program cannot do. Tell a despairing soul to "think positive" and you have given him law without a Savior — a command his soul cannot obey, because his soul knows what his mouth will not say: the outcome is not in his hands. Despair is not a thinking error. It is the soul telling the truth about outcomes. In Christ, God fills. The God of hope fills with all joy and peace in believing, so that hope abounds — not by technique, but by the power of the Holy Spirit (Rom 15:13, paraphrase). Mark the verbs. God fills. The Spirit empowers. Hope abounds because God poured it in. God gives hearing. God gives growth. Watch the psalmist command his own soul: "Why are you in despair, O my soul? ... Hope in God" (Ps 42:5, 11). He does not command his soul to think brightly about the circumstance. He commands it to hope in God — and he names the reason: "for I shall again praise Him." The object is a Person, and the Person will be praised again. Watch Jeremiah in the ruins: "This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope" (Lam 3:21). What does he recall? The LORD's mercies never cease, and great is His faithfulness (Lam 3:22-23, paraphrase). Hope is not projection — guessing at a bright future. Hope is recall — remembering a faithful God. The mind turned back to mercy produces hope that faces forward. Fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ (1 Pet 1:13, paraphrase). Hope has a fixed point: grace, revealed in Christ. Not the best possible outcome. Grace. And the true things are true because Christ is true: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). Dwell on these things — dwell on Him. Thinking Reaches the Body Every topic in this workshop relates to physical life, and positive thinking is no exception. Watch the body under the world's program. Manufacturing brightness is work. The optimist's body is braced — jaw set around the outcome he must produce, shoulders carrying the attitude he must maintain. He was told his thinking would relax him, but the thinking is itself a labor: watch every thought, replace every negative, keep the brightness up. The body keeps the score of the performance. In Christ, the body rests — because the outcome is secured by Another. In quietness and in trust is your strength (Isa 30:15, paraphrase). Quietness is physical. It is a body unbraced. "He gives to His beloved sleep" (Ps 127:2). Sleep is the body's confession that the outcome is not in its hands — and hope in God makes the confession easy. Christ came that they may have life, and have it abundantly (John 10:10). The abundant life reaches the thinking — and through the thinking, the body. The hopeful man does not sleep because he expects the best outcome. He sleeps because he knows the Faithful One. Think on What Is True The world's program says: brighten your thinking and your life will follow. Scripture says the things which are seen are temporal (2 Cor 4:18, paraphrase). Do not fasten your mind to what is passing. So stop asking the eye to generate light. Open it instead. Dwell on what is true (Phil 4:8, paraphrase). When the mind fastens to outcomes, move it to the Faithful One. When the soul despairs, command it as the psalmist did: "Hope in God" (Ps 42:11). Recall His mercies — they are new every morning (Lam 3:23, paraphrase). Fix your hope on grace (1 Pet 1:13, paraphrase). Warning and Invitation Apart from Christ, positive thinking is optimism aimed at death: brightness fastened to the temporal. "Whoever does not believe stands condemned already" (John 3:18). No brightness of attitude moves a man from death to life. Yet in Christ, God fills with hope. "Repent and believe the gospel" (Mark 1:15). "Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt 11:28). "He who believes HAS eternal life" (John 6:47). Come, and your thinking will have an Object — and the Object will not pass away. This Week Read Philippians 4, Psalm 42, and Lamentations 3:19-26. Watch what your thinking fastens to — outcomes, or the Faithful One. When it fastens to outcomes, move it: recall one mercy of God, name it, and hope in Him (Ps 42:11). Thank God that He fills with hope by His Spirit (Rom 15:13, paraphrase). Then walk in the light you received. This is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son (1 John 5:11).