Anxious generation - week 3 : Path to positive thinking…Rewire the Route
Anxious generation - week 3 : Path to positive thinking…Rewire the Route
Our minds can spiral fast — but Philippians 4:8 gives us a new route. When we fix our thoughts on what is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, and admirable, God rewires our brains toward peace. This week we’re learning to replace strongholds of fear with strongholds of faith.
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Well, hello Rock Church. How’s everybody doing today? You guys good, man? So good to see you all. I want to welcome everybody who is online that we are so glad that you are here. You’re joining in. And I want to welcome everybody from our J Ruben campus. We love you guys and glad that you’re a part of it as well. And uh you know, we’ve talked a lot about weekend of hope. Man, I want you to remember that. Be a part of that. Um I love what happens on our campus on Thursday night. So that day of giving will start next Thursday during our Thursday service. So we want to encourage you that way. Um and I love Thursday nights. I don’t know if you all have realized this, but we have started filling up the auditorium on Thursday nights. All right. It’s so cool. I love it. Love it. Now, unfortunately, I’ve got to make an announcement about a couple Thursday nights we actually won’t be in here. Okay. Um, so next Thursday night we’re meeting, but I want to go ahead and give you a heads up for the following two Thursday nights. The next Thursday night is Thanksgiving and everybody will be in turkey coma, so we won’t have Thursday night that night. Then the following Thursday night, we take our Thursday night happy hour on the road and we do it outdoors downtown in Conway. Uh, it’s part of the Conway Christmas tree lighting. All right. Uh, so if you’ve never been downtown on the night they light the Christmas tree, it’s a really cool experience. I will encourage you get there early. Parking is stupid. Okay. Um, but get there early, enjoy the festivities. But then we will do Thursday night service outside on the terrace. All right. So, next week we’re in the building. Then the following two weeks we are not. Everybody got that? Good.
All right. Let’s dig into tonight then. And uh we’re going to continue this Anxious Generation series that we’ve been in and in it we’ve been in the book of Philippians chapter 4. Uh so if you have a Bible, you can just go ahead and get there. Um grab it on your phone, go to the app, you can hit the Bible button, it’ll take you there. If you have a paper Bible, open that up, use your paper Bible, whatever you need to do to get to Philippians 4. But I want to talk you through where we’ve been. Uh week one, uh we we looked at verse six and we we talked about this idea of prayer. And prayer carries us all the way through this series. All right. And then last week we talked about verse seven where we talked about peace. Uh today we’re going to talk about verse eight and we’re going to talk about patterns. We’re going to talk about patterns that we have in our mind. Maybe I could say it this way. Pathways that we have in our mind. Patterns is something that that we all have locked into our mind. You might not even realize this that that there are things you see, things you hear, things you do that you’ve done it enough that it automatically locks into your mind, right?
Like like let’s just talk about things we see. Uh if you see the color garnet and black, that means Gamecocks. Gamecocks, right? Like like you kind of know that that’ll naturally you see it and you just think Gamecocks. If you see the color orange and purple, you think… That’s funny. I expected you to say Clemson. Obviously, we have a Gamecock fan somewhere in this area. Same boo, right? Like I got in a lot of trouble because we painted a wall orange and you Gamecock fans, you see orange, you’re like, “Ah.” Right? That’s not necessarily what orange means. But it’s a pattern that’s in your head. You see the color teal, you think Coastal, you think “Chant up,” right? It’s just natural because when you see things, you see a red octagon shape. You think stop. It’s like it’s a pattern. It’s a pattern that is in your head.
We have patterns that come up on things we see. We have patterns on things we hear. All right, let me prove it to you. This is an all skate, right? So, everybody can participate. But we hear things and we automatically have patterns that go with it. Like “Sweet Caroline…” right? You get it, right? You get it. Or how about this one? “8675…” You get it, right? It’s a pattern. Now, some of you went, “Oh, I just heard 67.” And your mind did this, right? You see, like some of you did it like it’s patterns that have developed.
We have patterns on things we do, right? Like like you you start to do something and you catch the pattern. Uh some of you put your shoes and socks on the exact same way every day. You know what I’m saying? Like for me, like I put both socks on and then both shoes. Some people will do a sock and a shoe and a sock and a shoe. That’s weird. Okay, I’m just going to tell you that’s weird. All right, but for me, I do my socks and my shoes, but every time I do it, it’s right foot then left foot. Right sock, then left sock, right shoe, then left shoe. We have patterns on things we do. Some of you, especially if you’re older, you remember patterns just on how you drive. Like, like before you looked at the map, before you had GPS, you just drove down the road because you knew when you saw the barn or the silo um or the corner gas station, you’re like, “That’s just where I turn. It’s just what I know.” Right? Some of you who are younger, you have your phone, you have patterns like you can open your phone, you can hit your app, you don’t look at your phone, you know where your app is. You can see somebody text you, you can text them back and never even look down at what you’re saying and hit all of the letters, right? Because you have put patterns in your mind.
All right? It’s it’s how our brain is wired. It’s how God created us and wired us. Now, neuroscience, they would call this neuroplasticity. What it is, it’s how your brain can remember something and lock it in. And then the more you do it, the deeper it gets locked in. That’s a great thing when it’s good things. It’s a really bad thing when it’s bad things. And unfortunately, we have a lot of bad patterns that are stuck in our mind. We have a lot of bad ideas, bad thoughts, bad uh beliefs about ourselves, about others that are locked into our brain that we’ve got to… well, we’ve got to change. We have patterns that that have been woven, pathways that have been wo w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w woven into our brain that it’s time to put them under construction and to say, “No, I need a new pattern. I need a new path that is going to take me the right direction,” because hear this: if you want to change your life, change your thoughts, because what you think will affect how you live.
So we got to make sure our thoughts, our mind is set on Christ. We got to make sure our thoughts, our minds is guarded by the Holy Spirit. Call back to last week. Now, that’s what we got to do with our brain. So that’s what I want us to see that that comes to light in Philippians 4:8. So if you have your Bible, we’re going to read it. I’m going to go back to verse six because again, I just want you to see it in the context of of how we’ve been dealing with it the past couple days um or past couple weeks. Verse six says this, “Don’t worry about anything. Instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need and thank him for all he has done.” Then verse seven, “Then you will experience God’s peace which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” Verse eight, verse of the day where we’re going to focus: “And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing, fix your thoughts on what is true, honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.”
I want us to take the next 25 minutes and just camp out in verse 8. And I want us to do it by looking first at the first part where it says, “Fix your thoughts.” That that really for the whole message, we’re just going to talk about fixing our thoughts. And when we say fix your thoughts, I want you to think about that word fix. It can really mean two different things. It can mean repair, like you need to fix, you need to repair your thoughts. But it can also mean focus, that I need to fix, I need to focus my thoughts. And let’s start with the repair idea. Let’s start with this idea that that we need to repair some thoughts that are going through our mind. And maybe if I could put it in this term, we need to fix some algorithms that are running in our mind because we have algorithms that run in our mind. Patterns that just keep replaying over and over and over. And it’s time for us to fix those, to repair those. It’s time for us to live out what Romans 12:2 says and no longer conform to the pattern of this world, that we need to change some patterns.
Well, what are those patterns? You know, I talked about the book a couple weeks ago, Every Thought Captive by Kyle Idleman. And in his book, he lists some of these patterns that that we need to fix. And so, a lot of what I’m going to share now is just really coming straight from that book. There’s some patterns. One of the patterns that that we need to fix, a pattern of the world that we need to fix, is our identity. That oftentimes we have errant ideas about our identity. That our identity is being attacked. Your identity is being attacked. Your identity is being attacked by things you you you learn at school. Your identity is being attacked by by things you you learn in commercials. Your identity is being attacked by algorithms you’re seeing on on on uh digital media. Your identity is constantly under attack. That that we we we end up finding ourselves in these places in life where we’re going, “Who am I actually?” That that we we find ourselves as we’re walking through difficulties, we start to question like, who am I? What is my purpose? Where is my value? We we we we attack our identity. We have this pattern of our identity that needs to be fixed. That that algorithm of identity that needs to be changed. It’s a pattern that culture tells us and culture just beats us into it.
If you can remember going back to the Attack on Idols series, on the Attack on Idols, that that they tried to change the name of Daniel, of Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael, they tried to change their names because they were trying to change their identities. That’s a pattern in our mind that we got to we got to attack. We got to fix. We got to repair. We got to change. Another pattern that needs to be conformed is a pattern of insecurity. Or another way for me to say that is fear. Is that if we’re not careful, we often will live in fear. We have this idea and and it could have come from some trauma in the past. It could have come because of a situation in the past. But we find ourselves living with insecurity and fear: fear that somebody’s going to leave, maybe because somebody left in the past; fear that we’re going to run out of money because you’ve run out of money in the past; a a fear uh that you’re not going to be loved because you weren’t loved in the past; a fear that you’re not going to get the job because you don’t think you measure up to somebody else. We allow these insecurities and these fears to run through our mind. And we need to change that pattern.
We have this this idea of of pleasure, a a a thought pattern of pleasure that we need to change, that we think that everything in life one should be pleasurable and we can do whatever we want to find pleasure, so that we we start bringing all kinds of things into our life. We start saying, “Man, it doesn’t matter as long as I’m happy. I want to do this. Everybody’s doing it. What’s the big deal?” And we go after pleasure. We think that everything should be instant gratification because we live in a microwave type society where you can have everything you want immediately. You know what I’m saying? Like we live in the days where Walmart will deliver, Door Dash will deliver, you can pull up to the to the curb and get your food. We expect Amazon to get it here immediately. Like I literally had to order this on Amazon. I didn’t know if it’d get here. It got here in 8 hours. Like I don’t even understand how. I’m like, was there just somebody sitting in their car with a coffee pot just waiting going, “Somebody’s going to order one?” Like I don’t know how it works. But we live in this society where everything is now. And that’s how we feel with pleasure. I want immediate gratification rather than eternal perspective.
Here, here’s what I’m trying to say is we got to fix this pattern, these patterns of identity, of insecurity, of pleasure. Here’s a pattern that’s in our world right now: hate, offense. We are so easily triggered. We are so easy to to to get upset, to get mad. You hear one thing, you don’t even know if it’s true, but you hear something, so then you immediately repeat it and tell somebody, “I’m so angry that they said this or they did this or that’s happening.” And you might not even know if it’s really true, but we get triggered. We drive down the road, somebody cuts us off. We get triggered. We get tripped up. We get offended that we see a comment on social media and we’re like, “I can’t believe they’d say that.” We get offended. We see something going on in the news. We get it. We are so easily triggered and offended now because this is what we believe: I have a right to be mad. And then we take it to the other level: I have a right to be offended. I have a right to get even. Man, we need to change that pattern. Don’t conform to the patterns of this world.
Or here’s the last one: despair. Now, there’s more, but I’ll I’ll end with this one. Despair. That we we have these patterns where we just think, man, there’s no hope. My life kind of sucks. Seems like I keep losing people. Things aren’t panning out. The relationships aren’t working. And the job’s not working. The spouse I had for 30 plus years has died and I’m going to spend the holidays without him. Like, I get it. That’s real. But if we’re not careful, we’ll live in this place of despair where we think there’s actually no hope, man. We need to change that pattern.
See, here’s what happens if we allow those things to come into our mind. They become strongholds. They they they become a a fortified area that nothing can break through. A stronghold, you’d have to actually go back to kind of medieval days. It’s that part of the castle that is really, really, really hard to breach. So, people would go and they would haul up in that part of the castle because that’s a stronghold. And no matter how hard they were attacked, they couldn’t be defeated there. And then eventually people would leave and then they’d come out and reset up camp and reset up life because the stronghold would protect them. Sounds like a beautiful thing except you can have a stronghold in your mind that is a very bad thing. You can have a stronghold where these these errant thoughts, these errant patterns, these errant paths are in your brain and they say nothing can break this down. And then what ends up happening is we have a thought pattern in our brain that is a stronghold that leads us in the wrong direction.
My stronghold when I was younger, my stronghold still today that I still have to battle is that I don’t have value. I I share this for this reason. It it started when I was young. Some of you know my story that uh when I was born, I was born with some birth defects in my ears. I was literally born uh deaf. Doctors said I’d be deaf for all of my life um because of some birth defects. I ended up getting my hearing when I was two. Praise God. Miracle. Different sermon, different day. But at that exact same time, my dad left. He split. So I’ve never met my father. Uh but when I was born, he was gone. So, I had this belief that my dad left my mom and didn’t want me because I had birth defects. Like, that was my belief. It’s my own lie that I fabricated in my brain. Okay. Truth: he left. The reason he left wasn’t because I had birth defects and he didn’t want me. The reason he left is because he had got another lady on the side and had another child with her. Okay, that’s… I didn’t know that till I was well into my adult years when when my dad died, which was I don’t remember how many years ago while I was pastoring here. So, within the last 10 years, when he died, I got a letter from a half-sister that I didn’t know I had who was my exact same age. So, I went, “Oh, now I know why my dad left.” Right? The writing’s on the wall. Figure this one out. Right?
But as a kid, I thought that he left because I had birth defects. I’m not valuable. And then my earliest childhood memory—and and we probably all have them, you can remember the earliest thing you can remember as a child—my earliest memory was me standing on the front porch holding my grandmother’s hand as my mom and my older brother walked down the sidewalk to go visit my dad. Because my dad wanted to see my older brother, but he didn’t want to see me. Now, why didn’t he want to see me? Maybe I was just too young. I don’t know. But all I know is my dad didn’t want me. And then I get old enough where I hear the stories about me being deaf and I’m like, “Now I know why he didn’t want me.” You see what I’m saying? And then it became a stronghold in my brain. So all the way through my elementary years, all the way through my high school years, when I was running towards sin, when I was doing all kinds of things, I would join sports teams, I would join clubs, I would do anything anybody offered because I was looking for value. It was a stronghold of negative thinking, of wrong thinking that led me towards sinful actions.
And and then I’ll be honest, it went to another level after I came to Christ. I was a youth pastor in Northern Indiana and I was going to get email one day and uh I I jumped on AOL’s, you know, remember the “You’ve got mail,” remember those days, right? And I was like, I’m going to get email and so I put the name Jay Fininkley in and it said, “Sorry, already taken.” I’m like, there’s no other J. Well, I guess my brother, but I don’t think my brother would have it. And so I clicked on it. It allowed me to look at the profile and it said New York. And I was like, that’s weird. My mom told me that my dad moved in New York. So, not thinking, I sent a little email. “Hi, my name’s Josh. My brother’s name is Jack. I have a mom named Fran. Ever heard of us?” Send. Like I wasn’t even paying attention. I was like, “Ah, let’s try this.” Right? And two weeks later, I get an email from Jay Fininkley. I’m sitting in my office chair. I got one of the high school students chilling with me and I opened it up and it said, “Yeah, I’m your dad. How’d you find me?” I literally fell back in my chair. I was not ready for that that day, right? And I sat back up. I read his email. Holy cow. It says, “Uh, yeah, I’m your dad. How’d you find me?” And, “Hey, how’s your brother?” So, I was like, “Dude, this is crazy.”
So, I sent him email back. “Hey, I’m Josh. I got a wife named Chrisa. I got two kids” at that time. Told him all my life story and then and then, “Yeah, uh, Jack, he’s doing great. He’s a lawyer here in town. He’s got a family.” Send. I get an email back: “That’s great to hear. Can you tell me how to get a hold of your brother?” Do you see it? And what did my mind say? You aren’t valued. You’re not loved. Now, fortunately, at this point, I had Jesus in my life. So, I was able to take that thought a little more captive, which I’m going to get to in a second. But, but I still wrestled with it because it brought back so much of my past and so much hurt and anger from my childhood that even now with Christ, it was like… but I had to make a decision. What am I going to do with that negative thought that he just put in my brain?
Which takes us to 2 Corinthians. 2 Corinthians chapter 10 teaches us what to do with those kind of thoughts. It says to take them captive. Here here’s what it says. 2 Corinthians chapter 10, it says this: “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.” Hear this. The weapons we fight with will demolish strongholds. The strongholds that this verse is talking about is the strongholds that are in our brain. The strongholds that are in our in our mind, the ideologies that we hold on to, some good ideologies, but we’re in this verse, we’re talking about the bad ideologies, the bad thoughts. It goes on. It says this: “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God.” And we—look at these four words—“take captive every thought.” We take captive every thought.
You want to fix, you want to repair your thoughts, your algorithm that’s running in your brain? Take the negative thoughts captive. Say, “You’re not getting in.” Let me illustrate it. Anybody here drink coffee? All right. Yeah, I know that because we go through a ton of coffee out in the lobby. And and if you were to make coffee at home, okay, let’s let’s think about this: that that there’s, I guess, maybe a couple different ways you could make coffee. One way you could make coffee is you could put your—now this is cold water, but you understand—you’d put your hot water in your coffee container. And then you could take your coffee and just drop it in the container. And if you did that, we would look at you and say, “What the heck are you doing?” Cuz that’s not how you make coffee, is it? You don’t put the grounds straight in the water. I know some of you go, “Yeah, I use instant coffee.” That’s not coffee. That’s trash.
If it’s real coffee, you would you would never take the grounds and just put them in the water and then drink your coffee because then you’d be getting the bad stuff with the good stuff, but you’d be getting the bad stuff. Nobody wants grounds left in their coffee. You want to drink clear coffee, good coffee without the grounds. Because the grounds are bad, the coffee is good. The way that we would make coffee is you’d have a filter and you would take the grounds and you’re going to put them in the filter and then you’re going to pour your water over the grounds so that the water comes through. I know you’re sitting there going, “Wow, that’s amazing, Josh.” No, this is called common sense.
But this is what we do in life. We go, “I guess I’m not worthy.” We take these thoughts of, “I’m not loved.” We take these thoughts of, “God doesn’t care about me. I won’t get that job. I’m not talented enough to get the scholarship. She’ll never like me.” We let these errant thoughts, fear, insecurity—“I don’t know if I can get married because if I get married, I’ll get divorced just like my parents got divorced,” that that “I got to be really careful with my money because I’ll never have enough money because I’ll run out of money and and Christmas will be hard because it was when I was a kid”—you see what I’m getting at? The stronghold comes in and we allow the the thought just to go straight to our brain.
What we need to do is when that thought of going, “I don’t know if I’m loved,” when… no, we let it go through the filter. We put it in, we grab a filter and what the filter does is it stops the negative thinking from coming in. When we say, “Well, I don’t know who I am,” what we do is we look at the truth of God and the truth of God says you are a creation of God, a child of God. You are loved by God. You were made on purpose by God and he’s got good things for you to do. Like like think about this as we’re doing this illustration going back to verse eight. Remember it said fix your thoughts on what is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, and admirable. Think about these type of things. So let’s fix our thoughts. Let’s change our algorithm and no longer conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed.
Rather than thinking, “I don’t have an identity,” find the truth of God because Satan will give you lies all day long. Satan will try to lie to you and if you don’t put the filter on, it’s going to go straight to your brain. But if you put the filter on, that filter is going to block out those lies. He’s going to speak his native language, but you’re going to go, “No, no, no, no, no. The truth says I’m a child of God.” The truth of his word says I’m a holy nation. The truth of his word says I am beloved. The truth of his word says that I am made on purpose for a purpose. When when fear comes in, you you can let fear go into your mind with with without a filter or you can say, “No, God will never leave me or forsake me.” That God said to be strong and courageous for “I’ll never leave you. I’ll never forsake you.” Jesus said that “I want you to go into the world and I will be with you always.” So when my insecurities say that that it’s not possible, my my the truth of his word, what I’m hearing, what I know is true is “I can do all things through Christ.”
So my identity, my fears—no, I’m going to focus on what is true. I’m going to focus on what is right. I’m going to focus on what is pure. When Satan says, “Oh, no. Just just grab another drink.” When Satan says, “Man, it’s okay. You don’t need to be sober.” You can say, “No, I’m going to focus on what is pure. I’m not going to focus on my pleasure. I’m going to focus on my purity. And I’m going to stack days of purity.” I talked to one of our guys tonight. Nine days sober. Nine days sober. Stacking days. Stacking days. “Oh, I can’t do it.” No, that’s wrong thinking. “I can do it. I can stack days.” And my filter will will grab a hold of what is wrong, what is false, what is pleasure, and we’ll focus on what is pure.
“Man, I just want to get revenge.” No. Scripture says to do what is lovely. That word actually means to walk in love. So, I’m not going to hold grudges. I’m not going to try to get even. I’m going to do what Romans 12:10 says, and I’m going to live an honorable life and show love. I’m not going to hate. And I’m not going to live in despair because I know that I have the hope of Christ. I know that no matter what I go through, Romans chapter 8—it was in our reading this week—is so good on this. I am more than a conqueror. I am not condemned. I cannot be separated from the love of God. Satan wants us just to throw our thoughts into this channel, into this mind without a filter. But what God does is through the power of the Holy Spirit, he puts a filter there that we can use to stop the wrong things and let the right things through. That’s what the Holy Spirit does when he guards us.
So what we need to do is we need to capture, take every thought captive and change our thinking and rebuild that road through the power of Jesus Christ. Because here’s what Jesus will do, man. He’ll come in and he will show you all of those good things. He will show you what is true. He will show you how to live what is right. He will show you that he loves you and doesn’t hate you. He will show you what it means to walk with him, to have a life that is admirable, that is built on character. He went to the cross so that we could have life.
So what I want to challenge you to do today is, man, change the algorithm. Change the thoughts because if you change your thoughts, you can change your life. And that thought starts with letting Jesus come in and do the construction. Letting Jesus come in and to start to rebuild the roads in your mind. And listen, he’ll start right away. If you surrender your life to him, he’ll start right away. He’ll put you on a new path. He’ll let you start walking in a new direction. But but I need you to hear this. He will get you going that way right away. But to rebuild those roads, it’s going to take some time. It’s going to take some time. Bottom line, it takes time to rebuild a road.
You ever seen a road getting built? Doesn’t happen overnight. I was sitting in my small group this week and one of the guys in my small group builds roads and I said, “How long does it take to build a road?” He goes, “On my own or if the government’s involved?” He said, “On my own we do it in about 3 months. When the government gets involved about three years.” And I told him what I was… reason I was asking. He goes, “It’s no different when it’s only Jesus. He can do it quick. But the reality is there’s Satan constantly trying to get in the way.” And I need you to hear that it’s not easy to rebuild a road, a map, a thought process that you’ve held for 5, 10, 15, 20, 50 years. But with the power of Jesus, that thought, that algorithm can be transformed.
So I want us to do it right now by just coming to Jesus, focusing on what is right, what is pure, what is noble, what is good, what is true, and say, “Jesus, take the negative out, and start changing the way I think.” And maybe tonight, if you’ve… maybe for you, it’s changing the way you think about Jesus. Maybe you’ve never surrendered to Jesus before. Now’s the time. Now’s the time. Say yes to him. Maybe you want to come up front and get down on your knees and pray. I want to encourage you to do that. Maybe you want to pray with somebody. We got prayer counselors that are always at our prayer banners that would always love to pray with you. The the baptistry is available if you’re ready to change the way you’re thinking and and take that step of baptism. Communion is available. It’s a great way to focus our minds because when you take communion, what you’re doing is you’re taking that piece of bread and that little cup of juice and you’re saying, “Jesus, I’m remembering your body and your blood. I’m remembering you. I’m fixing my thoughts on you. Now change my life.”
So, I’m going to invite you to stand with me. I’m going to invite you to to spend some time doing that. There’s communion up front if you want that. Maybe you grabbed some on your way in. But let’s spend some time getting on our knees, going before him, and focusing our thoughts on him. Jesus, our thoughts come to you right now. Our mind is focused on you right now. Help us to capture any negative thought and solely focus on you. In your name. Amen.
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Week 3 — Path to Positive Thinking: Rewire the Route
📖 Philippians 4:8
Bottom Line: Change your thoughts, change your life.CONNECT
Have you ever driven home and realized you don’t remember the drive? You just went into autopilot.
That’s how our thoughts often work — we travel the same mental roads again and again, even if they lead to worry, shame, or fear.Neuroscientists call it brain mapping or neuroplasticity — your brain creates pathways based on repeated thoughts. Scripture said it long before science did: “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” (Proverbs 23:7)
If anxiety keeps winning the war in your mind, it’s time to change the route.
DISCOVER
“Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable.” — Philippians 4:8
The word “fix” here means two things: repair and focus.
1️⃣ Fix (Repair) Your Thoughts
We all have mental strongholds — thought patterns built from lies we’ve believed too long.
“I’ll never be enough.”
“Everyone’s against me.”
“Nothing will change.”Paul calls these strongholds out in 2 Corinthians 10:4-5: “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God.”
It’s time to tear down the fortress of fear and rebuild with truth. God’s Word becomes the new construction plan.
2️⃣ Fix (Focus) Your Thoughts
Once you clear the debris, you have to set your focus. Paul gives a six-point filter for what should be allowed in your mind:
True — Does it line up with Scripture?
Honorable — Does it build dignity and respect?
Right — Is it obedient to God’s ways?
Pure — Does it cleanse, not pollute?
Lovely — Does it reflect beauty and goodness?
Admirable — Would others see Christ through it?
If it doesn’t pass the filter, don’t let it through.
Jesus warned that emptying your mind without filling it with truth just leaves room for chaos to return (Matthew 12:43-45). So fill it intentionally — with Scripture, worship, gratitude, and community.
3️⃣ Rewire Your Route
Science now confirms what Paul taught: your brain can re-route. When you repeatedly choose gratitude over grumbling, prayer over panic, and truth over lies, your neural pathways literally change. The same God who renews your spirit also rewires your brain.
RESPOND
You don’t have to keep thinking the same anxious thoughts. God has given you both the truth and the tools to rewire them.
This week:
Filter your thoughts through Philippians 4:8.
Replace every lie with a truth from Scripture.
Repeat it until peace feels like the new normal.
Because the path to peace runs through the roads of your thoughts. Change your route — and you’ll change your life.
Key Verses: Philippians 4:8 | 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 | Isaiah 26:3 | Romans 12:2
Peace Practice: If it’s not true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, or admirable — don’t dwell on it. Renew your mind daily. -
Small Group Curriculum – Anxious Generation
Small Group Curriculum – Anxious Generation: Week 3 Group Curriculum download PDF
Week 3: Path of Positive Thinking — Rewire the Route
Main Scripture: Philippians 4:8 (NLT)
Big Idea: Change your thoughts and change your life.1. Connect (Icebreaker)
Option A (Fun): What’s something you do on “autopilot” without thinking (drive a route, brush your teeth, scroll an app)?
Option B (Personal): Share a time when negative thinking spiraled you into anxiety.
Transition: Our minds form routes—some healthy, some anxious. But God calls us to rewire our thoughts around His truth.
2. Discover (Scripture & Discussion)
Read Philippians 4:8 (NLT):
"Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise."Discussion Questions
Why do anxious thoughts come so easily while positive thoughts take more effort?
Which of Paul’s six filters (true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, admirable) is hardest for you to apply?
How does choosing what you think about impact your emotions and actions?
Dig Deeper Scripture: 2 Corinthians 10:4–5 (NLT).
What does it mean to “take every thought captive”?
How can you replace stronghold lies with God’s truth?
3. Respond (Application & Prayer)
Personal Application
What negative thought pattern do you need to demolish this week?
What truth from Scripture can you use to rewire your thinking?
Group Prayer Prompt
Pray for God to reveal lies the group has believed.
Ask Him to help each person replace those lies with His truth.
Challenge for the Week
Memory Verse: Philippians 4:8 (NLT).
Next Step: Each morning this week, write down one thought you want to focus on that aligns with Paul’s filter (true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, admirable).
⏱️ Designed for 45–60 minutes:
Connect (10–15 min)
Discover (25–30 min)
Respond (10–15 min)
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CONWAY
AYNOR
SOUTH STRAND