Think Great Thoughts
Published: Fri, 02/14/25
Updated: Fri, 02/14/25
Sessions Include:Lesson #1 Lesson #2 Lesson #3 Lesson #4 Lesson #5 Lesson #6 Lesson #7 Lesson #8 Lesson #9 Lesson #10 Lesson #11 Lesson #12 Lesson #13 Lesson #14 Lesson #15 Lesson #16 Lesson #17 Lesson #18 The Me I Want to Be / Lesson #19 The Me I Want to Be / Lesson #20 The Me I Want to Be / Lesson #20 The Me I Want to Be / Lesson #21 The Me I Want to Be / Lesson #22
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One Saturday night our house was assaulted by an odor so indescribably noxious we had to evacuate. We figured it was a gas leak and called both the gas company and the fire department. As it turned out, a skunk had gotten very close to our house. I made a few phone calls, but no exterminator would come to look for a skunk, so we figured the problem would go away on its own. Most of the odor faded away, and what lingered we got used to. It didn’t bother us — until a visitor would enter and say, “It smells like a skunk around here.” A week later I was on the road when my family called to say the skunk had struck again. I had to find someone who specialized in the ways of the skunk — a “skunk whisperer.” The man discovered that we had two live skunks and one dead one permanently residing in the crawl space under our house. It cost a lot to get the skunks removed. But it was worth it. You cannot get rid of the skunk odor without getting rid of the skunk. Our sense of smell has a unique power to evoke emotion, and in our inner lives, our feelings are like aromas. Our positive feelings — joy, pleasure, gratitude — thrill us like the scent of freshly baked bread. Negative feelings — sadness, worry, anger — can make us want to evacuate our lives. When they hit, your mood dips, you lose energy, God seems distant, prayer seems pointless, sin looks tempting, and life looks bleak. But our feelings never descend on us at random. As a general rule, our emotions flow out of our thoughts. Discouraged people tend to think discouraging thoughts. Worried people tend to think anxious thoughts. These thoughts become so automatic that, like the lingering skunk odor, after a while we don’t even notice we are thinking them. We get used to what is sometimes called “stinking thinking.” This can happen to anyone. The prophet Elijah had reached a high point of his life when he defeated the prophets of Baal. Then one event — the opposition of Jezebel — plunged him into fear. Look at his thoughts: he felt worthless (“I am no better than my ancestors”), hopeless (“he ran for his life”), isolated (“I am the only one left”), and unable to cope (“I have had enough”). He actually wanted to die (“Take my life, LORD”). But God is the great healer. He had Elijah take a nap and eat a snack, then he did a little divine cognitive therapy to replace each of these life-killing thoughts. He gave Elijah an epiphany (“the LORD is about to pass by”), filled his future with hope because God would accompany him (“go back the way you came”), revealed that he was not isolated (“yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel”), and infused his life full of meaning because God had a mission for him. Elijah thought his problem was Jezebel, but there will always be a Jezebel in our lives. The real challenge is between our ears. The way we live will inevitably be a reflection of the way we think. True change always begins in our mind. The good news is that if God can change Elijah’s thinking, he can change ours. What makes people the way they are — what makes you you — is mainly the way they think.
Becoming the best version of yourself, then, rests on one simple directive: Think great thoughts!
John Ortberg, The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God’s Best Version of You (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), 12–13. If you would like to explore this new study, it is available on Amazon, as well as part of Good Questions Have Groups Talking Why Study Books?My church recently transitioned to using books as curriculum in our Sunday School. The reason is simple. My life has been profoundly influenced by the reading of books. I don’t think my life has ever been changed by any curriculum piece I have ever read. Ever. I have actually surveyed a number of groups I have taught over the years, asking: Has your life ever been changed by any curriculum? The most common response is for people to laugh out loud. Our first study was the Bless book by Dave and Jon Ferguson. It is a great study on relational lifestyle evangelism. About half-way through the the study, we did a survey to help determine what we would study next. No one wanted to go back to the curriculum. Not. One. Person. The #1 choice for what to study next was a tie:
We will be studying these two books over the next year and a half or so. Here is what Amazon says about Ortberg’s book: The Me I Want to Be will help you discover spiritual vitality like never before as you learn to "live in the flow of the spirit." Why does spiritual growth seem so difficult? God's vision for your life is not just that you are saved by grace, but that you also learn to live by grace, flourishing with the Spirit flowing through you. And this book will show how God's perfect vision for you starts with a powerful promise: All those who trust in God "will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit" (Jeremiah 17:7-8). Pastor and best-selling author John Ortberg first helps gauge your spiritual health and measure the gap between where you are now and where God intends you to be. Then he provides detailed tasks and exercises to help you live in the flow of the Spirit, circumventing real-world barriers - pain and sorrow, temptations, self-doubt, sin - to flourish even in a dark and broken world. As you start living in the flow, you will feel:
God invites you to join him in crafting an abundant and joy-filled life. The Me I Want to Be shows you how to graciously accept his invitation. I have just completed a new, 22-week study of John Ortberg’s book, The Me I Want to Be that we will be using in my church. (I had previously done a 7-week study.) I have always thought that using books as a curriculum would be a good idea, and I have written a lot of book studies over the years. One of the things that actually using books as curriculum caused me to realize has to do with cost. By writing a study on every chapter of this book, instead of my previous study that had a lesson for every section, the cost drops to below what we were paying for curriculum. Better curriculum. Cheaper cost. Win. Win.
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