Think. Believe. Become

“You are beautiful” I would say to my daughters when they were growing up. Their response? “Oh Mom, of course you think that. You’re my Mom.” And so, even though I thought they were beautiful, and I promise you that they were, they didn’t believe my thought. Proverbs 23:7 (NKJV) says: “For as (a man) thinks in his heart, so is he.”

The state of being verb “is” makes this a powerful statement. What people think in their own mind seeps down into their hearts and dictates what they believe about themselves and who they ultimately are. It didn’t matter what I was saying to my girls or that it was true. 

My words were rejected. 

All that mattered were the thoughts that they believed and allowed to live in their own minds, inside their beautiful heads. They were hearing me but thinking about their noses being too big or their hair being too curly. My words were true but their thoughts became what they believed. What would become of them if they kept believing these thoughts? 

I know that when we don’t feel beautiful, we feel less than, lacking in self-confidence. We tend to shy away from people or situations instead of boldly walking in assurance of who we are. That is why I was speaking the truth over them, that they are beautiful. 

I have always believed Proverbs 18:21 that talks about the life and death power of our words. But I now see that thoughts have power too and they are even more important. We as parents want to speak life over our children but, like my daughters taught me, that may not be enough. We also need to help them to buy these truths we are speaking; to understand the power that their thoughts have over their heart. How they think affects what they believe and therefore what they do. How can we help them to see this? By speaking the words but also pointing to the result that believing them will bring into their daily life. When we see them believing truths, we can highlight the fruit we see, and celebrate it. When we see that their thoughts are not lining up with the high and true thoughts of God, we must shine light on that too.  We can show them how their thoughts are hindering them and speak of how to turn it around for good.

By creating a culture of faith and expectation towards our children, we can call them into the truth of what is spoken over them.  We are then encouraging them in what we know to be true thus helping them to believe it for themselves.

In Psalm 139 David tells us all about God’s omnipotence and how personal He is in knowing us. Even the trivial, unimportant detail of how many times we sit down and stand up each day isn’t missed by God. David then says this, “You discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways.” (Psalm 139:2b-3 ESV). Amazingly, God knows the thoughts that we will think before they even get to our heads. 

Reading this Psalm as a parent makes this picture in my head:  A child is walking on a path. God sees and is watching as a myriad of thoughts begin to converge, not yet heard or believed. They are from many different sources and have the power to influence this child directly. If they are believed, this child will live according to them. My mom's heart starts to beat faster. Where are these thoughts coming from? Who is speaking? Are they truths? Are they lies? 

Well, we know that a loving God is speaking His thoughts for a future and a hope, purposes and plans for good. And we, their parents have our loud and constant voices, echoing that love. But there are so many other voices in the life of a kid, right? Their friends and their friend’s parents will influence them with their thoughts about things. Their school and their teachers will send words of knowledge and logic at their heads. Music sings its thoughts to them with a sweet tune and a catchy beat. Social media is screaming thoughts at them from a culture that allows and promotes anything and everything. Suddenly, for a second, that picture gets a little scary, doesn’t it? Swirling thoughts, like arrows coming from all directions. Truth and lies targeting our children’s minds and hearts. Ahhhh! If it makes you want to grab your kiddos and run for the hills, I get it.

We do our best to protect and discern but we can’t control all of those things. So what do we do? We know we can’t hide. We can’t live in a bubble. Bubbles eventually pop. We want our children to grow and live prosperous and purpose-driven lives in their generation. We can intentionally monitor what they are thinking and believing and regularly examine the fruit of those thoughts in their lives. In other words, talk to them and make them feel that they are always able to talk to you. Not only do we need to teach our children how to discern the truths, and buy and believe the right ones, but we must allow opportunities for them to see the effectual results of what they are thinking and believing. This takes a constant, vibrant, vital line of real communication with our children and wisdom from God as we trust in Him.

David is a great example of someone who believed for himself and lived that out to the fullest. He was called a man after God’s heart because as a young boy he had learned to keep his thoughts on God while he was watching the sheep. When a lion and a bear came at David, he was confident enough in who he was to kill them. Why did God allow such a thing? Well, He knew that someday David would walk to a battlefield and fight a giant to save all of Israel. Love prepares. God’s thoughts may have been something like this- “David, I am with you. You are more than a conqueror. I have good plans for you.”  When no one was watching but God, David was learning how to watch sheep and kill their enemies. He wasn’t born a brave lion-killer. He became one by choosing to believe what God was saying to him while he was alone out in the fields, all other voices muted. David didn't allow thoughts that could have said that he was forgotten or that he didn’t matter, even when circumstances came along that could have supported that wrong kind of thinking. He listened to God’s thoughts and believed that he was a conqueror, grabbing that lion by the beard and taking it down. 

If you were David’s mom, would you have allowed a lion and a bear onto his path? I know that sounds extreme but sometimes I wonder if we say things to our children about who they are but then when the opportunity comes for them to step out into it, we intervene. Instead of allowing circumstances for them to see and believe it for themselves, we step in and protect them from experiential discovery. 

Hey- I’m a good mom. I would want to protect my son from a lion or a bear. I’m not saying to throw your child into the den on your next visit to the zoo! But we can bring this same thinking down to apply it to our parenting. Do we at times, try to protect our children from feelings that we think they won’t like, like embarrassment or failure? Do we sometimes say on one hand, “You can do it” but then when it looks too hard or uncomfortable for them, we step in and save them, sending mixed signals? It can be hard on a Momma bear but I think we need to see that we are undermining our words of truth with actions of doubt when we do that.

We are robbing our children of life experiences and life lessons by keeping them under a shadow of supposed safety.

I know it feels like protection to us but if God protected David from the lion, he never would have had the experience and the courage he needed to fight Goliath. As painful as it can be for us as parents, we actually help our children best when we allow them to step into those uncomfortable feelings of “it’s too hard” or “ I feel embarrassed.” Because here is where we can allow the truth of “you can do it” to be played out, no matter the outcome! If they are successful, they experience the truth for themselves! If they fail, we have the wonderful opportunity to teach them another truth, that failure is not about who they are but a necessary stepping stone to success. We teach them not to fear failure and avoid it, but to embrace it and let it be their teacher. The lie that failing is somehow a reflection of who they are is then transformed and replaced by the truth that failure is not about their “who” but that it helps them with their “do.” If they believe it, they are free to keep trying, keep learning, keep growing! But they will never even get to believing it if we don’t allow or even promote the opportunities in the first place. 

Because what we think is invisible, it can be mistaken as unimportant when in fact, our thoughts are life-determining for us and life-influencing for others. My daughters thought that my opinion about their beauty was biased so they chose not to believe it. Self-esteem hinges on what we believe and in fact, becomes what others can see. An event in my childhood taught me this. When I was a little girl, I believed my Mom was the most beautiful person in the world. I would sit on her bed in the mornings and watch her get dressed and ready for her day. She had this little move she did as she tried on her outfits and looked in the full length mirror, turning a little to the side and popping one foot up behind her with a little kick. I watched in awe. One day she looked in the mirror and commented that she had an ugly nose. I asked her what she meant and she pointed to it and said, “See that ugly bump? I hate my nose.” I was shocked! I had never seen that bump before. I mean, it was there all along but to me it was just a part of my beautiful mom’s face. Suddenly the truth about my mom had changed. She was still the same person and, in reality, still just as beautiful, but now I had a new thought. It came from what she believed and unfortunately, that lying thought stuck to me. I remember being so sad after that. It just wasn’t the same anymore, watching her and now wishing that I had never been shown the ugly bump that I could not unsee. I had been thinking that she was beautiful but she believed her nose made her ugly. Ultimately, what she believed affected me, not the other way around. The reality is that what I think about my girls doesn’t matter. Even what God thinks about them doesn’t matter, if they don’t believe. God’s thoughts are true and are shot like love arrows at their hearts and minds each day. But what they choose to believe about themselves is what will have the power in their lives, dictating the reality that they live out of and, in a real way, affect what others see. 

I understand now why David, after writing verses full of the wonderful thoughts that God has for us, says this at the end, “Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts!” (vs 23 ESV). God is such a good God, always watching each and every detail of our lives, knowing our thoughts before we think them as we walk our path of life. When He determines our path, winnowing what comes and what doesn’t, He is expectant towards us. He believes in us and calls us up to good things, hard things, uncomfortable things, all to teach us that what He believes about us is true. He actually gives us the free will to choose what we believe and see for ourselves. When we don’t believe Him, He never gives up, recalculating our path to bring around new opportunities for new lessons, still believing the best. When we do believe, He helps us in our failures and our successes that follow, always teaching us and celebrating with us, calling us higher and higher. Somehow our good Father is always able to separate out who we are from what we do, His unconditional love never failing. He always has great expectations and absolute acceptance at the same time. David totally got it! His prayer was that God would keep testing what he was believing, making sure his thoughts aligned with God’s thoughts in order to keep him on the path that would lead him to his destiny. 

This is the kind of parenting that we can model. We can speak God’s words of life and truth over our children. We can keep the lines of communication going both ways by listening to what they are saying and what others may be saying to them. We can pay attention to what they do and watch for what they are believing in their hearts to present in their actions. We can bravely encourage them to boldly step into the truths we are speaking. We can allow opportunities to teach our children to embrace failures and celebrate successes, preparing them for their future. Thankfully, we are co-laboring with a loving God who intimately knows our children and has only good aim and marvelous purpose laid out for them to walk in and become.