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Our Vice of Habitual Negativity

Writer's picture: Andy McIlvainAndy McIlvain

Psalm 139:23 Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!


God Help Me to Know Me
God Help Me to Know Me

Are you a negative thinker? Is everything in your life so out of control and painful that only despair and negative thoughts go through your mind?

Life is hard, very hard for many of us yet Christ has made it clear He will ALWAYS be with us.

Our sinful natures and the ongoing failing of our bodies in combination of the sinful glorifying culture we live in makes it hard to cope.

If you need help seek it out! Get away from friends that are negative or entice you into drugs, alchohol or other negative and harmful behavior.

Know yourself and your tendencies and also know the truth through scripture and a relationship with Christ. Jesus died for your anxieties and despair. Pray to Him, seek Him and through the Person of the Holy Spirit the promises of Christ will comfort you in all circusmtances and heal you!


"This clip comes from a full episode of the Chris Stefanick Show with exorcist Fr. Chad Ripperger." from video introduction


Your Thoughts Will Betray You

"I am a thinker. I ponder, muse, speculate, evaluate, and explore everything. In truth, I overthink. If it were possible, I could think things to death.

I consider things I should have said and should have done. I relive discussions and circumstances I’ve had. I dwell on mistakes and analyze them in great detail. I recall the sorrows and heartaches of my past like a broken record. I think thoughts like if only, what if, or I should have.

Unfortunately, the more I think, the more I despair.

Examine Yourself

A certain amount of self-evaluation can be good. We should have insight into ourselves, our motives, our choices, and our actions. We should keep aware of the ways we minimize our sin. We ought to know the idols that reign in our heart. We need to know the temptations we’re prone to give in to.

“God’s word has the power to change and transform us. Lies lose their power in the face of truth.”

The apostle Paul encouraged such evaluation before taking Communion (1 Corinthians 11:28). He also encouraged the same Corinthian church to test themselves to see if they were indeed in the faith (2 Corinthians 13:5). The prophet in Lamentations wrote, “Let us test and examine our ways, and return to the Lord!” (Lamentations 3:40). Self-evaluation is good, especially when it helps us see the sin in our heart — when it helps us see the truth that we are fallen. Good self-evaluation will remind us of our need for a Savior and point us to the gospel of grace.

Down into Despair

But sometimes we can go too far. When self-evaluation ends with ourselves instead of pointing us beyond ourselves, there’s a problem. Bad self-evaluation keeps us focused on ourselves and the things we should have done, ought to do, and will do. We dwell on our guilt over sin, shame over sins done to us, and regrets over what we wish had happened.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote that overthinking and self-evaluation can actually encourage and contribute to spiritual depression.

There is a type of person who tends to be always analyzing himself, analyzing everything he does, and worrying about the possible effects of his actions, always harking back, always full of vain regrets. (Spiritual Depression, 17)

He explained that there is a difference between self-examination, which is something we should do, and introspection, which is when self-examination becomes something we always do.

We are meant to examine ourselves periodically, but if we are always doing it, always, as it were, putting our soul on a plate and dissecting it, that is introspection. (17)

When introspection pulls us down into despair, it’s no longer self-examination, but what Martyn Lloyd-Jones calls morbidity. This morbidity makes us focus all our energies on ourselves, making us self-centered — the opposite of what Christ called us to do when he taught us to put others before ourselves. As Christians, we are to be self-forgetful. We are to put our energies into loving and serving others, just like Jesus did for us (Philippians 2:3–8).

“The gospel isn’t something we respond to once in our life. We apply it to ourselves each and every day.”

Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote that because overthinkers can be prone to spiritual depression, we should know our strengths and weaknesses. If we tend toward overthinking and too much self-evaluation, we need to be cautious of that tendency and be on the lookout for it. There is great wisdom in knowing our tendencies, being mindful of them, and resisting them.." from the article: Your Thoughts Will Betray You



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