Did you empty your Recycling Bin?

I'm a techie person. I love technology and finding new resources. I love presenting on it, sharing it, and talking about it. So why wouldn't God take one passion and use it as a picture for something? He did...hence the title to the blog. I had some drive time this morning and afternoon, and God was talking/writing non stop.

When you go to open a document from an email or website, often times it will ask you if you want to download the document. You can then choose to just open it or download it and then open it. Once you download the document, you then have to choose to delete it if you want to get rid of it. Often times people forget that even though they don't save it to a folder, the download is still there in their downloads folder. Helping others with technology issues has also made me realize that few remember to empty their recycling bins without being reminded anyway.

Stay with me for a minute...

Thoughts are going to come at us every minute of every day, but we have the choice and power to choose which thoughts we think on and which ones we do not. When we choose to think on that thought, in essence we download it to our heads. That thought eventually makes it to our heart and our mouth. If it's a thought that is from Him and full of truth, great download it. If it's not a thought from God (see Philippians 4:8), we should not be downloading it. Often times we do though, because the thoughts hit us faster than we can hit delete.

I have heard many times before, you don't have to think every thought that comes in to your mind. God took it one step further this morning as I was driving to church. Often times we delete the thought, but we forget to empty our recycling bin. Once you delete a file on the computer, it goes to the recycling bin. The file is there until you empty the bin, even though you hit delete. So if you accidentally delete something, you can "restore" it again. Let God empty your recycling bin. When God begins to do a new thing, old thoughts may raise their ugly head again (the enemy knows which ones to pull back). God begins to replace your thoughts with His thoughts, and it scares the enemy. When God empties the recycling bin with all of those "deleted" thoughts, the enemy can no longer reach them. Those thoughts, distractions, weaknesses no longer have a hold on you.....

I know this was a different kind of blog, but for me it has been a very real part of my journey. Starting back in my routine this week I was confronted with some of those thoughts again. Thoughts that could lead to despair, discouragement, doubt, frustration. I had deleted those thoughts this summer, but somehow back in a routine the enemy tried to restore the thoughts. God was louder though...recycling bin emptied. Thank you Jesus!