What You Have Seen in Me…

By Diane Heeney | November 20, 2020

Someone asked me the other day, what scripture had been on my heart that week. Well, I’ve been thinking about what I’m thinking. How I’m thinking. How I’m modeling how to think to our kids.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.  Philippians 4:8,9

I’ve been accustomed to hearing lessons from verse 8, but we can be bad about removing verses from their context in an effort to stress a main idea. It’s important to run our thoughts through that 4:8 “sieve”, but today I’m seeing an admonition for me as a parent when I view this truth in tandem with verse 9. Verse 8 is designed to alter how I think and line it up with God’s thinking. His thoughts are not our thoughts, so this is one of those continual game-on challenges for us.

But then I consider the next idea. Paul, who, incidentally was writing this “joyful letter” from prison, invites the readers in Philippi to follow his example. What they’ve heard and seen through his testimony, he encourages them to practice for themselves.

So I ask myself–how am I thinking? When I consider the threats, frustrations, inconveniences, and concerns of our current situation in this world…are my thoughts making it through the sieve? Are they dark, fraught with worry, full of fear? It will translate into the climate of my home. I will model that for our kids. I will unconsciously be inviting them to practice the same behavior.  Convicting.

As I navigate this life, my spiritual GPS is continually “recalculating”. Some of the things that have helped me:

  • Good music
  • Keeping a mental thankfulness list…writing it down can help, too. A grateful heart is a powerful tool in adversity.
  • Embracing my smallness and reveling in God’s bigness. The world would teach us to reverse that order. Even if I can’t get out in nature, I can still “consider the heavens” via online tools. Oceans which extend their watery, wonderful depths from horizon to horizon, towering peaks crammed full of evergreen boughs reaching ever-heavenward, the broad expanse of stars which follow their courses according to His voice…all so healthful in bringing needed perspective.
  • Reading great books that get my mind to contemplate ideas beyond toilet paper, quarantines, and closures.
  • Prayer. This little book has been priceless through the years in reordering my mind and teaching me how to worship.

I’ve said for years that one of the biggest blessings of homeschooling is not teaching our kids what to think and regurgitate on paper for a test and a grade…but teaching our kids how to think, evaluate, discern, choose rightly as life skills. I’m still building those skills. Are you?

Diane Heeney is a pastor’s wife, living and serving in Wyoming. She blogs at Strength for Today, where this post first appeared. We republish it with permission.

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