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Philippians 4:8

THINGS OF GOOD REPORT

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As we practice Philippians 4:8 we are taking time to enumerate and examine things that are more healthy, illuminating and edifying to think about. In the United Bible Societies’ A Handbook on Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, it is pointed out that “things refers not to particular concrete objects but primarily to actions and events.” For example, when thinking about things that are lovely, we should not limit our thoughts to a list of objects but let our minds examine aspects of the objects that inspire us to think of them as lovely.

One of the categories of things our scripture verse gives is “things of good report.” What conduct or action is good and noteworthy? What is descent, wholesome, and commonly expected right behavior.  I want to differentiate between “of good report” and “Praiseworthy.” We will look at “things that are praiseworthy” another day. So, what about good behavior? If you were to define a person as “of good report,” what would you include in your definition? If you were to explain why you think a thing is good and worthy of attention, what about it causes you to conclude that?

Let’s begin with things that might quickly come to mind. A person of good report would be kind, generous, well-mannered, hard-working, patient, happy, talented, gracious, positive, and helpful. A thing that is noteworthy and good would be one that is useful, enjoyable, productive, lovely, necessary, desirable, and adds to our well-being. With these descriptions in mind, can you think about things that are of good report?

Imagine the difference in our minds and hearts when we find these things to contemplate rather than people and things that are despicable, tasteless, and depressing. We must allow ourselves the pleasure of thinking about things that are good. Bring to your mind the faces of those who are of good report and give thanks to God for them. Bring to your mind things in your life that are wholesome and wonderful and give thanks to God for them. If we can push our minds in the direction of discovery, our minds will begin to identify more and more noteworthy things throughout the day.

Take this to heart. “Anxiety in the heart of man causes depression, but a good word makes it glad.”  (Proverbs 12:25)

CHOOSING LIGHT

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There are many things in life of which we have no control. That is something we can easily agree upon. I don’t think we need to list those things. We just know there are some things we can not fix. We can complain and worry about those things and we can pray about them, but we cannot control them. There are other things that by our choices we can change. I want to suggest that we can choose what we will spend time thinking about.

In my blogs I have zeroed in on Philippians 4:8. This scripture names some things to choose for deep thinking and meditation. “Whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy – meditate on these things.” The scripture directs us to choose these things to think about. We can be fair to the text to understand it is telling us to choose these things instead of other things. Make this your choice.

There are so many other things to ponder. If we are not careful, we allow others to feed us things to think about. News media, commercials, movies, music, TV, social media, email, texts, magazines, games, friends and family will dominate our thoughts from dawn to dark, if we choice to let them. Small changes in our understanding and way of thinking happen every day as we choose to let our world pour garbage into our brains. It is interesting to me how so many enjoy the entertainment focus on Zombies. What do zombies want? To eat our brains. The really scary thing is, our brains are being eaten and we are choosing to let it happen.

“Instead.” Instead of choosing things that are not good for our brain, heart, body or spirit; think about things that are true, noble, just, pure, lovely, of good report, and praiseworthy. Jesus said, “the lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness” (Matthew 6:22-23). It’s a choice.