My grandmother recently sent me a book called "Good to Great in God's Eyes: Ten Practices Great Christians Have in Common" by Chip Ingram. I'm only 30 pages in, but already Ingram has all the wheels in my head turning. This book is right up my alley - not only because of it's practical life applications and earnest focus on Christian discipleship, but because it's written for those (like myself) who struggle with a strong desire for greatness.
In the introduction, Ingram talks about how he has wrestled with the question of whether or not it is wrong to want to be great, and whether ambition indicates a spiritual problem. The conclusion he drew came from Luke 22, where the disciples were arguing with one another over who was the greatest. Ingram points out that Jesus does not rebuke them for wanting to be great, but redefines what true greatness is. Instead of being what the world thinks is great, Jesus encourages them to pursue a life of service that will help build the Kingdom of God. Clearly, God wants us to seek SPIRITUAL greatness and pour everything we have into glorifying Him!
Now the question is - how do you do that? The book discusses 10 practices or disciplines that will help us on our quest for a remarkable faith. The first is to "Think Great Thoughts" (aka - focus on protecting your thought life.) I found the following two paragraphs to be particularly interesting:
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"Think again about how deliberate we can be when it comes to our physical nutrition. Thirty years ago, if you pulled a can of vegetables off the shelf, it listed one ingredient: the vegetable itself. Today you'll find a breakdown of protein, carbohydrates, and fat, as well as how much fiber and vitamin content is in there. Fast food restaurants have charts telling us exactly what's in the food we're eating. Those labels and charts are there in large part because of popular demand. Many people today are extremely fastidious about counting calories and nutritional milligrams. We can be downright obsessed with our intake.
"It's amazing to me that our culture can be so smart and deliberate about physical nutrition and so mindless about the spiritual, intellectual, and emotional content of the ideas we consume. We're casual about what goes into our minds and then end up in therapy desperately trying to change what's in there. I'm convinced that if we took half the care to guard our minds that we do to guard our bodies, in about five years we would be amazed at the transformation that has taken place in our heart and relationships."
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Wow. What a thought. I know I'm not that careful about what I eat. Sure, I've tried to cut back on my salt intake, and I try to remember to drink water instead of Coke, and I have started setting my vitamins out on the kitchen counter so I'll actually remember to take them. But do I REALLY try to filter what I put in my body? No. I rely on my fast metabolism to take care of all the sugar, fat and calories for me. But as bad as I am about taking care of my physical health, I do even less to protect my mental health from the junk the media produces. I do try to balance the hours I spend in front of the TV or my computer with some solid, Christian reading from time to time, but I'm sure that's not enough to achieve the levels of spiritual greatness I aspire to.
I know that my thought life profoundly affects my daily experience and so I need to be more conscientious about how I'm feeding my mind and soul. As James Allen says:
"You are today where your thoughts have brought you. You will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you."
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