Think 4:8 - Part 3

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Good morning.

That was a uh exciting day.

You know, Susan had to be out of town last Sunday, and so I was trying to explain it to her.

And uh the word I kept saying was sweet.

I mean, there was just a sweetness about it the love for God, the love from God, but then just the love for each other, you know, as we baptized uh each other.

So a way to go, and congratulations to everyone.

That's really an astounding and uh exciting day.

Happy Mother's Day.

Got uh some wonderful moms here.

You know, so we talk about God uh the Father, and it's I guess easy for me to forget that so many of those characteristics we love and appreciate are ones that we so often uh attribute to moms, you know, and like strength.

In the Old Testament, Israel is about to get annihilated, and it says that God raised up a mother over Israel, and then she led them in in battle as they conquered uh the enemy.

Um the uh God himself calls himself uh a uh he said he describes himself as a mother hand that would like to wrap his children underneath uh her wings.

Paul, who is a single dude, still uses a metaphor uh when he says, I was gentle with you, like a young mom uh nursing a child.

And so all those great characteristics of a love, protection, and strength and gentleness um are demonstrated by you moms.

And so we just love you and appreciate you a lot.

Um quick announcement, I've got kind of a community announcement, which um I don't have time to do often, but uh Chief Moss of the Woodstock Police Department uh called me and uh asked me to to do this and was gonna have me arrested if I didn't it.

Um but uh we've got such a great relation relationship with uh um the police officers and firefighters uh and just community servants in our area, and they really mean so much to us.

Uh we have at least two officers every Sunday helping us with traffic.

Uh just being here, you know, just by being here, uh anyone that would cause trouble usually stays away.

And and so it's just uh they take care of us and keep us uh secure, and I really appreciate them.

And they're having their main fundraiser this weekend.

It's three events.

There's a 5K race at uh First Baptist Woodstock at 7:30.

You can register um before the race if uh if you want.

And then in the city park in downtown Woodstock, there's a memorial service for uh police officers and firefighters who have lost their lives.

That's from 10 to 11.

And then from 11 to 5, there's their spring festival.

And they've got big raffles and food and games and and all that.

So hopefully it'll be a great weekend and it'd be a great way to uh support people that do so much in our uh community.

And uh the next day is kind of our spring festival.

We've got the Bless the Bikes, and we're gonna have a bunch of motorcycles.

We're gonna have a great Sunday to begin with.

And then a lot of people are gonna ride in, and so afterwards we're gonna have motorcycles and food and and music and and uh and hang out together.

And uh this morning, uh Tommy Newberry's back with us uh today.

And so Tommy's been uh Tommy wrote a book uh called the 4.8 principle, which was just a great book on uh a powerful verse in the Bible, Philippians 4-8.

And it became a New York Times bestseller, and then he wrote a follow-up called 40 Days to a Joy-Filled Life, which we've been doing together, over a thousand of us have been doing it together um each uh each day, and that's just been phenomenal.

It's been so uh so great uh for me.

And so Tommy kicked us off uh the first two weeks, and then he's back this morning to kind of wrap it up and and help us uh go forward.

So, our uh new friend and extended family member, uh please welcome Tommy back.

Thank you.

Good morning and happy Mother's Day.

As you as I have uh talked about before, I've got a uh several story makers in my family.

Um I was thinking of Ty again, who's now a junior, but when he was in third grade, he was in the fall, he just started football for the first time, and he really didn't want to play.

We sort of had to coerce him into playing, we thought it'd be good for him.

And he got out there on the field for the first practice where they tackled and had a great time of it, and he was so excited when uh he finished the practice.

Um, he came up and he wanted to show me how he made his first tackle.

And we were up on a sidewalk and the football field was down there, and as he was showing me how the guy turned and he backed up his cleat stuck in the the crease in the sidewalk, the seam in the sidewalk, and he fell, and when he fell, he landed like this.

And he yelled, and it it was awful, and we put ice on it, and we thought he just sprained it or something, but in the middle of the night he woke up saying the pain was just killing him.

So we took him to the minor emergency clinic, they x-rayed him, and the doctor came back in and said, Well, you've got a fracture.

And Ty, you know, in third grade, he goes, Well, how long can I not play?

And he goes, Well, you're out eight to ten weeks, which is the season.

And so Ty looked like he took it pretty well, and we left, he got casted, and then we went in the car, and as soon as we started driving out of the parking lot, um, I just heard him like sob, start to just sob right out, just like he couldn't control himself.

And he was so disappointed, he didn't even want to play football.

Then he got out there and played, he loved it, and then lo and behold, he broke his arm and he was gonna miss the whole season.

Um tended to take it pretty well over the next week or so, and then when we were coming back from church, about 10 days later, he started just getting really negative in the back of the car.

We actually coming back from eating uh brunch after church, and he was he was reciting all the things that he could not do.

You know, he he couldn't play football, um, he couldn't uh do push-ups.

He was on this push-up thing where he was trying to do a certain number of push-ups every single day.

Um there was he couldn't participate in P and all these other things.

And so I said, Ty, when we get home, come down to my office and we're gonna talk for just a minute.

And um, that didn't bother him too much.

And we got down there and I said, All right, Ty, I'm gonna do something that I do with a lot of my clients.

I want you to tell me um what you can do uh with just one arm.

And so I'm gonna ask you some questions and and then you write down these things that you can only do with one arm.

So you can see you really can do a lot.

And he had this weird look on his face, and he goes, Dad, I can't write.

But it got better from it got better from that point.

I said, I said, oh yeah, it's your it's your right arm.

Um I said, All right, you you talk and I'll write.

So I said, What's what's one thing?

You can't do push-ups.

You want it, you had this push-up goal for the year.

Um, what can you do?

And he said, Well, I could do crunches.

And I said, Yeah, you can't do push-ups, why not do crunches?

Um, can you play video games?

Yeah, I can still play video games.

Can you swim?

Yeah, I can still swim.

We made this list of about 20 things that he could do.

And um, and then then he got it somewhere maybe around 18 or 19.

He got it.

He goes, Dad, I can do I can do a lot more things with one arm than I really thought I could do.

This isn't that big of a deal.

And I said, Well, it's a big deal, but you can't do anything about it, first of all.

So you might as well focus on what you can do.

Um, and so he literally said, Um, I need to go do some stuff.

Like he wanted to get out of my office and go do some things.

And so, as it turned out, um, there's no way that I could talk to him about focusing on the good stuff and have it make as a lasting impact as when he actually experienced something.

And so he learned that in any situation, there's always the upside and the downside.

And if there's not the the upside and the downside in a particular moment, the upside and the downside is is just around the corner or it's two steps removed or something like that.

As it turned out, at the by the end of the season, he actually was able to play in the last couple of games of the season, so everything healed a little better.

Another situation that illustrates 4-8 thinking I took part in, but it was with my son Mason playing lacrosse.

I normally would go, I was like the third coach.

I don't know all that much about lacrosse, so I was like the crowd control coach.

Um but I love doing it, and usually I would go from my office, swing by the house, put my computer bag at home, and then drive to the lacrosse field, and and then I would be, you know, out there coaching, and my car would be in the parking lot.

Well, this time I was in a hurry and I left my briefcase.

Not only did I leave it in the car, and it has my laptop in it, I left it, I don't, I mean, I wasn't thinking clearly, I left it in the front seat, just on the floor in the front seat of the passenger side in the front seat.

And I got there and it was it was daylight.

There were tons of cars there, but it was so crowded I had to sort of park in the remote part of the parking lot, but I was surrounded by cars and it was light.

Practice was supposed to be over while it was still light.

I thought everything was good.

You know where this is going already.

So practice runs late, it's almost dark when I walk off.

I get to the car and it was uh it was I was driving a suburban, a black suburban, and the door, I don't notice anything right off the bat, but I get in the car and I notice my briefcase is not there.

And since I was in the habit of dropping it off, I was really confused.

Wait, my computer bag's missing.

Nothing else was gone.

My computer bag's missing, nothing else was gone.

I thought, I must have dropped it.

No, I'm pretty sure.

No, did I drop it at home?

I could I could not remember at all.

And we were going straight to eat somewhere.

So I was not good company because I couldn't get peace.

I didn't know whether I left it or I didn't leave it or it was stolen or whatever.

There was no visible markings on the car.

Long story short, if that's still possible, is I I went home, I left early, went home, and uh my computer was not there.

So then I go back out and I look more closely at the car, and I see that they had stuck like an ice pick up under the handlebar and gotten into the car.

And then I looked and I saw my wallet.

I said, Well, I'm sure glad they didn't take my wallet.

Well, they didn't take it, they just took all the information from my wallet and began going to all sorts of stores early the next morning in all parts of town.

Uh, and Amex called me and said, Are you doing this?

Did you have this charge?

Did you just buy a bunch of TVs at Best Buy?

No, I didn't.

Um and I remember at that point I had my computer in there.

Not only did I have my computer, but I had a this you might think of this story as uh stupid is as stupid does.

But I was planning to go home and drop it off.

So I I was going, I had a folder in there that was my master passwords list.

I don't know why I'm sharing this with you, actually.

I was gonna go home, you see.

It was one mile from my office, and then I so I I prayed about this.

I, you know, it's a it was you know, it's a computer, you don't want to lose a computer.

But I said, I remember I literally was in my car and I said, Heavenly Father, um, you know I've lost my computer.

There's a lot worse things that can happen.

If you want me to get the computer back or the bag back, that's great.

If you want if you don't want me to have it, that's fine too.

Just show me what to do.

Um 9:30 that night, uh, I get a phone call.

Uh, it's on our home phone from somebody I've never heard of, and he said, Hey, I'm trying to find a Tommy Newberry.

Um uh Kevin Link gave me your number.

This these were two men that knew each other, one of which knew me and was a neighbor of mine, but but somebody had found my bag outside of a church, right outside the rec room, the bag was there, everything was in it except the computer.

In other words, the password list, a bunch of other documents, some a client folder, everything was in there but the computer.

But truthfully, if I had been able to pick the expensive computer or my password list and a client file, I would have rather lost the computer, which I did because they couldn't get into the computer, everything was backed up and so forth.

But I attribute that to like uh first of all, an answered prayer, but also um surrendering that loss, uh however trivial it was.

Uh I thought, well, you know what?

They didn't damage my car very much.

In fact, I never did get the thing fixed before I sold it.

Um, that doesn't sound good either.

I'm sure they noticed that.

I mean, it was a tiny little microscopic pinhole.

Um apparently it was a flaw in the GM car at the time.

Um and so I I focused on, you know, I'm glad they didn't knock the window out.

I'm glad nobody was hurt.

I'm glad they didn't do that.

And it's amazing what can happen.

And there are more situations in your life.

You know, that's a little silly thing.

The thing with Ty's arm is maybe a little more serious, but there are so many opportunities to use for a thinking.

It is a foundational life skill.

And life is tough.

Life is difficult, life is challenging, and I think that's why Paul gave us these great words.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever's lovely, pure, true, gracious, just, if there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, think on these things.

And so sometimes that's easier to do than at other times, but it's a discipline.

And a discipline is doing what you need to do or what's in your best interest, doing what you need to do when you need to do it, whether or not you happen to feel like it at the time.

And our feelings often lead us off course in our life more than any other thing.

So today, what I want to do is I want to give you a visual recap of the 4.8 message so that it'll be really sticky.

Almost, almost like something that you know you're cleaning and you got you have some oil or you have some sort of adhesive on your hand and you you wash it with soap and water, hot water, but you still can't get it all off.

I want the 4.8 message to stick with you because it's it's foundational.

It is uh timeless.

I mean, it'll work forever.

It's also timely because we're all dealing with stuff.

Um the 4-8 mindset can even help the good things be better.

It can bring more color, it can amplify the things that are going well in your life.

Um, it's powerful and it's biblical.

And for those reasons, anything else, that any other experience that you have in your life, anything that goes on, anything that you want to learn or master, having this foundational principle at your beck and call is going to be very helpful for you.

If you look at this visual right here, this whatever, the a school in um Connecticut put this together, it was their theme for the whole year, the whole school year, and they made t-shirts out of it and posters all over the school, but it has the verse embedded within it, but it it it's the message is whatever.

You know, whatever.

That is a reminder to us that we are to be like detectives and look for the good in situations.

That does not always mean we ignore the bad, it just means we need to look for the good because even if we have to deal with bad, are you listening to this?

Even if we have to deal with some bad stuff, some negative stuff, if we have been reminded of the good, then we can deal with the bad in the proper perspective.

We cannot overreact to it, we cannot get all bent out of shape, we can be more creative, we can be better problem solvers.

So, not in the whatever way that some teenagers talk, you know, whatever, but in the whatever mindset of this really means that if there's a hundred things in here that aren't right, but there's one thing that is, Paul is saying focus on that one thing.

One of the reasons for that is that we broadcast our thought life to the rest of the world.

Nobody knows exactly how this works, but some people seem to be uh attractive for adversity and messes and junk and negativity.

And then because of that, they have a harder time staying positive, but because they have a harder time staying positive, at a minimum, they make tough situations tougher.

They make a difficult relationship even more difficult, they make bad times worse.

So we can, as we go about our life, we can either be a multiplier of positivity and positive energy, or we can be a divider.

We can interact with people in ways that magnifies their joy, or we can interact with them in ways that deplete their joy.

Each moment's a new beginning.

The first time I was here, I talked about three things.

Each moment's a new beginning.

We feel what we dwell upon, and we soak up our surroundings.

In other words, we've got to junk proof our mind because we soak up our surroundings.

So this is a cool image.

The sunrise that we have every single day in nature shows us that, hey, we have a new beginning, we can do it, have a do-over today.

Well, we get one of these anytime we want in our mental life.

We can just start fresh.

We can be on a 30-minute, 40-minute, three-week, three-month binge of being negative, but when we make the decision, we can start moving our thought life in the right direction.

See, life is a combination of good and bad.

We've got blunders and we have breakthroughs.

We have successes and failures, we have beginnings and endings, we have uh sorrow and success and everything in between, and it will never ever change.

It will never change.

Even when our life is at its peak, it won't change.

So think about this.

When you talk about how much energy to use, uh being being pessimistic and negative and cynical doesn't really use any energy.

It's easy.

It's it's the lazy thinker's approach to life.

It's easy to pick out what's wrong when there's always something wrong, right?

It takes a little bit of forethought to pick out the good when there's a lot of not so good things going on.

Say it's easy to be negative.

Alright, I'm not going to continue till you say that with enthusiasm.

It's easy to be negative, except on Mother's Day.

Okay?

So here's how our human nature works.

We have all these good things going on.

Uh in your mind, do a little mental checkbox.

Do you have any of these good things that are positive in your life?

Okay?

Nod to know that now here's what happens when it goes through the filter of human nature.

Things shrink.

Why do things shrink?

Why do things atrophy?

Because we don't pay enough attention to them.

A relationship shrinks, atrophies, goes away.

Whatever we don't pay attention to gets minimized.

Whatever we do pay attention to grows.

Sometimes we put our attention on the wrong things.

So we instead of growing the good stuff, we grow the bad stuff.

So it works the same way.

Right here, what happens is we dwell on the bad stuff, the mistakes, the failures, the setbacks, the blunders, the things we wish we hadn't said, and so forth.

And we dwell on the fact that we made a mistake, which is sort of silly because we're always going to make mistakes and we're not perfect.

So dwelling on it just builds up an image of ourselves as a mistake maker.

It the person who we used to be, not the person who we can be.

So when it goes through the filter of human nature, you see that these things get embellished and amplified, and that's not the approach that you want.

And the the antidote to this is following the 4.8 strategy.

Report card.

That's an image for you.

I want you to maybe think, what is the image that's going to make this sticky where I can't wash it off?

Maybe it's the report card that I mentioned before.

A child has a few good subjects, good grades, and maybe one bad grade, and parents are very likely to focus on the bad, not the good.

Why is that?

Well, it's our human nature, but does it produce more joy?

Does it make that student a better student?

I mean, reminding somebody who they're not or what they've done wrong doesn't necessarily, and usually doesn't, produce better behavior or better results in the future.

Eight to one is the statistic I shared with you on positive to negative, or negative to positive, rather, negative to positive, from parent to child.

Eight criticisms or discouragements or um don't do that sort of talk to one positive encouragement.

What if you just tilted that just a little bit?

What if you didn't even get break even?

What if you just raised it from eight to one to eight to four?

Imagine the difference that can make in a young person in your life.

Marriage is seven to one, and you have control over that.

The idea is that you have to train yourself.

You don't, you can't listen to me or read the four eight principle and automatically.

Practice it better.

You have to practice it, just like you would practice anything else.

If you want to get better at playing an instrument, better at singing, better at typing on the computer, whatever it is, you have to practice.

You don't need to be perfect, you just want to practice.

So, this is the summary.

Isn't it strange?

We downplay the positives, we exaggerate the negatives, and it's always a choice.

It's always a choice.

We can do what we want.

Why would we ever choose that way?

Well, that's easy.

It's a habit.

It's a habit.

So there's advice Paul gave us to deal with this negative human nature.

Wait, that's not the right one, is it?

No, that's not it.

This friction, though, that was the CNN version there.

Um there's this friction between we want to be realistic, which is an interesting word, we've got this junk and messes going on.

So I want to be real, so I need to talk about it.

Well, not necessarily.

I mean, what is real?

You can't, um, you know, if you're dealing with a friend of yours or a spouse or a child or something like that, there's the person you see in front of you physically, but then there's also the totality of who they are.

Um, we hold things against people for their past sometimes, which we probably shouldn't do, but if we're gonna do that, we should at least factor in their future, right?

You ever thought about it like that?

In other words, if we are assessing somebody or interacting with somebody based on who they were 10 years ago or 10 minutes ago, why not factor in to be fair and balanced who they're gonna be 10 minutes from now and 10 years from now?

In other words, when you look at somebody, don't just look at who they are today, but look at who they can be and who they should be when their full potential is developed.

And this friction, though, is dealt with with the with the four-eight principle, the message that is there, which is of all the good stuff and all the bad stuff, you've got a choice, free will, to focus on, which means replay in your mind, talk about, think about, mull it over, reflect upon all those words, you've got a choice, and and one of your spiritual disciplines for the rest of your life, because you'll never like arrive at a finish line, is to work at getting better at picking out the things that are working and giving them more attention, picking out the things you love, picking out the things that build your faith and giving those things more attention rather than less.

This is the amplified version.

The word that I love the most is fix.

Fix your mind on these things.

And that again is a discipline.

Um, but think about the 4.8 principle and and and the promise of it.

The promise of it is actually in 4-9 and emphasizes the peace that comes from focusing on these things.

Paul says, Do what I've done and what I've follow what I've said, and the peace that only God can give will be with you forever.

That's a great motivator.

So think of the difference it can make in your marriage, as a parent, in your work, in your evenings, in your mornings, during the grind in the middle of the day, on the weekends, on vacations, the rest of your life, the discipline and the blessing that can come from practicing for eight.

So easy word to think about is think for eight.

In fact, the the teenager version of the book is coming out in September and it's simply called think for eight, because that's that's the most distilled, uh broken down, easy to understand, think for eight.

Because when you look for the best in others, you bring out the best in others.

When you look for the worst in others, you bring out the worst in others.

And I believe there is a true, it's invisible initially, spiritual dynamic, which is the descriptions in Philippians 4.8 are lovely, pure, true, gracious, noble, of good rapport, depending on the translation you're looking at, those words all describe the nature and character of God Himself.

So when we look at people and interact with our loved ones in the way that God does, when we see our spouses and our children and our co-workers the way God does, we tend to bring the best out of them.

When we see the people around us and the world around us in his eyes, then it changes everything.

So we've got to thank 4-8.

The wrapping here is the gift of the present.

No need to worry about thinking 4-8 tomorrow or even this afternoon.

It's just thinking 4-8 right now.

And then when you wake up tomorrow morning and you have that sunrise, it's it's thinking 4-8 then.

And starting over each day, and if you get off on a poor note or a poor track, you just switch gears real gently, like you're like you're moving a trail horse back to the trail.

And after a while, that's going to be your default pattern.

Somebody shares some bad news with you, somebody's coming down hard on you, and you just naturally think, you know what?

They must be going through a difficult time.

You won't take things as personally, you'll shrug them off, and you can train yourself to do that.

Now, what if you woke up tomorrow with only those things that you thank God for today?

It's a powerful thought.

I heard this on the radio.

And I thought, you know, that is a quick and easy, distilled way of uh promoting gratitude.

What if you woke up tomorrow morning with only the things you thank God for today?

And the the express route, if you will, I know y'all talked about it when I was not here, but is gratitude.

The fast route to practicing 4.8 is to focus on the things that you appreciate, the things that you're grateful for, the things that you're thankful for, but actively appreciating those things, not passively.

So when I was here uh on on April 7th, I had some golf balls, and I think I showed you the golf balls, and this is the image of them.

The red represents the not so good stuff.

Lock this image into your mind.

That's what life looks like.

Life is a mixture of red golf balls and white golf balls.

If we start focusing too much on the red golf balls, it actually colors the good stuff in a tint of red or light pink.

That's the unintended consequence of focusing on the negative.

There's seven great things with your marriage that are really great, and there's seven things that aren't so great.

The more you focus on the things that aren't so great, the less great the things that are great remain.

I couldn't repeat that, but you know what I'm saying.

With your teenager, the more you focus on the two or three deficiencies, and you don't give attention to the things that he or she does well, then the child will begin to see themselves as the deficient child who just can't get it right, who can never live up to mom and dad standards, and will, and because they see themselves like that, will actually drift into that other category, at least in your mind, hopefully not in their mind.

But our lives are colored by the thoughts that we think, and that would be awful if we didn't have control over our thoughts, but we do.

So this is how it should look.

Don't amplify the red golf balls by thinking too much about them, otherwise the white will turn pink.

Some people just can't be helped.

Some people, this is another visual for you, the wrinkled$100 bill.

What does this mean?

Do you remember?

Some people are trained to focus on the negative so much that even if they get a hundred dollar bill from you, no strings attached, they'll look at it and the first thing they'll think is it's wrinkled.

Do you know any wrinkled hundred dollar bill people?

Do not elbow anybody.

Wrinkle with a hundred dollar bill.

Is is that is that your image that's gonna be sticky for you?

See, even in the best of times, the mountain peaks, some things still won't be so good.

But even in the worst of times, when things seem like it's crumbling down around you, not everything is.

Our emotional discipline, whether we're joyful or whether we're bent out of shape, is going to depend upon our mental discipline.

It's somewhat easy to remember in that our mental discipline leads to emotional discipline.

Joy starts first as a thought and then it gets translated as an emotion.

Our emotions, invented by God, allow us to feel what we've been thinking about.

So if our thoughts haven't been so great, we're gonna feel it.

And we tend to point the finger at the world or another person when what we really need to do is examine our own thoughts and find out whether we are actually making the situation a pink golf ball, or worse, a red golf ball simply by the way that we think.

So, what is the solution?

We have to, just like for diet, the 4.8, another way you could explain this to somebody who hasn't been here is the 4-8 principle is a mental diet.

It's about eating, not eating.

It's about mentally eating some things and mentally not eating other things.

You would never eat certain foods and expect to be lean, healthy, and energetic.

Why would you think certain thoughts and expect to be joyful and full of peace?

You wouldn't, but sometimes we just don't think enough about what we've been thinking about.

So this is food, but think of it as a thought buffet.

You can pick the good stuff that'll promote energy, or you can pick the stuff that will deplete your energy and sour your moods on the people around you.

It's all about seeds.

Every positive thought, and if you like the word productive, it's fine for you to use the word productive.

Some people don't like positive as much.

The negative people, maybe?

I don't know.

But productive works also for me.

You know, you could, Paul could have said, finally, brothers and sisters, whatever's productive, think about those kinds of things.

So you want to plant productive seeds.

Um, what is productive then?

Means it's a thought or an action that leads to a desired result, right?

So even if you're justified at blowing up at somebody or being down and discouraged, the world wouldn't blame you at all, they would empathize with you.

Even if you're justified, that's in quotes, even if you're justified in being negative, is it productive?

Is it productive?

Sometimes you have a valid gripe, but is hanging on to that productive?

Does it help you become the person that God wants you to become?

Does it help you reach the goals that are important to you?

If it doesn't, then it's unproductive.

If it's unproductive, it's not a 4-8 thought.

And it's counterproductive.

Why would you want to think a thought that makes you feel worse and damages relationships?

Only one reason, it's because it's not logical or reasoned, it's because we're human.

It's just the nature of us.

But we can succeed and have peace and joy to the degree that we overcome that low side of human nature.

So planting seeds, maybe that's your image that's going to make this message sticky for you.

Maybe it's the brick wall, meaning how do you build a brick wall?

It's not all at once, it's one brick at a time.

So, how do you practice the 4-8 principle?

One seed at a time, or one brick at a time.

And before long, you'll realize you built a whole wall.

You built a positive wall, or you have uh crops that are exactly what you wanted because of you being the one who chose to plant the right thoughts.

So you want to thank 4-H, you want to 4-8 your mate, 4-H your kids, 4-H your parents, 4-H your work, 4-H your teachers, and today, you want to make sure you 4-H your mom.

Right?

Round of applause for moms.

Did anybody in here grow up with a perfect mom?

No.

Oh well, that's you know exactly how to get what you want, don't you?

Nobody's perfect except moms on this one day.

Moms are perfect.

Okay, we feel what we dwell upon.

Um, 2 Timothy 1, 7, for God has not given us the spirit, or you can just substitute the word emotion, for God has not given us the spirit or emotion of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

Very powerful.

And this could be your image.

You know?

All negative emotions, whatever they are, you can raise your hand because I struggle sometimes with this negative emotion.

If it's not fear, fear is at the root of it somewhere.

In other words, if you trace it and track it back to the origin, you'll find fear underneath.

By the way, I'm about seven minutes from being done.

Seven and a half.

A little bit less than seven and a half now.

Okay, this is what happens.

Is this your image?

We think, we feel.

If you were teaching the message to a group of fifth graders, this might be a good image, which means it's a good image for us.

We think, we feel.

So if we feel rotten, what does that mean?

We've been thinking rotten thoughts.

It's cause and effect.

It's not something I invented.

Does that mean that your world is perfect?

No.

Sometimes we think rotten thoughts because some rotten things have happened.

More often than not, we think rotten thoughts because we've been conditioned to think rotten thoughts, and it's a little bit easier.

So you have to be objective.

If there is a rotten thought for a good reason, then you need to deal with the source.

But by dealing with it, that's very productive and makes it 4-8.

Mostly, though, we blow things out of proportion.

We think rotten thoughts because it's the default.

And in that situation, it's great news because you just have to go after the thought itself.

Okay?

This is not my dog, but this is a maybe this is the image.

If you love dogs, you're familiar with dogs, you understand that dogs are not like humans in many ways.

We have something special that dogs don't have, which is a little gap, a little gap, say a little gap, a little gap in between a stimuli and a response.

We have that, dogs don't.

Which means if a dog is stimulated, it will do what what?

It will do what its instincts tell it to do.

If our dog, Gracie, barks, or or the neighbor's dog barks, Gracie will bark right back.

Like she has no control over it.

But some people are like that too.

She yells at him, he yells at her, he says something sarcastic, boom, hang grenades back and forth.

Like there was no other choice.

Bark, bark back, bark, bark back.

That's how God made dogs.

Right?

You could put that up on your fridge, or you know, that's how God made dogs.

Everybody will know in the family what that means.

Sometimes you can totally for aid a situation by simply not throwing the hand grenade back.

I mean, Jesus, you know, think turning turning the other cheek doesn't mean you have to get beaten up on.

It just means you don't add fuel to the fire.

Oftentimes people get upset with us because of their junk, not yours.

They try to insinuate that it's you, but it's really their mess.

But then once you engage, then it's then it's uh you're off to the races.

It's like a dance and it's going back and forth.

We are not dogs.

Deal with negativity much like a campfire.

Spark flies up on you, you brush it off, right?

Or a picnic where a fly is on the watermelon or the fried chicken or whatever it is, and you simply shoe it away.

You don't panic, you don't overreact to it, you don't talk about flies for the rest of the lunch.

You don't call your friend and go, you won't believe this.

We had flies on our table at lunch.

You actually, some of you can keep a conversation going while you're shooing it away, right?

That's what we do.

And finally, the last point number one, each moment a new beginning.

Number two, we feel what we dwell upon.

And number three, we soak up our surroundings.

I could I said it like this last time.

I said we have to junk proof our mind.

But the reality is, is we are walking, breathing, living sponges.

We soak up our surroundings.

We soak up the attitudes of the people we hang out with, the values of the people that we hang out with.

In Proverbs 4.23, uh, we're told to guard our hearts, um, not just to guard our hearts, but there's with all diligence.

In other words, make every effort to protect your mind because what you let into your mind comes back out again and has great influence on who you become and what your life looks like.

Proverbs 423.

So that's the image maybe for you.

Guard your heart.

You know, the heart in the Bible is really referring to the totality of who we are, who we are at the core, you know, our subconscious mind, not our literal heart, but this image may stick with you.

So we can't be Lone Rangers out there in the world by ourselves.

So we have to filter out the 8-4 stuff, right?

So maybe the coffee filter is the image that you'll see on a regular basis, unless you have one of those carriaged coffee makers.

You know, and you can you can still think of the same principle, which is you want something to come out, but you don't want all of the grinds to come.

You want to have a filter.

So 4.8 is a filter for you.

Was my telephone conversation lovely, excellent, worthy of praise?

Was the show that I watched, the conversation that I had, the people that I spend a lot of time with, do they make it through my 4.8 filter?

And some do and some don't.

This is junk.

And do you want a life of junk or a life of joy?

I was trying to figure out what in the world could symbolize joy.

So we got junk, and then we have joy.

You don't want to be a South Pole elf, do you?

Okay.

Isn't this nasty?

I should have skipped this, but these are the really awful thoughts.

I call them rats, and these really awful thoughts are the extreme thoughts that really keep us locked down into eight-four thinking, upside-down thinking.

When we blame others, when we exaggerate things, uh, when we take certain things to the extreme, when we we take everything personal that people say to us, and so we get entangled in the negativity.

Proverbs 27, 17 gives us great insight into the relationship side of things, is we need some relationships that strengthen us and sharpen us.

It says, iron sharpens iron as one person sharpens another.

So the people that we hang out with are doing one of two things in this regard.

They're either making it easier to be a 8-4 thinker or they're making it more difficult.

So, bolo, law enforcement, we were just talking about that, or Steve was a few minutes ago.

This is a phrase that means be on the lookout for.

Your job as a 4-8 thinker is to look out for the good things in life.

The bad stuff's always going to be there.

When law enforcement issues a bolo, they issue a report of the bad guy, the suspect or the person of interest that they're looking for.

And when they when they do that, then every all the officers know to look for the person in the red ball cap that's five foot ten with a mustache or whatever it is.

You want to be looking for the things the bolo for you is lovely, pure, true, gracious, just, excellent, noble, commendable, of good rapport, worthy of praise, all of those things.

And when you do that, you'll start to find what you look for.

So, specifically, how do you do it?

Look for these things, look for goodness.

Kindness, nobility, integrity.

Look for strength.

Look for examples of service.

If all else fails, look for a good intention.

You know, you might end up thinking this thought, don't say it aloud.

You go, well, at least he had good intentions.

Some of you know what I mean.

At least he had good intentions.

At least she had good intentions.

In other words, look, make it your character work to look for the good when it's most difficult to do so.

If everything looks bubbly and celebratory and everybody's having fun and it's great, it's easy to find the good stuff.

Make it a mental challenge with yourself to find it when there's not that much evidence of it.

These are some questions to ask yourself as well.

What might God be trying to teach me through this?

What could be great about this?

Is there a hidden gift?

What am I looking forward to and excited about in the next week or month?

What's the lesson here?

What's God trying to do through this situation?

On the marriage side, the bottom two, you know, what do I love most about my wife?

What do I respect most about my husband?

Whatever questions you ask will lead to the answers.

Probably the most important thing that you can do is to start your day with joy and to protect your mind, to make sure that you're soaking up the right surroundings.

Start each day with joy.

This is an early morning joy ritual.

Maybe just 15 minutes.

EMJR.

During that first 15 minutes, remind yourself of the good things in your life.

Remind yourself of the white golf balls.

Because when you remind yourself of the white golf balls, you begin to see more.

When you remind yourself of the red golf balls, you begin to see more of those.

And I'm going to close with a very left brain piece here.

And then I'll and then I'll pray for all of us.

This is really what we have to deal with here.

We have a finite amount of time, 24 hours in a day, and we have a finite amount of attention.

If we put our attention on the things that we have, we'll develop a grateful spirit.

You can think of it in different terms, what's available to us, but sometimes it's so easy to focus on what we don't have.

But since we have limited attention, it's wise to focus on what we do have.

We can focus on what we can do and what's controllable.

There are so many things we can't do, so many things Ty couldn't do with his broken arm, but there are so many things he could do.

So we can focus on what we can do and what's controllable.

Third, we can focus on the opportunities and the possibilities that are in front of us.

Some opportunities are closed off to us, some possibilities are no longer an option, but we still have too many to take advantage of in one lifetime.

And then the fourth place to put your attention is on serving others, is on adding value to others.

So you focused on what you have and you have a grateful spirit.

You focus on what you can do versus what you can't do.

You focus on the opportunities and the possibilities, not the closed doors.

And then finally you focus on serving other people.

That's how you become a 4-8 thinker.

And it can start pretty, pretty quick.

So that's the bottom line.

You always have a choice.

You always have a choice.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, thank you for all the moms, uh, the moms that are in our lives right now, uh, the grace and the love and the joy of moms everywhere.

Help us to dedicate this day to appreciating mothers.

Thank you for our minds.

Thank you for our free will to thank the thoughts that you want us to thank, and those thoughts that line up with your will.

Pray that you would bless us with a fresh dose of your Holy Spirit so that we can go from this place and lift up others that we see by seeing them the way that you do, by focusing on what is lovely and pure and true.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thank you.