Nido Qubein once observed, “You can’t think your way into acting positively, but you can act your way into thinking positively.” George W. Crane has advice based on this observation: “Act the way you’d like to be and soon you’ll be the way you act.” These men believe that if we begin to act in a good way that soon our thinking will be affected to feel positively about our good acts. It works the other way as well; if we start behaving badly our thinking will change for the worse.
In Scriptures this principle is taught by example. For instance, the first commandment is to love God. We find it difficult to love someone who cannot be seen. However, we read over and over in the Psalms and elsewhere to praise our God. “O praise the Lord all ye nations, praise him all ye people, for his merciful kindness is great towards us.” David writes, “I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever: with my mouth will I make known thy faithfulness to all generations.” By praying to our heavenly Father and praising Him for all He has done for us, we appreciate His goodness to us and grow in thankfulness and love for Him. Our thinking changes because we are speaking the words of praise that we are commanded to speak. Our thoughts become full of gratitude for the many blessings we have been given, and we love our God for it. Our action of mouthing the words of praise to our God will change our thinking and the words will become real to us.
Another example comes from Proverbs where we are advised to train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. By forcing children to obey, to perform their duties, to go to school, to learn about God, we are training their thinking. We teach them not to be greedy by forcing them to share their toys or cookies with other children. They learn from their actions many lessons, such as the satisfaction of a job well done and to consider the needs of others, all positive thought processes. Their actions change their thinking, even though they act in that way because their parents tell them.
A negative example is Pharaoh in Egypt whose actions to oppose the God of Israel so hardened his thinking that even after the firstborn were slain and Israel had left, he reconsidered and decided to chase them down and forcibly return them. He acted negatively, his thinking aligned with his actions, and at the last his decisions would be considered irrational, with Egypt in ruins as he headed off in his chariot to his doom in the waters of the Red Sea.
It is much easier to think negatively, and negative thoughts tend to produce negative results. As Henry Ford said, “If you think you can do it, or you think you can’t do it, you are right.” If we focus on the hurdles in our way and we do not take the actions that will bring success, essentially we defeat ourselves. There is a story about a little league coach who was trying to inspire his team to think more positively. One day after they arrive at the field for a game, one of his players comes running up to him and says, “Do you see how big the fellows are on the other team? I think we are going to lose.” The coach realizes that his lessons on thinking positively are not sinking in. He says to the youngster, “Don’t you remember me telling you that you should think positively? Now, rephrase your statement for me.” The little boy says, “Okay coach, I know we are going to lose.”
If we begin to act as if everything is going to get better, it will help us to change our negative attitude, and soon we will be thinking in a more positive way. When Joshua and Caleb returned with the spies, they ignored the giant warriors and strongly fortified cities they had seen and focused on moving forward to take the land with God’s help. Unfortunately the other 10 spies thought only about the obstacles and convinced the rest of the people that the task of conquering the land was impossible. The people made plans to return to Egypt because they thought that they would never be able to take over the Promised Land. As a result, that generation was not permitted to enter the land. Their negative action reinforced their negative thinking, and they reaped the unfortunate consequences.
In contrast, Caleb was so confident in God’s help that he specifically requested Hebron for his inheritance, the area where the giants in the land lived. Joshua, who had feelings of total inadequacy when he stepped into the shoes of Moses as the leader of Israel, was very careful to obey God and to act the part of a leader of the people of God. Joshua’s success in acting the role assigned to him changed his attitude and he truly became the faithful leader who captained the people in their conquest of the land. Joshua and Caleb are examples of George Crane’s words of wisdom; their actions caused them to become the men they wanted to be.
Paul teaches us this lesson when he says, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.” What we may consider to be obstacles to our progress may in fact be part of God’s purpose for our life. In Paul’s life, all things on the surface did not seem to be working together for his good, but he explained that even though he had been arrested and charged falsely and was in prison though innocent, that he actually believed that it was all working out for good. When Paul was in prison in Rome and chained to Roman soldiers, he wrote a letter to those who lived in Philippi and said to them, “Now I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. Because of my chains, most of the brothers in the Lord have been encouraged to speak the word of God more courageously and fearlessly.” Paul recognized that what seemed like a terrible thing was actually an advantage for the truth. His actions, preaching and writing letters in spite of his chains, gave him a reason to think positively about his situation because he saw how the message of the gospel spread because of it.
While Paul was in prison he wrote a number of what we call prison letters. Had he not been in prison he could simply have visited these ecclesias and told them face to face what he wanted them to know. John, on the other hand, was not in prison, so when he wrote two very short letters, he said to a sister in 2 John, “I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete.” To Brother Gaius in 3 John he wrote, “I have much to write you, but I do not want to do so with pen and ink. I hope to see you soon, and we will talk face to face.”
We can see the truth of Paul’s teaching that all things work together for good, for all things really did work out for his ultimate good and for the good of all who received his letters. We are thankful for Paul’s prison letters since we in our time now benefit from the wise inspired counsel he wrote to those ecclesias. We need to learn this lesson well and put it into action in our lives by acting in a positive way even when we do not feel like it. We will surprise ourselves when we discover that even in times of great hardship, acting positively will affect our feelings and we will begin to think more optimistically.
We can take comfort in the fact that the Lord is in control of our lives. We are the sheep of his pasture, and he is taking care of us to bring us through the trials of this life to the glorious life to come in the kingdom. We are thankful to know, as Paul did, that “If God is for us, who can be against us?”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One