Day 5 of Temple Training is about dumping all the negative thoughts about my life, myself, and others. It's about dumping negativity; my own and people if I need to, in my life that create it. It's about dumping all the excuses I've made in the past and the one's that I make for myself regularly. It's about dumping the whining and martyrdom (now this is a BIG one for me) as if no one understands my situation, my circumstances or my challenges and if they did, they would understand me better - waaah! And finally it's about dumping old patterns and thought processes. So I made a long list of all the hurts, the people who bring me down, the things I whine about, and all the negative challenges in my life. I wrote the list on toilet paper (naturally, that's what you need when you're taking a dump, right?). Once the list was made, I asked God's forgiveness for all the stored up stinkin'-thinkin' and flushed it right down the toilet!
Once a year on the Day of Atonement, when the priests in the temple offered washing for the people from their year-long sins, one person was selected to take all the waste, (the useless remains of the animals sacrificed; guts, bones, skin) including the dung of the animals, far away from the community of faith, to be utterly destroyed by fire. This was followed by a very specific cleansing and washing process in preparation to re-enter the community. (Leviticus 16:27-28).
You see, there is a lot of waste in our lives, things not suitable for worship, not suitable for sacrifice, and unhealthy for every member of a community of faith. There is a lot of dung, (pardon the pun), that has got to be dumped and destroyed. Yet, we've become content to live with it, I know I had. This waste is not conducive to pure worship and it taints and contaminates my thinking and life of contentment in whatever circumstances I am in. It creates a whole lot of disease or dis-ease and the result is stinkin'-thinkin'. The longer I sit in my dung-heap, the less I recognize the stench of it. But, believe me, others do! And for certain, our Heavenly Father does. In fact, He gives us this instruction from Philippians 4:8:
"...whatever is true, whatever is worthy of reverence and is honorable and seemly, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely and loveable, whatever is kind and winsome and gracious, if there is anything worthy of praise, think on and weigh and take account of these things - fix your minds on them." (The Amplified Bible)
Why is this instruction so important? Because scripture says, "As a man thinketh, so is he."(Prov.23:7) We pollute every aspect of our being to the point of actually becoming the rubbish in our lives we complain about! It hinders our growth, it hinders our relationship, it even hinders our usefulness in worship, and it rubs off onto others! Before you know it, we're surrounded by the very negativity we can't stand, never realizing we created this dung heap!
Now mind you, ridding ourselves of this foul habit is NOT going to be easy! So, during my Temple Training, I am keeping a roll of TP on my desk with a marker pen, so that every day those thoughts from the day before that I want to dump, I write down and flush away! Doing this regularly in prayer, repentance, and physical action, is a sure cure for stinkin'-thinkin'. But, this isn't enough. Next to my desk I have a "Blessings Wall." Each day, I write the blessings and positive things from the day before on a sticky note and post it to the wall as a reminder of God's goodness and provision in my life, things worthy of praise. I am reminded that I have to FIX my mind on these things and flush away the other. I need to regularly, even daily, take a dump!
It is my goal in my Temple Training, to find myself responding to negativity with positivity, compassion, and praise. It's my goal to become one who seeks the solution instead of agreeing with the problem. May I become a joyful, positive influence of sweet perfume instead of a foul smelling dung heap!
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