Avoiding Negativity

Avoiding Negativity by Dr. D. James Kennedy

"…for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.…he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways."  James 1:6, 8

Have you ever heard the old song, “You gotta accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative, and don’t mess with Mr. In-Between?” Today, let’s talk about how we can avoid negative thinking, because if we harbor negative thoughts, sooner or later they’ll destroy our lives.

One day a man tried to start his car with a jumper cable. Instead of connecting the correct part of the cable to the positive pole of the battery, he connected it to the negative pole. That mistake sparked a terrible explosion, and because of it, the man became permanently blind. In the same way, many people blind themselves by connecting to the negative pole of life.

Negativity is like a witch’s wand that attaches itself to a person’s forehead. The wand kills and destroys whatever it points toward. It may point toward the person who wears it, or it may point to others. You probably know people who walk around with that wand permanently pointed at their own lives. You can recognize them immediately by their negative thoughts: “I’m nobody…I really don’t amount to much…I don’t have many friends…I’m not too smart.”

Others take that wand and point it outward. These people fail in life but blame their failures on others: their parents, their spouses, their bosses, the system, the corporation. They never accept responsibility for their own downfall. Some even point the wand at God. They say, “God could never love me. I wonder if there even is a God.”

We all have negative thoughts at times, and often we don’t recognize them. While we can’t avoid all negativity, we can turn our attitudes into more positive perspectives. Today ask God to show you your negative thoughts and to give you the ability to look at the bright side of life.

I have begun everything with the idea that I could succeed, and I never had much patience with the multitudes of people who are always ready to explain why one cannot succeed.  BOOKER T. WASHINGTON