Counselor's Corner: Choose to Magnify the Good in Your Life

Dictionary.com defines magnify as to make greater in actual size or to enlarge.

What are you magnifying in your life? God’s blessings and goodness or all your difficulties?

What you CHOOSE to focus on will become larger. Our problems become larger as we mull them over and over again. A magnifying lens will actually make something smaller look larger, but if you pull the magnifying lens back what you were looking at will get smaller. If we stop gazing at our problems and focus our eyes instead on Jesus we will gain His perspective on our situation-our problems will get smaller in His presence.

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12:2

I recently had many opportunities to focus on what was going wrong in my life, but I have made a decision to reflect on what is right instead. For a season in my life, I magnified all that was negative in my life. The enemy had me so consumed with what has not come to pass in my life, or my losses, or my trials that I had difficulty seeing any good. Now, I know none of you have ever magnified the bad over the good, but if you ever have done this you will know that it makes matters worse. I did not intentionally set out to amplify my circumstances, but sometimes life hits you with one curve ball after another, and before long you can find yourself deep in the pit of despair.

When we have difficult trials in our lives, magnifying the good will be a conscious choice. In other words, you will not feel like focusing on the good in your life. Heartache and pain can cause you to look at what is wrong in your life, and the enemy will then magnify or distort the true reality of your anguish.

Set your minds on things above, not on things that are on earth. Colossians 3:2

Start your day by writing (5) things that you are grateful for. Doing this will shift your thinking from the negative to the positive. Even if you feel nothing is going right, think again! Dig deep and take some time to reflect on what you do have. Practice the skill of gratitude daily and you will begin to think differently about what is wrong in your life.

We all have problems and situations in our lives that if we stare at them to long, we will become overwhelmed, anxious, worried, depressed, and full of fear. This is exactly what the enemy wants. What if instead we gave our problems over to the Lord, and daily cast our cares upon Him? What if we began to magnify the blessings in our lives and stopped gawking at our problems? What would your life look like if you did these things?

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