Bless & Love with Your Thoughts

I've been listening to "The Love Revolution" by Joyce Meyer on audio book over the past few weeks here and there while working around my home or driving in the car.  It's one of those books I feel I need to listen to several times as it's message is profound! (I've also been having other members of my family listen.)

This is a short excerpt I heard a couple of days ago:

"A woman shared this story to show the power of thoughts:

'During Christmas I moved a fig tree upstairs to the bedroom to make room for the Christmas tree. It had a small branch with about a dozen leaves on it down below the rest of the branches. It didn't look right, ruining the shape of the tree.

When I would wake up in the morning I'd see that tree in the window and think, I'm going to cut that branch off. Every time I passed that tree I'd think, That branch doesn't look right, I'm going to get rid of it.

Time went by. The tree was moved back to the living room. I continued to think a negative thought each time I noticed it. All total this lasted about a month and a half.

One morning I walked by the tree and every leaf on that little branch was yellow. There was not one other yellow leaf on the whole tree.  I got kind of goose bumpy and told my husband. He looked at me and said, "I'm sure glad you think nice things about me."

I cut that branch off that day!

I have always had a difficult relationship with my mother-in-law. Of course I never thought I had any blame, being so sweet and all. I decided this was worth an experiment. Every time I thought about my mother-in-law I determined to bless her, to go out of my way to think about her and bless her!

She seldom calls me or has interest in chatting with me. But within five days she had called me three times--just for a moment, but they were friendly calls! She hadn't called me more than six times the whole last year."

This woman ordered my teaching series on the power of thoughts and said, "I watch what I think about other people now.'

We think countless thoughts about other people, but we should do it more responsibly. I believe thoughts work in the spiritual realm, and although they cannot be seen with the naked eye, I do believe our thoughts are felt by other people. Just as the fig tree was negatively affected by the woman's negative thoughts, I believe people are affected by our thoughts.

What we think about people not only affects them, it also affects the way we treat them when we are around them. If I think secretly about how much I don't like someone and mentally go over all the faults I believe they have, when I see them I treat them according to the image I have formed in my mind."

Think about how all our relationships would improve if we would seek to bless people with our thoughts, especially those we have been the most critical of in our minds.  A powerful lesson here!