Shut Down Your Mental Ping Pong Match

To experience a solid walk in your life, you must have a strong, focused, undivided heart where thoughts originate.  Proverbs 4:23 is clear, “Guard your heart with all diligence,for it is the source of life.”  Self-talk inside your mind emanates from your heart.  Emotions are derived from your self-talk which drives your behavior. Often, a ping pong match is being played within your mind between your self-talk and your emotions.  Intensity increases as the ping pong match is played out.  The volatility of this match when destructive self-talk is volleying with emotions over an extended period of time becomes a hurtful experience.  This frequently results in overpowering anxiety and/or erratic behavior.  A person can try to suppress this ping pong match but will be unsuccessful.   

One young mom called the battle inside her mind “the hood”.  I asked her one Sunday AM how she was doing.  She answered, “there is all kinds of gun fire and fighting going on in my hood” meaning her mind and emotions were volleying back and forth hurtfully.

James 1:5-8 calls the “ping match in your mind” as “being double-minded”. “Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God…and it will be given to him. ⁶ But let him ask in faith without doubting. For the doubter is like the surging sea, driven and tossed by the wind. ⁷ That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord, ⁸ being double-minded and unstable in all his ways.” Notice the “ping pong match” between faith and doubt in your mind.  The result?  The person becomes “unstable in all his ways”.

God wants to shut the ping pong match down inside your minds.  He desires an undivided heart. Psalm 86:11-13 is a powerful for verse for us who are challenged living fragmented lives. “Teach me your way, Lord, and I will live by your truth. Give me an undivided mind to fear your name. ¹² I will praise you with all my heart, Lord my God, I will honor your name forever. ¹³ For your faithful love for me is great, and you rescue my life from the depths of Sheol.”

Never forget the devil is the culprit who “lures” your attention away (James 1:14) and then floods your minds with lies.  John 8:44, “You are of your father the devil…He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks from his own nature, because he is a liar and the father of lies.”  We are fooled with the consequences being a mind full of destructive self-talk which punishes our emotions leading to behavior that is unwholesome.

The Bible states in Hebrews 4:12 that Word of God becomes the scalpel that operates on us down to the “thoughts and intents” level in our heart infusing truth into our soul.  The result is the healing of your mind.  I know because He has done this for me.

God the Holy Spirit is within you ministering to you to the deepest part of your being.  Romans 8:26 explains, “In the same way the Spirit also helps us in our weakness, because we do not know what to pray for as we should, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with inexpressible groanings.”

Colossians 3:3 is a powerful exhortation that keeps you mentally well, “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”

Shut down your mental ping pong match!