By Rae Lynn DeAngelis
It seems that I have a little problem hitting the delete button. Perhaps you can relate.

My problem isn’t spam emails—those I can easily discard. The problem is all the other transmissions that come to my inbox on a daily basis. As soon as I get ready to hit the delete button, I think to myself. What if I need to refer to that later?

Months later, I literally have thousands of emails floating around my inbox, congesting the cyber highway to my computer. Eventually, I must go through the drudgery of weeding these emails out. When I finally take the time to do so, I’m often amazed by the needless information I held on to. How much misery I could have saved myself if I had just hit the delete button the first time around.

We can have a similar mentality when it comes to our brain’s inbox. Whether it’s the hurtful words of others, negative self-talk or lingering memories over past hurts, we just can’t seem to hit the delete button in our minds. Before we know it our heart is cluttered with all sorts of negative transmits. The resulting blockage fogs our brain and clogs the outflow of our heart.

“I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind…” (Jeremiah 17:10a)

We need to ask God to help us weed out those negative thoughts floating around our mind’s inbox so we can free up space for something good—truth.

“…the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace;” (Romans 8:6b)

When negative thoughts threaten to take up residence in your mind, hit the delete button right away. Take it from someone who knows; you’ll save yourself from a whole lot of misery and heartache later on.

“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5)