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Thoughts on Positive Thinking

Positive thinking for the Christian is rooted in passages such as:
"And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose." (Romans 8:28)
"What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?" (Romans 8:32)
"It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I may learn Your statutes." (Psalm 119:71)
Positive thinking for the Christian is different from optimism in that it is rooted in the real picture of things for Christians. It is not wishful thinking or even seeing the real silver lining around the dark cloud. The whole cloud is truly golden for the Christian!
Positive thinking is fully secured to, and rightly owned by, true Christians alone. All the books, podcasts, and conferences on positive thinking outside of the Father's electing love are instructions, sadly, on how to deny reality. Reality for those still in rebellion against God is every day full of the threat of God's ultimate, sudden judgment. Tomorrow is not promised. Hell is- for those who won't turn from their love of sin to a miraculous love for Christ.
Positive thinking for the Christian is not "selling out" out to secular ideas. It is a command of Scripture itself ("Rejoice always!" "Give thanks in all things"), and rightly belongs only to those who love Scripture. We therefore are right to reclaim it from those who hate Christ.
Non-Christian positive thinking "works" in keeping people "happy" because it is a carbon copy of how mankind was originally created to think. But in the howling winds of post-rebellion earth, positive thinking is misplaced, for it has not yet been recaptured by, and rightly oriented to, the unending love of Jesus Christ.
Not being a temperament, Biblical positive thinking is learnable by even the most pessimistic of people. I myself am Eor, but even I am learning and applying how to think Biblically about my life!
Realism for the Christian is all Good News, so it involves, necessarily, positive thinking. Realism for everyone else is all a looming nightmare behind the immediate gifts God gives even to those who will not treasure Him. Non-Chrisitan realism should therefore be focused on one thing: getting right with God through Christ.
For the Christian the scope of positive thinking is as boundless as all the providence of God in the world and universe. Even God's judgements in the earth are in fact on behalf of His true church. "He works all things for the good of those who love Him." So, we are to rejoice in them, though not in the suffering itself of the individuals under judgement. (As we have received grace upon grace, so we should pray earnestly for those under the direct and indirect judgements of God. After all, their suffering and our Spirit-led prayers are the Divine mix which God so often uses to bring about the new life of Christ in their hearts.)
God's love for us Christians is such that, in a sense, grace in Christ is the only thing we should be focused on. God's gracious promises and activities create a river of life in which faith and positive thinking swim, each spurring the other on with joy.
Positive thinking is focused on the grace of God towards us. It's not like grace is the only thing in the Bible (there is law, sin, and judgement, for example), or that it is the only perspective on the whole of the Bible, but what is important to regrasp is that we have only received the grace, not the law or its' condemnation. We can read the Bible for all that is in there, but in that true story, that history, we Christians play the part of recipients of grace only. And so we should always let the Bible (as well as God's acts in our lives) feed us GRACE, even in reading about God's glorious judgements.
We may be full of positive thoughts since God has related to us Christians in a special way, absorbing on the cross- in Christ His beloved Son- all the law, with its wrath, leaving no other way to relate to us but gracious, overflowing, endless love! The law is now a guidepost for us, showing us what righteousness looks like, nothing more or less. The law cannot "get" us now- we've already been set free and escaped into Heaven. In Christ, we are already legally and mystically seated above all condemnation, legalism, moralism, dread, and judgementalism. The infinitely positive end to our lives has already been accomplished and applied to us who love Him.