Eagle Brook Church

"The New York Times bestselling author, columnist and frequent guest on nightly news shows, Carl Bernstein writes: “For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal.” Ours is a culture filled with toxic influences that can poison our family and faith."

“If you go to work or school tomorrow, the people that you see who have their heads hanging low, are sad, depressed or burned out. You can usually trace it back to a hurtful interaction they had with someone. When someone is hurting, 99 percent of the time, somebody else’s words were on the other end of that.” —Henry Cloud Our words can do enormous good, but when they are toxic, they inflict massive pain and damage.

Do you realize what toxic thoughts do to your life? Your negative thoughts are what cause you to be grumpy and irritable. Your anxious thoughts are what rob you of what the Bible calls “a peace that passes all understanding.” Your discontented thoughts take away the joy that Christ offers. And your critical thoughts clog up your ability to love people. If you could identify, reject, and replace your toxic thoughts, so much could change in your life for the good.

As we’ve moved through the Toxic message series, we’ve seen that our words, thoughts and influences are all things that we have direct control over. The same is true when it comes to our faith. God may have stirred our heart to put our faith in Jesus, but we have the responsibility to then put the hard work into growing our faith. Without even knowing, we may have turned our faith in Christ into a toxic religion.