{"id":37644,"date":"2025-10-05T22:00:29","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T05:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/?p=37644"},"modified":"2025-10-03T20:49:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T03:49:18","slug":"251006-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/251006-open\/","title":{"rendered":"Open the Book"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"flex_column av_one_full  flex_column_div av-zero-column-padding first  avia-builder-el-0  avia-builder-el-no-sibling  \" style='border-radius:0px; '><section class=\"av_textblock_section \"  itemscope=\"itemscope\" itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/BlogPosting\" itemprop=\"blogPost\" ><div class='avia_textblock  '   itemprop=\"text\" ><p style=\"text-align: right;\">by Max Lucado<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-37646 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/251006_1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/251006_1.jpg 600w, https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/251006_1-300x150.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>John 8:31-32\u00a0 <\/strong><span class=\"text John-8-31\">To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said,\u00a0<span class=\"woj\">\u201cIf you hold to my teaching,\u00a0you are really my disciples.<\/span><\/span><span id=\"en-NIV-26414\" class=\"text John-8-32\"><span class=\"woj\"><sup class=\"versenum\">32\u00a0<\/sup>Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve listened to lesser voices. Locker-room know-it-alls. Godless teachers. Messed-up movie stars. Self-absorbed talk show hosts. They don\u2019t know what they are talking about. I need an authoritative voice, an owner\u2019s manual. And so do you.<\/p>\n<p>I played catcher in Little League baseball, Pony League baseball, and high school baseball. I noticed something: the width of home plate never changed. It was always seventeen inches wide. The width of the plate was permanent.<\/p>\n<p><strong>So is the truth of God<\/strong>. It\u2019s why Jesus said in John 8:31-32 (NIV), \u201cIf you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.\u201d Healthy thinking happens as we submit to Scripture. Do you want to know God\u2019s thoughts about anything? Open the book!<\/p>\n<h3>God Made Our Brains. He Can Retrain Our Brains.<\/h3>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-37576 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/time.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"198\" height=\"300\" \/>Stuck in your head? Hounded by regrets? Weighed down by worry? Change is possible! The thoughts that have characterized your past need not characterize the rest of your life.<\/p>\n<p>In\u00a0<em><strong>Tame Your Thoughts<\/strong><\/em>, Max explores three key thought-management tools and then applies them to the most common thought problems: worry, guilt, anxiety, and other types of mental quicksand that threaten to trap us. God loves us too much to let us lead a life marked by poor thinking. He has not left us alone in this battle of the mind.<\/p>\n<p>shared with permission<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John 8:31-32\u00a0 To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said,\u00a0\u201cIf you hold to my teaching,\u00a0you are really my disciples.32\u00a0Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve listened to lesser voices. Locker-room know-it-alls. Godless teachers. Messed-up movie stars. Self-absorbed talk show hosts. They don\u2019t know what they are talking about. I need an authoritative voice, an owner\u2019s manual. And so do you.<\/p>\n<p>I played catcher in Little League baseball, Pony League baseball, and high school baseball. I noticed something: the width of home plate never changed. It was always seventeen inches wide. The width of the plate was permanent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37646,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-upwords"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37644"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37647,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37644\/revisions\/37647"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}