Mom, "I can't stop thinking!"
The walls of my boyhood home must have been very thin. I remember one restless night trying to go to sleep. Mom detected my restlessness and said with a loud voice from her adjoining bedroom, "Jimmy, go to sleep!" My reply was something like, "I can't get to sleep, I can't stop thinking!"
Let's try an experiment. For the next 60 seconds try not to think about anything.
Times up....
Pretty hard isn't it? Have you ever wondered why you think about the things you think about? I have (maybe I have too much time to think). I am sure that some researcher somewhere has received grant money for research into thinking patterns and why we think about what we think about. I am more interested in what the Bible says about our thinking. A Bible study into "thoughts" and "thinking" gets quite involved. Ultimately we learn that our thoughts come out of the state of our hearts (Mark 7:20-22 for example). Instead of jumping into that whole study, I just want to stress three points regarding our thoughts.
1. What we think about matters.
There are many scriptures that indicate that our thoughts matter to God. For example, "The Lord detests the thoughts of the wicked, but gracious words are pure in his sight" (Proverbs 15:26). Ultimately, thoughts merely reflect what is in our hearts, but we know that God changes hearts every day (Romans 12:1-2). This leads to our second point.
2. We have the ability to control our thoughts.
Although we do not always exercise the power to control our thoughts, we have been given this ability. People are guilty of thinking habitually--that is we tend to fall into patterns of thinking. This is often because of our environment. The computer programming phrase comes to mind--garbage in, garbage out. This applies to virtually every area of life and is the reason for Paul's admonition:
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatsoever is true, whatsoever is noble, whatsoever is pure, whatsoever is lovely, whatsoever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things." Philippians 4:8
3. We can determine many outcomes in our lives by controlling our thinking.
Think about the power of this statement!
This statement is true.
If we think about positive, Godly things, then we will have more Godly positive outcomes in our lives.
The opposite is also true.
If we think about negative, worldly things, then we will have more negative ungodly outcomes in our lives.
This is true for the Christian and for the non-Christian! This is a natural law that applies to all mankind. There are many laws that apply to mankind--give and it will be given to you, love and you will be loved, tithing (there is a blessing for all who give a 10th to God, I know several non-Christians that feel strongly about tithing). Thoughts have a resonance or frequency that can be heard by God and I believe can be detected by others. I would rather my life resonates positive, Godly, up-lifting "vibrations" than ungodly, faith-killing, fleshly "vibs".
