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Think About It! (Matt 22:37 KJV) “Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” We read it, and we hear it preached, but do we know how to apply it to our lives? That is a good question. Here is another very crucial question concerning anything that we read in God’s word, and hear over the pulpit: How do we get the words to drop from our heads into our hearts? For the most part we expect God to do it all. We want Him to say it, then cause us to understand it, and then make it the epitome of how we live. I have good news; He will, if we will. The answer is this; we can’t do it without Him, and He won’t do it without us. If we will set our affections, and our attentions, and our concentrations, and our meditations, and our desires upon the things that God is saying, then He will write them upon our hearts. (Pro 23:7 KJV) “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he:…” The world says we are what we eat, but the Bible says that we are what we think. The true meaning of the Hebrew word used in this text refers to the action of opening or performing the act of gate keeping. The fact that our mind is actually a gate explains why there is a constant battle for the dominion of it. If we are to have victory in the battles, it helps to understand how thoughts are processed. We conceive a thought with our minds, but we can only believe a thought with our heart. The conception takes place when we allow our mind to agree with a thought that has entered it. The formation from thought into belief happens during the gestation period, or term of pregnancy. At full term we give birth to what we believe by the words we speak, and by the way we act. That which a person believes will come from his mouth when he speaks. The information becomes truth to that person even if it is actually incorrect. Knowing this, we discover that what we allow to be conceived in our minds is an issue of life and death. (Rom 1:28-31 KJV) “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:” What are we thinking about on a daily basis? With millions of things to think about every day, do we ever consider that thinking about growing in the love of God, as well as growing in love with God are among the greatest topics to ponder? God offers us so much every single day. He wants to give us real life. Our part is to believe what He says enough to act upon it. He speaks, but do His words fall upon deaf ears? (Heb 4:2 KJV) “For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.” Our faith is placed into operation as we take what we hear from God and keep it as the most important priority in our minds. Only then can it drop into our hearts and manifest in our lives. God said that we could love Him with all of our hearts, and with all of our minds, and with all of our souls. That is possible if we will not continue to allow outside influences to have precedence over the word of God. Let us receive the word until we conceive it, and believe the word until we see that it has become a part of our lives. -Kurt Thurston March Newsletter 2001 | Stewardship | Mind Your Own Business - part 2 of 2 Pastor's Journal March 2000 | Think About It | Inside-Out & Upside-Down - part 3 of 3
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Biblical Counseling for Leaders
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