Proverbs 4:23. Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.
Do you know that your actual heart sends thoughts to your brain? Those feelings you have in your heart when you remember how someone is making you feel are actually thoughts. Afterthoughts come from there as well, I think, cause that’s where I feel the afterthought first.
There is a saying that ‘people will remember how you made them feel long after they remember what you said’. How you make people feel is more important than what you tell them, although your words leave in their mind positive feelings or bad feelings. Be careful about how you make people feel. Mostly you make them feel good or bad about themselves by what you say and how you say it. When you are making someone feel bad, you are giving them a DangerousThought down the road that may affect their spiritual life. Although you might not give it a second thought, it becomes a consistant DangerousThought to them. People have unintentionally given me DangerousThoughts that interrupt my prayer life, my thought life, my joy, and they have been dead for a long time. People have said good things to me, giving me JesusThoughts, and they have unintentionally, or intentionally helped me feel better about myself, helped my pray and thought life, and increased my joy. How do you want to be rememberred?
Proverbs 18:21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue:
The tongue conveys thoughts, that’s why they are so powerful. Thoughts are ideas. That computer you are looking at was someone’s thought 50 years ago. The light bulb was someone’s thought 100 years ago. That modern and new chair you are using was someone’s thought maybe just last year. Words, these words even that I am writing you, are my thought capsules in a language with letters you understand. Thoughts are just real than the ground we are standing on, and as spiritual as our Lord God Almighty. JesusThoughts *GodThoughts* are the best!
Jeremiah 29:11-13 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you.
There are some thoughts that are just as deadly as a rattlesnake or shotgun. They are what I call DangerousThoughts. I don’t know about you, but I can be having the time of my life, and some foul thought comes creeping up on me, and before I know it, I am messed up for hours. My joy was literally sucked out of me because I was blind sighted by some unexpected DangerousThought and my guard was down. It happens less and less, but it’s a reality. DangerousThoughts are never from God but from the enemy. DangerousThoughts will devour you, your relationships and your spiritual life. Sometimes they can actually kill you or drive you into a mental ward.
1 Peter 5:8 “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.
Right now, for example, the ‘little -c- word’ is causing me fits again. PSA has doubled, so I’m in trouble! I am ok with it though. It’s making me wait on the Lord. Being still and waiting is new to me. When I heard bad news before, I would just get busy and bust my way through it. But my thoughts were going crazy. I used to do so much busyness, (Bible studies, journalling, reading other stuff, praying (talking at God) listening to praise and worship, prayer lists etc during my ‘quiet’ time, that the Lord couldn’t get in a word edgewise. DangerousThoughts sure were a problem when I wasn’t listening to Him. I am so busy there were no JesusThoughts, only DangerousThoughts. Especially when I was facing a problem, I would be even busier, therefore, even more DangerousThoughts. When you let yourself be scared you need JesusThoughts more than ever, instead of DangerousThoughts. Ask God to show you and to help you with your thoughts, to keep them on Jesus.
Psalm 139:23 Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
Do you know how you know it’s a JesusThought? Because peace comes with JesusThoughts every time. Peace never comes with DangerousThoughts. That’s why we are told to take our thoughts captive and renew our minds. People ask, ‘Dean, aren’t you afraid of dying a miserable death with tubes and bags hanging out of you?’ My answer is always the same, and completely sincere, ‘nope, I am at perfect peace’.
Isaiah 26:3 Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee
Love Dean and Winnie Peters