[Faith-talk] Daily Thought for Saturday, September 14, 2013

[Paul]

Hello and good day to you all.  I hope and pray that, by God's matchless grace and His providential care, that your Saturday is going well or about to end.  To you in the UK, if rugby season is in full swing, I hope that your favorite team was the winner today, whether that be Manchester United, Doncaster Rovers or whatever your favorite or local team is.  And for you cricket fans, if teams in your part of the world had test matches today, that they did well.  Not being very cognizant of rugby and cricket, won't comment here.  We in the United States, if we are obsessed with Saturday football (somewhat similar to rugby), we have our favorite college or university teams, and may the best one win.

Today we have the first of at least a two-part article, the second of which will appear sometime next month if there is sufficient interest.  It was written by the late Dr. Ralph Montanus (1919-1986), founder of the Gospel Association for the Blind and editor of its house organ, "The Gospel Messenger." His article for today has a rather unique title.  It is "Your Thoughts Govern Your Life" and is rendered as follows:

Someone said, "Sow a thought and reap a character." That statement is in conformity with God's Word.  In Proverbs, chapter 23, verse 7, we read, "For as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."

Some years ago, a famous physician wrote the book, "You Are What You Eat." It was one of the greatest selling books of its day and was jam-packed with wise nutritional information.  The physician who authored the book showed how a balanced diet, which is called the 20-20-60 diet, made for excellent health and even improved our personality.  What was meant by the 20-20-60 diet was that the intake should be 20% protein, 20% fats and carbohydrates, and 60% vitamins and minerals found in leafy vegetables and other sources of plant life.

No matter how excellent that book was, it was just a matter of time before the adherents, together with the author of the book, would pass on into eternity.  In fact, as I write to you today, the author of that book has been gone from the land of the living now for a number of years.

There is something far more meaningful to our lives than even food and raiment.  That is the proper use of our thought life.  Remember these words from the Scriptures, "For as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." Perhaps a book with the title "You Are What You Think," would be more meaningful than the former.

Your mind is the master control of your entire being.  Fortunately, God has so constructed us that we have the power of choice.  We are not mere creatures of chance, but of choice.  God has given us the power to will.  One could make a lifetime study of that mental quality and emotional guide of our words and actions called our will.  Not only has God given us a will, but He has also given us sensibility and intellect.  Intellect, sensibility and will are resident in the master control called our mind which, as the Bible frequently refers to it, is our heart.  Whenever the Bible speaks of our heart, it never means the pump in our chest, but speaks of the seat of our affections.  For example, Jesus asked, "Why reason ye these things in your heart?" (Mark 2:8).  On another occasion, our Lord said, "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh" (Matthew 12:34).

Still another admonition is given to us to keep our hearts with all diligence for out of them proceed the issues of life.  How magnificent that God, in creation, has bestowed upon man the ability of intellect, sense, and choice.

Now, let us go back to our key text, "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." This reveals to me that my thought life affects my deportment and character.  Let us illustrate by thinking that we have awakened in the morning and look out the window.  We suddenly exclaim, "Oh, what a rotten day." This thought immediately triggers a whole chain of reaction in our nervous system, resulting in our emotional state becoming affected in an adverse way.  It cannot be long that the thought of a rotten day results in the emotional state of our feeling rather rotten.  The thought that results in feelings very soon will be expressed in both words and deeds.

If you think badly, it is not long before you feel badly, and you speak and act in the most unbecoming way.  That is why the psalmist gave the secret to the child of God found in Psalm 118:24.  "This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it." There is the secret of victory.  There is the area of well-being.  A rejoicing attitude results in a merry, happy, emotional state that expresses itself in cheerfulness, both in word and in deed.

Today, a brand new science has sprung up called psychosomatic medicine.  Over the years, physicians have discovered that frequently patients who visit them with symptoms are not at all organically sick.  In fact, it is estimated that 70% of all patients visiting their family physician are not organically sick, but they are truly psychosomatically hurting.  Upon further investigation, it has been found that our thought life can affect our physical well-being and create such illnesses as arthritis, lumbago, sciatica, tooth decay, and all sort of rheumatic aches and pains.  In the coming days, we will give some documented evidence of this truth.

Not too long ago, a well-known specialist in the treatment of ulcers wrote a book regarding this ailment.  To sum up his entire book in a very brief statement, it brought out the fact that "ulcers are not caused primarily by what you eat, but what is eating you." Such beginnings in the area of observing what the mind can do in adverse reaction to the body has made psychosomatic medicine some sort of specialty.

It has also been discovered that the normal adult does not use more than the capacity of 1/3 of his mind during his entire lifetime.  This very source of knowledge, this God-given and God-created computer of wisdom, discernment, and choice is never used in its entirety.

There has been one other interesting discovery concerning the mind and that is that we can just think one thought at a time.  It is true that the thoughts are rapid, sometimes ambiguous, even in various clusters, but when all is said and done, in the final analysis, you can think but one thought at a time.  If you do not believe this, then make the following experiment.  Lean back, relax, and endeavor to think of the full moon and, at the same time, what you are going to do tomorrow morning.  That ought to be sufficient evidence of the fact that you cannot think of two things at the same time.

Now what does all of this have to do with God's proclamation of the fact that you are what you think? Well, let us, once again, examine the progress of thought.  We first think about something which, in turn, influences our emotional state, and we have feelings which are the result of those thoughts.  Then, in turn, our thought life that has affected our emotional state is reflected or manifested in our actions.  So, the simplest breakdown is thought, feeling, action.  By an act of our will, we can govern our thoughts.

Right hear, I can hear someone say, "How do you do that?" God willing, next month, we are going to dwell on the answer to that question.  However, between now and then, may I say that God would never tell us to do anything that we would not be capable of doing.  When someone says, "I did not want to say that," or "I did not want to go there," that is an absolute lie and an insult to their own power of choice, let alone to that of transgressing God's will.  You and I never say anything that we do not want to say, and we never go anywhere that we do not want to go.  What a horrible thing it would be if we did not have control over our thought and acts and mouth.  If all at once, if your mouth began to talk with no approval from you, if one leg wanted to go in one direction while the other wanted to go in the opposite, you would be in terrible trouble.  Well, such things never happen.  You must will to say what you say, and you must will to go where you go.  Perhaps what we mean to say is something like this, "I should not have said what I did." That would be a spirit of repentance.  Or, "I should never have gone where I went." Here again, that would be repenting of a wrong choice which, by an act of your own will, you decided.

We will only mention what, God willing, we will prove next month from the Scriptures, that God's will over our thought life is that we accentuate the positive and endeavor to minimize the negative.  To be a happy, victorious, overcoming Christian, we must think positively.  We must feel positive, and we must speak and act in a positive way.  Where is that found in the Bible? God willing, next month, we shall see.

Well folks, time to put Dr. Montanus back into his grave, so to speak.  I'm referring, of course, to his body.  For those of you who knew her, I wonder what the late Pastor Karolyn Phillips, founder of Seasons of Refreshing Fellowship, would say if she read Dr. Montanus' article? I'm sure that she would have something to say; she always did, as those of you who knew her more intimately would agree.

Again, if you'd like the continuation of this series, please let me know, and if I get a sufficient amount of responses, will comply with your wishes to post the next and succeeding articles in this series, if there are any more.  You can't deny that there is a lot of things to ponder in what Dr. Montanus had to write.  I've read this article I don't know how many times, and I have always come up with ideas that the Spirit has implanted in my mind.

And now may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe, individually and collectively, in these last days in which we live.  Your Christian friend and brother, Paul