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

[Poppa Bear]

I would like to hear more in this series. It hit the Spiritual spot right 
about now.
Blessings
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Paul" <oilofgladness47 at gmail.com>
To: <iccshare at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, September 14, 2013 11:08 AM
Subject: [Faith-talk] Daily Thought for Saturday, September 14, 2013


> 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
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