What Did You Say?

Psalm 55:21 The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart: his words were softer than oil, yet were they drawn swords.

Psalm 52:2 Thy tongue devises mischief; like a sharp razor, working deceitfully.`

We live in a world dominated by smooth talkers who proclaim goodness but are corrupt to the core. Jesus warned that many false prophets would come; preaching harmony and love, but they were wolves in sheep's clothing. What about us? Have we presented ourselves as sheep when we know a wolf lives inside?

We’ve all known that person who seemed so cool that butter wouldn’t melt in their mouth, and may have felt privileged to have them in our world…yet, time and life melted away the surface ice and the real person was revealed. The smooth talk becomes harsh and abrasive. Soothing words evolve into wounding razors. Just as a blade cuts deep into flesh, unkind words cut into the heart.

A sacred trust has been entrusted to Christians. That trust is the dignity and feelings of the rest of God's children. We become our neighbor's keeper. It is our duty to love and defend one another. The tongue has enormous power to build up or to tear down. How will we choose to use it?

Ask for God's wisdom and guidance as you make choices in your life. He will expose the darkness of lie and deceit through His holy light. Speak words of comfort and love and encouragement, rather than words which leave others bleeding. We are His mouth on earth, measure your words by the standard which is Christ Jesus.

Lord, grant us a careful and discerning spirit. Make sure we use the common sense You have given us. Protect us from those who would try to take advantage of us and keep us from taking advantage of others. May every word out of our mouths be one that encourages, builds up, or praises. Remove from our hearts the desire to hurt others by our words. Fill our mouths with Your thoughts and words, Lord. Amen.

It's Trash Day

At my house, Thursdays are trash day. Oddly, my thoughts of organizing my week revolve around trash day; don’t ask me why, I do not have a clue. Maybe because it comes near the end of the work week, so it marks a mental change of pace, I don’t know.

But, this Thursday I had a thought I’d like to share. Trash days are action days. We go around emptying the cans from the various rooms so my Honey can take the big yard can down to the street. We actively work to rid our home and lives of trash. We do not have to think about it, it’s a habit of necessity, we just do it. Things can get messy and stinky if we don’t.

This brought to mind the question, why don’t we make a habit of routinely ridding our minds and thoughts and lives of messy, stinking thinking? Everyone dislikes taking out the trash but we do it because we do not want to live with the trash in our homes. So, doesn’t it make sense that we take out the trash encumbering our thought life, as well? The trick, as I see it, is to make a point of taking action, taking out the trash.

As we grow in Christ, reading the Bible and learning from His example, we make changes in our thinking. We seek to please Him and want to be more like Him. Yet, still we have those thoughts, habits and mindsets that are not of Him. I am suggesting that we make a point, on trash day, to pick one of those and purpose to dispose of it. Sound silly? Let me give you an example.

Thursday morning, I was doing my morning routine of dressing, face and hair. As I put on my moisturizer, I had a thought about how old I look. I noticed all the lines, sags and imperfections I saw looking back at me. This, Friends, is classic stinking thinking. I was judging my own face by worldly standards. My face, although sculptured by God, was viewed and judged as not good enough. WOW, where do I get off thinking such thoughts?! This is trashy thinking. Seriously, can the eternal God really look at me and see an ‘old’ face? In His big picture, my 57 years is less than a blink of an eye, yet I have the audacity to call myself old and look upon the face the He gave me with less appreciation. I’ve got some nerve!

Another example, the news has repeatedly shown scenes of gangs of young people mobbing into convenience stores and stealing everything they can get their hands on. A spirit of fear is generated by these scenes. Not all young people are doing this, yet a cloud of suspicion hangs over any group moving in mass. This is stinking thinking. We are judging young people, races and cultures by an unruly few. This is prejudiced, stinking thinking.

It’s time to take out the trash! I propose on trash day, whatever day yours is, we pick one thing on which to focus for the next week. We must first repent and ask for forgiveness for our stinking thinking. Read scripture on whatever it may be. If you are reading this, you have access to a computer. Google scripture on the trash you are putting out and faithfully pray for a renewed mind in that area. A steady diet of reading scripture will change hearts. Scripture says ‘out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.’ So, what will it be with us? What is the abundance of our heart?

Picture the heart as a vessel—a bowl—and things are poured into the heart. At a certain point, the vessel will overflow, and abundance will come out of it. What comes out of our heart—this bowl or vessel—will expose the characteristics of the heart.

When we pour information into our minds, we process it. For a while, it stays in the bowl, as it were, and becomes mixed with what has been put there before. Our minds work on it for a while, and over time, it begins to gel into certain ideas. Once our minds are full, ideas break out in words, plans, and behaviors. Evil thoughts within, evil speech and/or works without. Or, we can put it the other way around—godly, kind, Christ-like thoughts within, godly, kind, Christ-like speech and/or works without.

It’s time to put out the trash! It didn’t accumulate overnight and we can’t rid ourselves of it overnight but we have to start taking action. Let’s go, it’s trash day.

True Guilt vs. False Guilt

How can you tell the difference between true and false guilt?

In the Bible, sin is very specific. It is a violation of the Laws of God. We are guilty when we disobey one of God’s Commandments. Sin is failing to worship God alone, it is making or worshipping an idol, taking God’s Name in vain, desecrating the Sabbath, dishonoring our parents, taking innocent life, committing adultery, stealing, bearing false witness, and covetousness.

In the Bible, true guilt and repentance is specific and personal, not vague or manipulated by others. Biblical restitution is to be made by the culprit to the victim – directly and entirely. Biblically, true guilt is when I personally violate a specific command in Scripture. False guilt, or psychological guilt, is a result of selective focus, distortion of reality and certainly not from God. It is vague and it involves guilt manipulation.

When we repent of our personal guilt in violating God’s Commands, the result is forgiveness, freedom, healing and restoration. However, you can repent for false or psychological guilt every day for decades, but you will never find freedom and forgiveness from false guilt, because the devil is a hard taskmaster.

The Holy Spirit brings conviction of sin to lead us to repentance. On the other side of repentance is forgiveness and freedom, healing and restoration.

By way of contrast, the devil and/or other people bring condemnation in order to paralyze and enslave us.

We have enough real sins and genuine guilt of today to deal with, without having to deal with sins and shortcomings other people and/or satan want to hand us. We’ve all known those people that are never responsible for their own circumstances, right? It’s always someone else’s fault they are in the situation they are in. They often believe we ‘should’ help them because they are merely victims of circumstance. Any deviation in what they want from you and what you can do is seen as a shortcoming on your part! A common manipulation is to throw your faith at you. “You call yourself a Christian and…(fill in the blank)” Regardless of what comes after the ‘and’, they are trying to manipulate your emotions by attacking your faith. If you feel guilty because you cannot meet their expectation, need or desire, KNOW that is false guilt.

When our children have specific needs, we want to help where and how we can. However, when we cannot help, we stand on prayer and trust in God to meet their needs. If we feel guilty because we could not ‘fix it’, that would be a false guilt because it was not a violation or sin against God. Letting them learn to lean on God in their own lives is the best help and gift we could ever give them.  

On a personal level, are you personally guilty of theft? Greed? Gossip? Pride? Envy? Malice? Covetousness? Selfishness? Bitterness? Unforgiveness? If God were to speak to you today, with what sins would He confront you? You know that He wouldn’t be bringing up other people’s sins, He would deal with what you personally are responsible for and guilty of. “The lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life, etc.”

We have enough sins of our own that we are personally guilty of, without wasting our time following the agenda of guilt manipulators seeking to cover us in a mantle of guilt so we will meet their needs. 

Differentiating between true guilt and false guilt can be answered with one question: Did I sin against God? If not, shake it off, it is not yours to own and Jesus died to free us from condemnation. Don’t allow His death to be in vain for your life by carrying around a burden of false guilt. His burden is light…..

Safety in the Storm of Temptation

He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure.

1 Cor 10:13b

Picture this: It’s totally dark outside. There were no stars or street lights. The only light is coming from the headlights, which you have on bright so your squinting eyes can make out what is up ahead. Then it gets worse. A fat rain drop hits your windshield; another and another. Before you know it, the heavens opened up and you turn the wipers on as fast as they will go. Driving can be hard enough at night but can become next to impossible with a downpour and wind blowing you from one side of the road to the other.

Temptation can creep up on us faster than any thunderstorm, and when it unleashes, can wreck us and throw our lives off road and off course. Just as our windshield wipers and headlights are designed to help us see through the rain and darkness, the Bible is there to prepare us for what can and will happen.

As we read the Bible, we see where even those ‘biblical greats’ were tempted and tested, sometimes to the very brink of their sanity. Why then should we think we are beyond such temptation? King David had already been called ‘a man after God’s own heart’ when he fell to temptation lusting after another man’s wife and conspired to commit murder so he could have the woman. Not one of us is above or immune from temptation blowing in and clouding our vision. When we think too highly of ourselves and our spiritual walk, we are more likely to be blinded to the oncoming assault of temptation.

Yet, the verse above reminds us that God is in control even when our surroundings are not. The Bible is our spiritual radar we can rely on to be aware of approaching storms and our GPS to guide us back to the high roads of safety. We can trust God and know even if a ‘hurricane of temptations’ swirl around us, the eye of the storm is not that far away.

Be Careful Little Mind What You Think

We’re still covering the vast subject of taking our thoughts captive because it is a vast problem among believers and non-believers alike. I have a friend that is going through a very rough time in her marriage. She shares with me and there is a well established pattern and habit of negative thoughts spinning in her head. When I bring this up, she dismisses it with a confession of ownership. "That's what I think and I can't do anything about it." The enemy doesn't have to do a thing in her marriage, her thoughts are her own worse enemy; the job is taken! Sadly, she and her husband share this refusal to change the way they think. They are on a two way street to Splitsville because of it.

Thoughts can be cancerous to our lives. Let’s use physical cancer as an example. We ask for healing and deliverance from cancer. If it was caused by smoking and we refuse to give up the smoking, we can’t blame God if the cancer comes back because we gave it a place in our life and access to come back by our continued sin against our bodies. It works the same way in our minds. We open the door with cancerous thoughts and invite sin into our lives.

In like manner, we can cast a devil out of someone, bind the devils operating in their life, but unless they change their system of thinking, satan will soon have the same access back into their life that he had to begin with. When we were sinners, satan owned us. Our minds and world view thinking were filled with landmines that were meant to produce destruction in our lives. Once we are born again, his authority and place in our lives is removed, but he still has a system of thinking placed inside our minds that has to be broken down and replaced. Until we renew our minds with a new way of thinking, we are still giving access to the devil in our lives. We have to be disciplined by the Word and the Spirit to stop getting mad and holding grudges or fighting back and doing/saying things we did before.

It isn’t the first thought that gets us, but thinking on it. It isn’t the first look that produces lust and sin, but the second look. It’s continuing to look that produces lust and sin. It is a process, not one glimpse. James 1:14-15 “But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” The first look wasn’t what did it, but being drawn in and giving in to the temptation which entices us leads to sin. If we nip it in the bud by taking our thoughts captive, it will have no power over us. If we immediately yield or submit ourselves to God and resist the devil, he will flee (James 4:7).

These days it is hard to never see that which we shouldn’t because of our society. We cannot watch TV, movies or look at magazines without running into pictures meant to entice. But when we reject the temptation the enemy throws at our minds, we overcome. If we give in and begin to think evil thoughts, we will sin. It doesn’t matter if it is lust, anger, covetousness, or whatever. Wrong thinking leads to sin. Taking our thoughts captive and casting down evil imaginations keeps us from sin. It is simple in theory, but sometimes hard to do.

The reality is that the devil works through our thought lives and none of us are immune or exempt from his efforts. If he can get us to think cancerous thoughts, he can get us to sin. It’s that simple. If someone says something mean or cruel to us or does us wrong, it is natural to strike back, to get upset, and angry. It is godly, spiritual maturity to forgive and let it go, like water off a ducks back. That ability doesn’t just come overnight but takes time, like a child growing up and becoming a mature adult. When we come to Christ, no matter our age, scripture calls us babes in Christ. “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby:” (1 Peter 2:2). We have to grow up and learn the ways of God and become mature by renewing the thinking in our minds and learning to shut the devil out of our thought life.

Proverbs 23:7 “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he:” satan understands this and he cannot do anything in our life unless our flesh cooperates with him. Let us look at the verse before and after so we get the whole context. Proverbs 23:6-7 “Eat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eye, neither desire thou his dainty meats: For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee.” Notice the context. We confuse the person with what they say. We are not what we say but what we think. A man, through guile and subtly can deceive and manipulate as so many wicked men and politicians do today. Don’t confuse what they are saying with who they are. Sometimes men will speak peace with their lips, but war is in their heart. Psalm 55:21 “The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart: his words were softer than oil, yet were they drawn swords.” Man/Woman can be very deceitful.

What we are thinking on the inside is who we really are. When someone comes up to you and asks, “How are you today?” and you answer “Great, everything is fine” but inside you are thinking, “What a lousy miserable day! Why do you ask, you don’t care anyway?” Now, which is the real you, what you said or what you are thinking? As we think, that is who we are. We must pay more attention to changing the thoughts we think! It doesn’t matter what we say and confess if inside our hearts we don’t believe it. We can confess the opposite until we are blue in the face, but it will not change anything in our life.