We don’t do anything that we do without first giving it a thought. Oh I know there are those impulse items…such as having an ice cream cone when you KNOW you are on an all protein diet…well doesn’t ice cream come from a cow and a cow is protein, and think of all the calcium and vitamin D it contains…Oh I know all about that!! I am talking about doing something productive, such as my son did. He graduated from Georgia Tech and then decided that what he really wanted to do was to enroll in Life University and become a Chiropractor, so after a lot of thought wondering if he had just wasted the four years he had just spent at Tech, he DID it! He now has his own practice and is happy doing the thing he wanted enough to take four extra years to learn! Deciding to buy a new appliance for the home, or new flooring is not impulse stuff, it is something you must give thought and plan before you do it.
Now let’s look at the negative side. When Eve handed over her authority on this earth to Satan he really took his position seriously. He had already done a number on Eve’s thinking by talking her into taking the fruit and eating it after God had told her not to do that. He convinced her that there would be nothing wrong with it, she would just be smarter and more like God. That was the beginning of a “beautiful friendship” between Satan and all of our thinking facilities. Our thought life can be good, but it can be toxic also.
The Bible tells us in the Proverbs that as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. We have all seen hypochondriacs…these are people who “think” they are sick for so long that they actually DO become sick. I am using at this moment one tool (the computer on which I am typing) that is at once so wonderful and can be used to spread knowledge and facts of all kinds and a way for me to write my thoughts to you, but can also be a great tool of Satan himself. There is so much evil that starts right in those chat rooms, secret emails that become not so secret when one person becomes disenchanted with the other, pornographic pictures and every evil that man can imagine. Who is in charge of YOUR thinking? I did a lesson one time on “Stinking Thinking” and sometimes, no one that is reading this right now I am sure, we get that stinking thinking and do things or say things in what we think is a private forum that we would never say out loud to someone. One young girl went into her closet and hanged herself because an older woman pretending to be a young boy insulted her and told her she was too ugly to live. Oh my God, what have we come to as humans? James 1:14-15 says: “But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it brings forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, brings forth death.”
So we are ALL tempted and following that temptation can bring us to ruin. How can you get out of the temptation? Now you know I would not have asked you that question if I didn’t have an answer…right? 1 Cor. 10:13 says No temptation has overtaken you except something that is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.
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