We Must Carefully Guard Our Mind

21 Feb We Must Carefully Guard Our Mind

You’ve seen the old magician’s trick where he puts a silk handkerchief in a top hat and then, presto, pulls out a rabbit. What he gets out of the hat is not the same as what he put into it.

Well… that’s a trick.  And it’s not true. You can only get out of something what you put into it.

This is a big problem – and becoming bigger – for 21^st century Christians, as the world becomes more and more hostile to spiritual values, and godless input becomes more and more inescapable. In the living of everyday life, the souls of Christians are awash with godless lies and values.

As a result, that is what Christians are getting out of their minds.

Neil Postman wrote a compelling book many years ago regarding the impact of television on modern life entitled, Amusing Ourselves to Death. In it, he makes the case that television is fundamentally changing how our brain processes truth and the negative impact television is making on our entire culture. After making that compelling case, he states that the first step in breaking the hold of television is realizing that it has a hold on us.

That was written decades ago, and it is even more true with the ascendancy of the internet and social media. It all has a hold on us, and the first and most important step in breaking that hold is recognizing that it has a hold.

Next, we have to act.

We made the point last week that we have to be sure that what we believe is actually true, and then we must repeat that truth until it changes us.

This week, we make three additional points:

1. We must guard what we let into our mind.
2. We must guard what we let our mind create.
3. We must guard what we let our mind dwell on.

Let’s look more closely at each of these.

We must guard what we let into our mind

If we want good things out of our mind, if we want helpful things, we must put good and helpful things into our mind. If we put bad and unhelpful things into our mind and then go to our mind later for good and helpful things, it doesn’t work. So, we have to guard what we let into our mind, both what we knowingly let into our mind and what we unknowingly and/or passively let into our mind.

We must guard what we let our minds create

Beyond that, there is the danger of creating harmful thoughts in our mind. Scripture says, “everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). We must guard what we let our minds create. We can have thoughts of anger, lust, fear, envy, pride, and a host of other things. Our minds can create things that are just as destructive as anything we let in from the world.

We must guard what we let our minds dwell on.

Finally, we need to be careful about letting our minds dwell on bad or negative thoughts. Philippians 4:8 says, “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.”

Why? Because if we dwell on hurts, if we dwell on anger or resentment, if we dwell on failure or other negative things, those things grow, dominate our thinking, affect our emotions, and begin to control who we are and what we do. But on the other hand, if we dwell on positive things, then those positive things begin to dominate our thinking and positively affect our emotions and actions.

Conclusion

In Gary Smalley’s book, Change Your Heart, Change Your Life, he shares some of his personal testimony. He said that a big change occurred in his life when he had a heart attack. His emotions were in shambles. Facing major heart surgery, he was scared. He knew he could die. He knew that he would go to heaven, but it didn’t comfort him emotionally.

He had known the importance of memorizing and meditating on Scripture, and it had even helped some. But not enough. He needed something on a deeper level than he had ever experienced before.

He chose Romans 5:3–5, “We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they . . . help us learn to endure. And endurance develops strength of character in us, and character strengthens our confident expectation of salvation. And this expectation will not disappoint us. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love” (NLT).

Those verses told him that he should make the best of trials because if he did, they would make him into a different person… one with character and hope, and who enjoyed the ongoing blessings of God in his life. Again, he already knew this, but it hadn’t helped.

As he read the passage over and over, the truth began to penetrate his mind . . . deeply . . . on a level he had never experienced before. He memorized the verses and reviewed them over and over, day after day. He pondered their deepest meaning.

As he did, the passages began, as he described it, “to seep into his heart.” Their meaning began to become more than distant principles, but deep beliefs, thoroughly embedded in his heart. Within a few weeks, Smalley writes, “most of my fears slipped away.” His new, deeply understood and deeply embraced beliefs, conquered his negative and fearful emotions.*

It is no secret that our consistent thoughts become our beliefs and our beliefs control everything about us. The key is to reinforce good beliefs until they replace bad beliefs.

As we said last week, every time you think a thought, it wears a slight path in your mind. Week after week, month after month, as that same thought is repeated over and over again, the path becomes a road. And as the thoughts are repeated still more, the road becomes a four-lane freeway. When our key beliefs are set within our hearts like four-lane highways, they control everything about us.

So, there is power in a protected mind. The power to be who we long to be is determined by how we guard our minds. Guard it well, and become who you long to be.

* Gary Smalley, Change Your Heart, Change Your Life: How Changing What You Believe Will Give You the Great Life You’ve Always Wanted (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007), 26.

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