Saturday Psalm ~ 11-28-09

The Lord is my strength and my shield;
My heart trusts in Him, and I am helped;
Therefore my heart exults,
And with my song I shall thank Him.
Psalm 28:7

Happy Thanksgiving!

May we all remember to be truly thankful today.

Happy (American) Thanksgiving everybody!

Give Thanks!

Reading through the Psalms, I noticed that there were several verses with the exact same wording, “Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His lovingkindness is everlasting.” I pulled up my Bible study program on my computer and found there are five verses in the book of Psalms that say this. Growing up, I was taught that everything God said is important, when He says something twice it’s really important, and if He says it three times it’s really, really important. The Bible repeats these exact words five times! I think God is trying to tell us something through the Psalmist. He is commanding us to be thankful to God because He is good. His everlasting lovingkindness is not only another reason why we should be thankful to God, but it is also one of the many things we should be giving thanks for. God told us this five times, so let’s listen up and give thanks!

“Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His lovingkindness is everlasting.”

Psalm 106:1; 107:1; 118:1; 118:29; 136:1(NASB)

Saturday Psalm ~ 11-21-09

I will give thanks to You among the nations, O Lord,
And I will sing praises to Your name.
Psalm 18:49

The Final Thought

In my last post, I wrote about feeding our minds and taking our thoughts captive. I have one more thing to share with you about our thoughts: “The last thing we think about at night is what we sub-consciously think about all night”. If what we are thinking about when we fall asleep is what we think about all night, that means we can control what we think about while we sleep! So, if we fall asleep meditating on Scripture, we will think about those Scriptures all night. What an amazing thought that is! Taking our thoughts captive is not only for while we are awake. We need to take our “sleep thoughts” captive too. What will you be thinking about tonight while you sleep?

Feeding Our Minds

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “You are what you eat”. If we eat healthy food, we’ll be healthy, but if we eat junk food, we won’t be healthy. The same is true with our minds. We feed our minds with the things we listen to, watch, and read. What we feed our minds with effects our thoughts, and our thoughts effect our actions. In other words, what we feed our minds on is what shapes who we are. This can be a good, beautiful thing or it can be a bad, ugly thing depending on what we are using to feed our minds. When we read the Bible and meditate on Scripture, we become more like Christ and become beautiful to God. However, if we are reading books, watching movies, and listening to things that stir up wrong thoughts, we will eventually start acting in a way that displeases the Lord. The Bible says we are to take every thought captive (2 Corinthians 10:5). That starts with what we are using to feed our thoughts. If we control the types of things we are listening to, watching, and reading, we will be able to better control our thoughts. Does this mean we shouldn’t read anything except the Bible? No. We just need to be aware of what causes us to sin in our thoughts and stay away from those things. We can also give ourselves a standard or guidelines to help us decide whether we should feed our minds with a certain book or movie. Something that has helped me in this area is a standard that is found in the Bible. Philippians 4:8 says, “Finally, brethren, 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”. While reading a book or watching a movie I can ask myself, “Is what is happening true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, of good repute, excellent, and worthy of praise?” If the answer to the majority of these is “no”, then I probably shouldn’t be reading or watching it. I admit I don’t always hold things up to this standard or put them away when they don’t measure up. However, we all need to be striving to take captive our thoughts by controlling what we are using to feed our minds.