To Control Your Conduct, Control Your Thoughts – Part Three

Romans 7: 22 – 25

“Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee” (Psalm 119: 11).

She was lovely, successful, and brimming with promise. This was her senior year in high school. She was active in her church youth group. A straight “A” student, she was a cheerleader, and homecoming queen. Life was good.

She sat in my office with tears streaming down her cheeks and choked out the story of her pregnancy. Then she said, “I don’t know why I did it?”

I said, “I know why you did it?”

With a flash of fire in her eyes and anger in her voice she snapped, “Why?”

“You did it,” I said, “because a long time before you did it you made up your mind to do it by the music to which you listened, the movies and TV you viewed, and the conversation of friends to which you listened.”

She dropped her head and nodded gently as she said, “You are right.”

Preempt improper programming. Get it out of your life if you don’t want it in your life. Get it out of your cranium before it gets in your conduct.

Some TV sets have the capacity of having a channel preset so it comes on automatically. It’s preferred. This must be true of our minds. Preset your mind on proper programming.

Some people have an immature concept of prayer as being like a child asking a divine Santa Claus for things. We are to ask Him to supply our every need, but prayer is more. We need to grow out of the stage of making prayer a matter of “give me,” into a deeper level of “Lord, make me.”

Preset your mind on Scripture.

We often wait until a crisis or a major problem and then want a verse of Scripture that will make life simple. Don’t wait.

That is exactly what we often do, however, spiritually. We wait until there is a problem or a crisis and start looking for a verse of Scripture to use. Memorize it in advance. That is equivalent to loading your gun before it’s too late. By memorizing it in advance you can simply apply it preventively and do what you should or not do what you shouldn’t do.

The brain is sophisticated and complex. Here is an elemental insight. Negative thoughts produce certain chemicals in the brain. Positive thoughts produce other chemicals. In turn these chemicals tend to attract thoughts that produce them. Therefore, if you have been thinking negatively you have a negative chemical flow. This causes more negative thoughts. If you have been thinking positively you have a positive chemical flow and will tend to continue to think positively. You have a preset mindset.

The matter of doing the right and not doing the wrong comes down to mind over matter as noted in Romans 7: 25, “So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, and with the flesh the law of sin.”

It is a matter of mind over matter and the mind only prevails if it is under the control of Jesus Christ. “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.”