GUARD YOUR THOUGHTS

 

   By A. W. Tozer

 

    Make your thoughts a clean sanctuary.

 

        God reveals to us that our thoughts are a part

    of us.  Someone has said that "thoughts are things,"

    and the Spirit is all-seeking and all-hearing and

    all-loving and pure.

 

        Can you imagine a man with malicious and

    evil thoughts in his heart having companionship

    with the loving Holy Spirit?

 

        Can you imagine a man bloated with egotism

    knowing the Holy Spirit in anything like intimacy?

 

        Can you imagine a man who is a deceiver having

    blessed fellowship with the Holy Spirit?  Never!

 

        My friend, if you are habitually given over to

    thinking and harboring and savoring dirty

    thoughts, you are habitually without the

    communion of the Holy Spirit!

 

        Keep your mind pure. Clean out the sanctuary

    the way old Hezekiah did.  They had dirtied up

    that sanctuary, so when he had taken over,

    Hezekiah got all of the priests together.  It took

    them days and days, but they carried out all of

    the filth and burned it, threw it over the bank

    and got rid of it, and then went back and

    sanctified the temple.  Then the blessed God

    came and they had their worship again.

 

        Our thoughts are the decorations inside the

    sanctuary where we live.  If our thoughts are

    purified by the blood of Christ, we are living

    in a clean room, no matter if we are wearing

    overalls covered with grease.

 

        Our thoughts largely decide the mood and weather

    and climate within our beings, and God considers

    our thoughts as part of us. They should be

    thoughts of peace, thoughts of pity and mercy

    and kindness, thoughts of charity, thoughts of God

    and the Son of God --- these are pure things,

    good things and high things.

 

        Therefore, if we would cultivate the Spirit's

    acquaintance, we must have the control of our

    thoughts. Our mind ought not to be a wilderness

    in which every kind of unclean thought makes its

    own way. 

---

    Yours in Christ,

    Paul N. F.