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.

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    Yours in Christ,
    Paul N. F.