Psalm 19, Part 3: Control Your Thoughts

Psalm 19:14 contains a subtle but profound idea: one may sin simply by meditating on impure thoughts. Even if we do not act upon those thoughts, we have committed sin. How, then, can anyone be saved if our own thoughts betray us? “The Lord would have us awake to our true spiritual condition. He desires that every soul shall humble heart and mind before him. The words of inspiration found in the nineteenth and twentieth psalms are presented to me for our people. It is our privilege to accept these precious promises, and to believe the warnings.” “As God works upon the heart by his Holy Spirit, man must co-operate with him.

The thoughts must be bound about, restricted, withdrawn from branching out and contemplating things that will only weaken and defile the soul.

The thoughts must be pure, the meditations of the heart must be clean, if the words of the mouth are to be words acceptable to Heaven, and helpful to your associates. . . . “In the sermon on the mount, Christ presented before his disciples the far-reaching principles of the law of God. He taught his hearers that the law was transgressed by the thoughts before the evil desire was carried out in actual commission. . . . “Let every one who desires to be a partaker of the divine nature, appreciate the fact that he must escape the corruption that is in the world through lust. There must be a constant, earnest struggling of the soul against the evil imaginings of the mind. There must be a steadfast resistance of temptation to sin in thought or act. The soul must be kept from every stain, through faith in him who is able to keep you from falling.” Too often we allow the trials and tribulations of our lives to occupy every waking moment.

We do not take time to pray.

We do not guard what our eyes see and our minds contemplate.

Once an image is imprinted in the brain, it is almost impossible to erase it.

There is the old saying: by beholding you are changed.

What are you watching?