Guarding Your Heart.

It has been a busy and fun season so far. In all that is going on it is easy to let my quiet time with God slip away undone. But I have made an effort to have that time even if it is cut a little shorter then normal. So, yesterday as I was reading I was hit by something so simple and so well known that I wanted to share it. I think that by now in my Christian life this idea or concept should be well in practice but I will admit it isn't always. What touched me was a chapter in a book called, Just Like Jesus, by Max Lucado and I want to share this excerpt:

" Everyone knows you harvest what you sow. Galations 6:7, 'People harvest only what they plant.'
'Be careful what you think, because your thoughts run your life.' Some of our hearts are trashed out. Let any riffraff knock at the door, and we throw it open. Anger shows up, and we let him in. Revenge needs a place to stay, so we have him pull up a chair. Pity wants to have a party, so we show him the kitchen. Lust rings the bell, and we change the sheets on the bed. Don't we know how to say no?

For most of us, thought management is, well, unthought of. We think about time management, weight management, personnel management, even scalp management. But what about thought management? Shouldn't we be as concerned about managing our thoughts as we are managing anything else?

We need to deny entry to many thoughts. The Holy Spirit is ready to help you manage and filter the thoughts that try to enter. He can help you guard your heart. A thought approaches, a questionable thought. Do you throw the door open and let it enter? Of course not. You 'fight to capture every thought until it acknowledges the authority of Christ' (2 Cor. 10:5). you don't leave the door unguarded. You stand equipped with handcuffs and leg irons, ready to capture any thought not fit to enter."

I needed this simple reminder. Why do I find myself in a bad mood so often or angry...is it because life is hard? No, it is because my thoughts were not captured and brought under the authority of Christ. So many times we think life revolves around our circumstances when really as Chuck Swindoll said, "The longer I live the more convinced I become that life is 10 percent what happens to us and 90 percent how we respond to it. This may shock you. But I believe the single most significant decision I can make on a day to day basis is my choice of attitude."

So, my prayer is that I can fill my mind with Christ like thoughts so I can have a Christ like response when things go wrong...rarely does life go the way we plan it but we can make the best of a situation with our attitude!