Directing Thoughts

Our thoughts, as we know, play a major role in dictating how ours lives go because inward thoughts dwelt on eventually produce themselves outwardly through our attitude and in our words. And, as the Word says, we’ll receive the fruit of our consistent words, whether those words are good and to our favor or bad and acting against us. To address this issue of thoughts, in Romans we’re instructed to renew our minds with the Word of God so we don’t conform ourselves to a negative, biting, downtrodden, evil world (Romans 12:2).

Renewing the mind is one of the keys to a successful Christian walk. If we can better keep hold of our thoughts, our attitude and words produce the fruit not only we’d much rather have but the fruit God wants us to have as well.

For example—and I’m sure many of you have heard this before—Brother Hagin gave the illustration once on how to direct your thoughts. He said the word dog. Just now, you imagined a dog—if you’ve heard this before, you probably imagined a big, black dog because that’s what he went on to describe. Him adding the descriptors of big and black to dog allow you to narrow your thoughts on the specific type of dog he intended for you to imagine. In other words, adding descriptors to what was a simple idea directed your thoughts to something far more specific.

I’d like to take Brother Hagin’s wonderful example of directing thoughts just a step further. If I was to say instead red dog, I know that each person reading this might visualize a different type of dog that’s red. Maybe a spotted bird dog, or an Irish Setter, or a little reddish Pomeranian. My point is that each of us assumed what sort of red dog I as the author intended you to imagine. But our Father, as the Author of Scripture, never leaves His directions to our imagination. Since we are told to grab hold of our thoughts, taking them captive (2 Corinthians 10:5), then He’s given us specific instructions on what to think about, therefore specifics on what words we should speak and what attitudes we are to hold. Confession, after all, means to say the same thing.

In this we come full circle! With the Word we renew our minds so we speak the right things, and to speak the right things we take our thoughts captive and hold them up for inspection against the truth of the Word. Yet to help up direct our thoughts, we speak what God tells us to speak. Thinking and speaking go hand-in-hand and neither is more important than the other. Our thought life is just as important as the life we present outwardly because our thought life eventually becomes our speaking life, and our speaking life eventually becomes the life we live.

Are we guarding our minds and mouths with the Word? Or are we letting the enemy take our thoughts and words captive, thus giving him our authority in this earth?