August 9, 2025

Minding Your Thoughts

A Biblical Overview of Obtaining and Maintaining a Biblical Thought Life

I Corinthians 8:2 And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know.

How discouraging!  The Holy Spirit inspired the apostle Paul to communicate to all a simple truth.  Which is: you may think you know something, but you don’t know what you ought to know. There is a key piece of information here that needs to be understood if our thinking is going to be right.

Years ago, we were taking teenagers to summer camp. All of the girls were riding in our church van, and all the boys were riding in our personal minivan. The trip to camp was about a six hour drive and it started out as all trips do, with excitement and anticipation. About an hour into the drive one of the young men asked, “How much farther is it?”  I told them that we were about one sixth of the way there. A little later they asked again, and I said that we were two twelfths of the way there.  Later the answer was four twenty-fourths and then eight forty eighths. One of the young men, the smart one of the group, told the others that we were getting farther from camp, not closer.  We were having fun.

Then one told me that I missed my turn.  He had never been to camp, never had he even been on the road that we were on.  He had no map, did not know where the camp was, did not know how to drive, and he probably didn’t even know the name of the camp we were going to, but he thought he knew how to get there.  He thought he knew, but he didn’t know anything that he should have known in order to safely navigate our little caravan of vehicles to camp.

It’s a good day in the life of any individual when they realize that they do not know everything.  I once heard Nolan Ryan being interviewed about a pitcher while that pitcher was pitching in a game.  The pitcher was struggling and Mr. Ryan said, “He is telegraphing his changeup, and the other team always knows when it is coming.”  I began watching the pitcher’s windup and delivery very closely to see if I could pick up any differences between his pitches. To me a pitch was a pitch, and the movement of the pitcher’s body was the same every time, at least to my untrained eye. Imagine me, a preacher, telling a Hall of Fame pitcher anything about pitching! He would look at me and probably say something like, “If you think you know anything about pitching, you know nothing that you ought to know.”  

It was folly for that young man to tell me how to get to camp.  It would be folly for me to tell Nolan Ryan anything about pitching at the major league level, and it is folly for us to claim to know all that we ought to know about God.  This truth should motivate us to study His Word and learn more of Him.

Yes, it’s a great day when we realize we don’t know everything we ought to know.  It is from this starting point that we can begin to grow in what we ought to know about the things of God.

May the Lord bless and be pleased with your thought life today.

Dr. William Howe