June 9, 2025

Minding Your Thoughts

A Biblical Overview of Obtaining and Maintaining a Biblical Thought Life

Luke 19:11 And as they heard these things, he added and spake a parable, because he was nigh to Jerusalem, and because they thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear.

Certainly, this has never happened to anyone else. After a service I was standing by the door greeting the people as they exited and a visitor said to me, “Well, I never heard that before, I don’t believe that.”  They said this with the type of disposition that meant, “If I have never heard this it can’t possibly be true.”  Really? It was as if they were saying, “I know everything.”  Really! You know everything, you’ve heard everything, and if you hear something new you automatically reject it as not fitting into your purview of things?

When speaking of the Bible the old saying is a fact, “If it’s new it’s not true, and if it’s true it’s not new.” But even after sitting in church for a lifetime there are still new things to learn from the Bible. After reading through the Bible numerous times there are still things that can be learned, they are new to the reader, but they are not new; which brings us to our thought life. There are thoughts which come to mind, but they may be wrong. An old preacher one time said, “Never underestimate your ability to be wrong, it’s immense.”  Just because a person may think something doesn’t make it correct.

The people to whom Jesus is speaking in the above verse thought that the Kingdom of God would immediately appear. They were wrong and Jesus, being the expert and prototypical teacher, pointed out their wrong thinking by telling them the parable of the pounds (money). He knew they were wrong but they did not, so He instructed them. In this story there are two lessons to learn: 1) our thoughts may be wrong, this is why we are to continually search the Scriptures daily to see if the things we believe are true as those in Berea did (Acts 17:11); 2) Leaders must realize that sometimes their followers will be influenced by wrong thoughts, when this happens, follow the example of Jesus. Demonstrate patience and caring by teaching them the truth in a way they can understand and receive it as Job did with his wife when she told him to curse God and die. Job loved her and cared enough about her to leave his own problems and teach her “…shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?...” (Job 2:10).

When a person comes to the place where they can never be taught anything new from the Bible they are in a very dangerous place. By the way, just because you haven’t heard it before does not mean it is not true.

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

Dr. William T. Howe