May 2, 2025

Minding Your Thoughts

A Biblical Overview of Obtaining and Maintaining a Biblical Thought Life

Esther 6:6 So Haman came in. And the king said unto him, What shall be done unto the man whom the king delighteth to honour? Now Haman thought in his heart, To whom would the king delight to do honour more than to myself?

Haman had quite an opinion of himself, and it cost him his life and the life of his ten sons.  Just think of his wife, poor woman.  Abigail suffered from the same affliction, perhaps you remember her, she was married to Nabal. He was characterized as being churlish and evil in his doings (I Samuel 25:3).  She saved him from certain slaughter at the hands of King David only to have his heart die within him. Throughout the centuries good women have agonized through the experience of being married to prideful men, and certainly, no doubt good men have suffered the same from prideful wives.  What a waste!

I enjoy reading books written by Louis L’ amour. Many times, he has a reluctant hero as the central character of the book. I remember one book wherein a mountain man attempted to help a struggling wagon train that was left to die by an unfaithful wagon master. They were stranded in the mountains with winter coming on and he did everything he could to help this rag tag bunch of tenderfeet. In the group there was a man from the east that had never been in the west. This man did not believe the mountain man about the Indians, the way to prepare for winter, the way to conserve food, the way to survive the cold weather or anything else. This man from the east had never lived in the west, never coped with the harsh winters of the high elevations, and never encountered hostile Indians, but he thought he knew more than the mountain man and his way of life. Why? Pride and it proved to be the undoing of that man from the east.

Each and every thought we have is influenced by something. It is a very wise person indeed that can discern if the thoughts of their own mind are influenced by pride and keep them in check. Haman had a thought in his heart, but it was wrong, it was only a figment of his pride. What a sad, sad, story of a man filled with pride.

Speaking of having one’s thoughts influenced. Just consider Peter over there in Matthew 16. In verse 17 Jesus said of him …Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. Then six verses later, Jesus said this of him …Get thee behind me, Satan… One thought of Peter was influenced by the Lord God, the other by Satan.  Make no doubt that thoughts are influenced.  In my mind, while this cannot be proved any further in Scripture, there are no absolute original thoughts.  All are influenced by the things one allows in their mind.  If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, but this one thought helps me to control all thoughts. Or at least know where the wrong ones originate.

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

Dr. William T. Howe