May 3, 2025

Minding Your Thoughts

A Biblical Overview of Obtaining and Maintaining a Biblical Thought Life

Job 12:5 He that is ready to slip with his feet is as a lamp despised in the thought of him that is at ease. 

Circumstances often dictate our thoughts. In our verse this morning there are two opposites: one is a person who is about to fall, the other is a person who is at ease. The person at ease is said to despise the one who is about to fall. Certainly, no faithful believer in Christ would think ill of someone who is about to fall; would they?

Thoughts like, “They deserve what they get” may be one way a person at ease may despise one who is about to fall.  But wait a minute. Does the one who thinks that others should “Get what they deserve” want to also “Get what they deserve”? Probably not! Christ did not want people to get what they deserve. He proved this by being willing to die on the cross for people who frankly were ready to slip into an eternity of pain and never-ending death. 

Let’s pretend for a moment that eating peanut butter is a sin. Thou shalt not eat the cursed peanut butter.  But someone does, and then does it again; they cannot help themselves. There is something in their flesh that makes them believe that they would die if they could not get just one more spoonful of peanut butter. They dream of peanut butter toast, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, peanut butter cookies, peanut butter and bananas, peanut butter and apples, all things with peanut butter. Another person may have sampled the peanut butter somewhere along the way, but there is no power of the brown creamy substance over them. They don’t want it and can easily live without it because peanut butter is not their weakness. How easy is it for the person who has no desire for peanut butter to have thoughts which despise the one who has the problem with peanut butter? They may think, “Why don’t they just leave it alone” they may think. In their thought life they despise the poor soul that struggles in this area.

The thoughts of one’s mind must be continuously patrolled in this. The area in which one struggles may not be the area in which another struggles, but all struggle with something. Christ’s children are to be a family that helps one another and when opportunity arises helps those who are not in our family. To do this, thoughts that despise those who are about to slip must be identified for what they are and eliminated from our thinking.

If anyone has a problem with peanut butter, rejoice, God through Christ can give victory over that horrible substance. No one has to be a prisoner of sin. For not only does our Lord deliver His children from the penalty of sin, but also the power of sin. One day Praise God, He will deliver from the very presence of sin!

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

Dr. William T. Howe