November 8, 2025

Minding Your Thoughts

A Biblical Overview of Obtaining and Maintaining a Biblical Thought Life

II Peter 3:2 That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour:

Once upon a time I was an adjunct professor at a Bible college in our area. As such I was given the task to teach certain subjects as the administration deemed necessary. My least favorite part of teaching those classes was testing the students on that which they had learned. When I was in school, I hated tests, I don’t like them any more as a teacher. I believe that every exam is blatantly unfair to the student. In real life you can look things up if you don’t remember; why not on examinations, especially finals and midterms.

I went through grade school and high school and my undergraduate studies at the university on the navy plan. Everything was “C” level. (This joke really doesn’t work when written but is very funny when spoken.)  Sometimes, I was on the submarine plan, below “C” level. However, in Bible College all the way through my Ph.D. work I made straight A’s. What was the difference? I was mindful of that which I learned in Bible College. I desired to know the body of knowledge that a good Bible College offered. Those professors knew so much and I wanted to learn everything they knew.

To assist my students when they were preparing for examinations I would give them study questions, I reviewed the notes they would be tested over, and sometimes we even had competitions in class to help them retain the items they would need to know for the test. I would do all I could to make them mindful of the data they needed to know for their tests.

The Word of God is the study sheet for the final examination that every man and woman will face (the Judgment Seat of Christ for believers, concerning the rewards we earn or lose, or the Great White Throne Judgment for those who reject Christ). In the above verse the Apostle Peter relates two things of which believers must be ever mindful. 1) …the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets 2)  …the commandments of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour. Being mindful of these is more than knowing them, it is doing them. But that is a topic for another day.

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

Dr. William Howe