Think on These Things

My verse for this week is Phillippians 4:8. I have tried to keep this verse with me and have made a concious effort to apply it to my life this week. Each thought I have, I have tried to ask myself "is this honest, just, pure, lovely...." As christians we should strive for this everyday of every week. We must place our minds on those things which are true, pure, holy and righteous. By doing this we can have the peace of God and freedom from worries and anxieties. If we back up and read verse 7 it states "and the peace of God, which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." When our minds begin to think on ungodly and worldly things the joy, the nearness and the peace of God are lost and our hearts are no longer guarded. I want the joy of the Lord, and the peace of God. I want ALL of my thoughts to be in subjection to Christ. This takes a continuous surrender to God.

I would like to end with an excerpt from a book that Dakota has been reading. He shared this with me tonight. This is an article written by an atheist:

If I firmly believed, as millions say they do, that the knowledge and practice
of religion in this life influences destiny in another, then religion would mean
to me everything. I would cast away earthly enjoyments as dross, earthly
cares as follies, and earthly thoughts and feelings as vanity. Religion
would be my first waking thought and my last image before sleep sank me into
conciousness. I should labor in its cause alone. I would take
thought for the morrow of eternity alone. I would esteem one soul gained
for heaven worth a life of suffering. Earthly consequences would never
stay my hand, or seal my lips. Earth, its joys and its griefs, would
occupy no moment of my thoughts. I would strive to look upon eternity
alone, and on the immortal souls around me, soon to be everlastingly happy or
everlastingly miserable. I would go forth to the world and preach to
it in season and out of season, and my text would be: "what shall it
profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"