Bruce Collins, Evangelist

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Meditation for the week of March 29, 2009

1 Chronicles 28:9 "As for you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father, and serve Him with a loyal heart and with a willing mind; for the LORD searches all hearts and understands all the intent of the thoughts. If you seek Him, He will be found by you; but if you forsake Him, He will cast you off forever.
Luke 6:8 But He knew their thoughts.

When we are around someone who has studied body language and knows the eye twitches and hand movements that give away what we are really thinking, it can really be kind of scary.  You simply can’t lie to them or win at poker when you are playing with them.  The Lord can do better than that, He can read our minds.  I know people that claim to be able to do that, but the Lord actually can. 

Most of us are glad that the Lord keeps what He knows to himself for the most part because we know that the “heart is deceitful” and that at times we have complimented someone when we were really trashing them in our minds.  We tell people we love them when in fact we wish they would leave us alone.  We tell people that they are really doing a good job when in fact we wish we could fire them and do the job ourselves.  

But what the Lord really knows that nobody else knows is how we feel about Him!  He knows whether we are really loyal or whether we are “worshiping” Him for what we can get out of it.  Is He just another way to make a buck or is He really the “man of sorrows” who was acquainted with grief who suffered and died for our sins personally?  Do we say that we love Him to make the religious crowd happy?  Are we pleasing our parents or friends by saying we believe in Him?  Do we love Him enough to get baptized His way?  Or do we think this is all a game and it really doesn’t make any difference as to how we worship Him?

The Lord knew the thoughts of those who thought He blasphemed when He forgave sins (Luke 5:22).  He knew the thoughts of those who were waiting to see if He would heal on the Sabbath so that they could accuse Him of not keeping the Law (Luke 6:8).  He knows our thoughts and He knows if we are real or whether we are hypocrites.

No wonder David could say in Psalm 19:14,  “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart Be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, my strength and my Redeemer.”  I suspect that most of us would have to say that a lot of our thoughts and meditations are not acceptable to the Lord.  That is why it is so necessary to replace the thoughts that come so easily with that which is right and good. You can’t simply empty a container without replacing the contents with something else, because an empty container will collect dirt.  We are like that.  We can’t empty our heads of bad thoughts.  It is impossible.  We will just obsess on the thoughts that we want to eliminate.  But we can drive out the bad thoughts by replacing them with something good.  And the something good should be the thoughts that the Bible gives us concerning Christ.  Paul says in Philippians4:8,  “Finally, brethren (or in conclusion brethren), whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy–meditate on these things.”  The Lord Jesus is the only one with all of these virtues, so we need to think on Him.  As we think on Him, we should drive out the stuff in our minds that shouldn’t be there.

The Lord knows our thoughts and motives.  We can’t fool Him.  I am glad that the Lord is forgiving and understanding, aren’t you?

Bruce Collins

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