Proverbs 16:3 – Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be established.

Hello readers, just a short blog to finish my weekend. My thought life has been pretty poor of late, or even poorer than usual. That is for a variety of reasons, not least related to the situation with covid in my country, and a government that has begun mandating vaccine or no work. That has taken over my thoughts, and they’ve been troubling thoughts. It’s amazing how quickly we are troubled and lose faith and start asking Jesus “carest thou not that we perish?”

So much of the battle is in the mind, and we need to arm our minds, because Satan and this world wants your mind, your thought life and your heart. I’ve increasingly realized the spiritual nature of what’s going on in all this. It’s like a spirit has swept through our country and many are taken with it. They’ve been possessed by fear and a horrible irrationality and insanity which has gripped our nation. We shouldn’t be so surprised. You read Revelation 16, and you will read of three unclean spirits “which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.” Imagine that, a few spirits able to gather the armies of the world to battle.

But when your thoughts are overtaken with covid, with fear of the future, with all the uncertainties and so on… my thoughts started troubling me. When they shouldn’t be. My thought life needed help, and it needs help. And I was reading Proverbs 16 recently this month, and I saw this  verse and it gave me comfort. In fact, the entire chapter spoke to me like never before, but I just wanted to focus briefly on this verse. Are you in need of a tonic for your thought life? Has Satan got all the real estate inside your mind? Are you ready to have your thought life back?

If we just focus on this world and all that’s going on and how powerless we are to change what’s going on and leave God out of our lives, of course we are going to be full of worry and fear and insecurity. But that shouldn’t be our lot as believers. Don’t we believe in God? What good is a faith that is never tried and never tested, and no good when any adversity comes? Paul wrote for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. We’re nowhere near that territory are we, because we love our lives more than Jesus Christ. We are so invested here when we should be invested in heaven.

The key to getting your thought life back on track is “committing”. Committing your life, your future, your direction, your next step, your next decision… to God. It’s your life God. My body is for your service and your glory. And when you bring your own life to that altar and give it to God, your thought life will get a pick me up, trust me. When you realize yeah, I can’t change what’s going on, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know… but God knows. God can easily map a way for you through whatever situation. He had a way for the three Hebrew children in the fiery furnace. He had a way for Daniel through the lions den. He had a way for Israel through the Red Sea. When’s that God going to be your God?

The more you make your life about the Lord Jesus Christ, the more your thoughts will be established. Our solution to our thought life is committing our life to God. It’s your life God, do with it what you will. Can we say that and mean it? Can we truly let go of ourselves and stop holding our lives so tightly and let it be HIS life? Commit your soul to the faithful Creator, he is faithful with what you commit to him. The more you give him, the safer it is. If I stop worrying about me, and instead commit the direction and future and outcome of my life to God, that helps my thinking. My life is God’s to use. And there is peace in that.

I don’t know what’s coming and what the future holds, but I can commit my job, my hobbies, my interests, my dreams, my desires, my future to God. I’ll just trust him with it. I look at the job I’ve done trying to manage and advance my own life, and I made an awful mess of it anyway. The best plans and best intentions fell flat, look where I got me… not very far. I never even known how to get what I want. Honestly, the best I’ve done is fulfill the verse in Hosea 13:9 which says “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thine help.” You can try and take on this life and this world in your own power and intellect and reasoning and resources, and guess what, it will be very tiring. But Jesus Christ’s yoke is easy and his burden is light.

Instead of taking the heavy yoke and heavy burden of this world and everything that’s wrong in it, and how crazy it is, and how wrong so much stuff is that’s going on, we need to take Jesus Christ’s yoke. Yoke up with him, get in step with him, get in line with him, get in yoke with him. His yoke is easy. My thoughts hadn’t been easy. But they can be. My burden had not been light. But it can be. Focus on Jesus Christ. He is who we are commanded to look to. Hebrews 12:2 says “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith”. And Jesus knows what adversity is like, he knows what false accusations are about, he knows what injustice is like, he knows how crazy and horrible and illogical and irrational and contradicted man is. And he says “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Tune out your tv, close facebook and youtube… and go to Christ, he is where a right mind is found for our heavy, weary, labouring, stressing, worrying, troubled, and fearful souls.

My thinking has been full of worry and uncertainty and fear, but that doesn’t belong there. I left God out of my thinking. I forgot that he is in control. I forgot that he can turn it around in a heartbeat. Joseph woke up one morning in the dungeon not knowing that that same day he would be second in command only to Pharaoh as governor over all of Egypt. Just think about that. God turned it around. Because that was God’s plan for Joseph’s life, God was taken by surprise by what happened, and he used those hard times and injustices and evils that Joseph experienced to produce salvation for his family and the known world. God is greater than government, Jesus said be of good cheer, he has overcome the world. Maybe God has a tough course for you, but guess what, there’s no passage where he does not give you grace to make it. And God is right there with you, he wasn’t on the outside of the furnace cheering the three Hebrews on, he was right in there with them, walking with them. Jesus was fully man, he identified with us, he knows what we go through.

We got so used to throwing out cliches we became immune to statements like God is in control. But he is. It may be an hour of darkness, it may be an hour of power for Satan… but it’s working eternal glory. Jesus did say at his betrayal and arrest… “This is your hour, and the power of darkness”. But we know how it ended up, in his glorious resurrection. Whatever comes up, God is directing my paths, they’re good steps when he makes our feet like hinds feet, we just follow him, and I am trusting him with the lead, knowing that I am in good hands. If Elijah could make it through those three and a half years plus much more with a king and queen and government and army and God hating and unbelieving population after him when noone was standing for nothing, noone seemed to be doing right and the land was in famine and drought… surely God can navigate a path for me as well. God looked after Elijah… he will look after you and I.

I recalled this verse in Genesis 28:15 “And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.” This is God speaking to Jacob when he saw the ladder. “I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.” Just think about that. If God has a race for you, and it is set before you, you are going to run that race, and you will finish it. Whatever plan God has for you, he’s going to do it. It doesn’t matter how covid crazy the government gets, it doesn’t matter what decrees and laws… God’s word will prevail, and what God has for you in life will happen.

I was thinking in the Bible of all the impossible situations much more impossible than this. I thought about in the book of Esther, a law passed to kill all the Jews everywhere. Yet God delivered the Jews from that. Because there was a greater law than that law made. And God is the greater, because he is the Greatest… my government thinks they’re God, wants to be God, but they’re under God. They are subject to him. And each person will answer to God for themselves. And these big politicians, and these big scientists and these big bullies… they will be very small before God.

My thoughts got bad because God wasn’t in my thoughts. But when I commit my life to God, when I commit my next day, my next step, when I commit what I’m doing and my ability to God… that helps my thought life. When I am surrendered to him, that is the right place to be. The more my life is Christ, the more my thoughts are established. I want to get my thinking straight, the last thing I need is for my thought life to be an absolute mess. Satan and this world does not belong in there. So today, just commit your life to Jesus Christ. It starts with salvation, and it never stops. Trust him, believe him, obey him.

Remember, this life is about his glory, and no matter how hard the times get, no matter how uncertain, no matter how terrifying… Jesus’ promises still apply. We don’t need to be afraid, center our lives on him, fix our eyes upon him, and we will walk the water with him. We need to stop being so invested in me and my life here, and invest in a better place, in my home, where my Saviour is who is one day coming for me and where my life and future needs to be committed for my sanity and my peace of mind. The answer for my struggling thought life is a person, the Lord Jesus Christ. Read the Bible, pray, commit my life to him, and he will heal and establish my thought life.

Isaiah 26:3 – Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.

Blog Anxiety Bible Christian Fear Gospel Jesus Peace Rest Salvation Saved Stress Thought Worry