FOR AS HE THINKS IN HIS HEART, SO IS HE 18 NOV 2013

My entire life I have watched how wrong beliefs have made people their own worst enemy. It’s a serious problem of epidemic proportions. Gaining the ancient wisdom of God’s Word has helped me fix my own unhelpful beliefs. (And confirmed that…”The Word of God is living & active…it judges the thoughts & attitudes of the heart.” HEB 4:12) This post is how the truth can truly set us free—we ourselves are in control of realizing these helpful truths…yes, we ourselves are the ones who must examine our beliefs (in our heart) & realize that our beliefs dictate our actions, our success, & our happiness. I watch people not take care of themselves because of poor beliefs. (For instance, they neglect their health, damage their health, & blame the doctor for not saving them.) When we blame external things for our anger, for our fears, for our difficulties we tend to ignore that usually the root problem was our own beliefs. Our reactions to events are determined by our beliefs.

People believe that happiness is having all one’s expectations met. Some have very strange desires, some have more normal expectations, but when they are not met, they are angry, sad, & their day is ruined. Christ said “out of the heart proceed evil thoughts” and what is not of faith is biblically defined as sin. A thought not of faith is…(I don’t need to tell you). An obvious example of an evil thought proceeding from the heart…someone decides to rape a girl. What may be more difficult to realize is that negative thinking in general, for instance, a controlling manipulative spirit also originates with an incorrect belief in the heart. Plenty of people justify their controlling manipulative spirit by quoting some Bible verse, not realizing that they are missing the spirit behind the words. For instance, “wives obey your husbands” does not justify unChristlike actions based on unChristlike beliefs. Read the following verse & one sees the fuller context (i.e. the husband is acting Christlike)! Hurtful words & damaging attitudes come from mistaken beliefs. (As a sidenote…don’t mistake anger for indignation…there is a place for righteous indignation…yet we need to identify which is at work.)

GOOD BELIEFS. “Keep your heart with all diligence for out of it spring the issues of life.” PRV 4:23 Within this short post, my words need to get distilled down to the foundations. Christ gave us just such a distillation of the foundational beliefs which we should begin with. Without a vision of God, people perish (cf. PRV 29:18, 2 CHR 7:14). But people have lots of screwy beliefs about God, for instance, they may equate the heavenly Father to be similar to their own father. In previous posts, I have emphasized the need for us to believe in the goodness of God. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart & with all your soul & with all your mind & with all your strength.” “Anyone who comes to Him must believe…that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.” The next good belief is to realize the value of our fellow humans…Christ taught “Love each other as I have love you.” Life boils down to love. Creation itself was an act of love. That doesn’t mean you love everything about everybody. But it does mean we should see that other person like God sees them. Christ said to do good to our enemies. If we invest good things in them, we are investing in a person that was created in God’s image. Christ’s disciples ask when did we help you in the things you are describing?, and he said every time you did good to others you were doing it to him. Do we have the beliefs of Christ in our hearts…or something else?? Love never fails. We only know in part. Knowledge only goes so far. But love will remain. The bottom line is that many of our problems are actually an extension of bad beliefs in our heart. The heart’s beliefs are where the battle for success start.

I can’t give you a new heart, but the Spirit of God can if you want one. This post is too short to make specific adjustments to the beliefs of others, but the Spirit of God will reveal these things to those who deeply want to discover their unhealthy beliefs. You, my friend, are in the driver’s seat. My goal is to remind you that over & over again I have been amazed at how an improvement in people’s beliefs has brought amazing positive transformations into their lives. Where might one begin? If you already love God, He tells us that meditating on his Word day & night…”for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.” JOS 1:8 The benefit of this are all the wise beliefs that you will absorb: “O how I love thy teachings! It is my meditation all the day…I understand more than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation.” PS 119:97,100

BE BLESSED MY FRIEND.