Think / Listen

Transcript

Alright thank you very much, and hello again dear radio friends. How in the world are you? Oh, I’m fine thank you, nice of you to ask. I’ve just been praying that God would put His love and His power and His truths and His blessing in every word that I say. That the tone of my voice and the words that are used and the unspoken emotional content that lies behind them. I just want anybody who’s listening to be blessed.

We started hitting the high spots in Philippians and we come to chapter 4. We talked the last time we got together about the fact that if you commit a situation to God, He will anchor you, He’ll hold you, His peace will keep you and that word, keep, actually means keep like a garrison of soldiers standing around. God will keep your heart and your mind. Your heart has to do with your emotions and decision-making qualities of your life, and your mind has to do obviously with the intellectual questions that you face, and God can take care both of them. Both your heart and your mind can be perfectly at peace when you know the Lord is in control. They said of our Savior, “He hath done all things well”. That is still His record. Everything that God has done for you is going to be the right thing, as you yield the situation to Him.

Now, there’s a beautiful triad of truth, that I want to point out as we’re just skipping along here and it has to do with verses six, eight and nine. Three verbs, “Everything by prayer”, that’s pray, verse six, “Those things that you have, whatever things are pure and righteous and beautiful and holy and just and honest and lovely and of good report, virtue and praise. Think on those things”, verse eight, that’s the second word, think, and then verse nine, “Those things which ye have both learned and received and heard and seen in Me, do”, that’s the third verb ,do. Pray, think, and do. This my friend is the, the procedure that will keep you happily in the will of God.

He says, “The God of peace will be with you”. Now, you want the peace of God, you pray. You want the God of peace, His presence in other words, you obey, in between you use your mind to focus it on His eternal truth. Pray, think, and do. Now, you pray, he says, “Let your requests be made known to God”. You pray with worship, you pray with thanksgiving, and you pray with definiteness, and you let God know what your need is, and He says He will give you His peace.

Then says he, “Think about things”. The thoughts of your heart and mind are the determining factor of your conduct. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he”, the Bible says. Now, he says, “True, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtue and praise. All of these are attributes of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. You can find every one of them listed in one way or another in the Word of God. We haven’t the time today to go through that list but it’s there and you can find it for yourself, if you wish. All of these are attributes of our blessed Lord, and so what he’s actually saying is let your mind be filled with thoughts of Christ and the truth concerning Him.

Some time ago when I was the studying with you in the ninth chapter Mark, where our Lord Jesus said, “Have salt in yourselves and be at peace, one with another”, we did, we did a little rundown of, of some of the verses that had to do with peace. Do you remember that? “The peace that comes when the war is over”, Romans 5:1, “Therefore being justified by faith with peace with God”. The peace that comes through being occupied with the Word of God, “Great peace have they that love Thy law and nothing shall offend them”.

The peace that comes in answer to prayer, this very passage we’ve been looking at Philippians 4:6, “Everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God and the peace of God, shall keep your hearts and minds”, and then I came to Isaiah 26:3, “Thou wilt keep Him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee because he trusteth in Thee”, and the truth hit my soul strongly, I have been meditating on it ever since. He says, “Thou wilt keep Him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee”.

You are thinking about God and as a result it says, “A causal relationship is formed and you begin to risk things on God. He trusteth in thee”. And the truth that that God brought home to my heart was, what you think about becomes the basis of your trust. Now a little Cookism definition of the word trust, is that on which you’re willing to risk the whole bundle of life, that on which you are willing to risk the whole situation, that’s what you trust. You’re driving a car, let us say along the road, and let’s say it’s a fairly powerful car. Ahead of you there is a truck lumbering along at a slow speed. You’re on an incline, but it’s a long hill, you can see quite a ways ahead, and you want to get around that lumbering, slow-moving truck, and so you, you say to the person sitting beside you, “I think I’m gonna pass this truck”. Well now, you get out in the other lane, it’s a 2 lane highway and you’re going to pass the truck. In the distance however, you see a vehicle coming towards you. Now the question is, are you to backup and go behind the truck again or are you going to try to get around him? Well, you happen to know that you’ve got a good many horses under that, under that hood, and so what you do is you drop down on the accelerator pedal which causes your automatic transmission to downshift, and there’s a surge of power and all of a sudden you’re around the truck and on your way, safely. Now, what did you do? What actually did you do? You trusted the situation to that which you knew had some power. Actually were taking your life in your hands because if it hadn’t worked and you were in the wrong lane when the oncoming vehicle arrived, there would of been a head-on collision, wouldn’t there? So, you were really trusting your whole life and well-being to something that had some power, namely the horsepower under the hood of your car. You follow me?

Now, trust is the willingness to risk a situation on God, just as you trusted your motor to rev up and put and, and get you moving so that you get around that slow-moving truck. You understand that? It says, “He trusteth in Thee”. The basis of trust is what you think about. Whatever is on your mind all the time is what you’re going finally to trust. You’re going be willing to risk the whole bundle on what you think about. Now, you can prove that to yourself in any number of ways.

Here’s a man who lives to make money, and he’s thinking about it all the time. You talk to him for three minutes, he’ll be off on something having to do with money. So what happens? He sees a way to make a big amount of profit and he takes the risk. Now, whether or not he’s successful is beside the point, but he risks his capital on a situation that he thinks will make money. Where other people would hang back and say, “No, that’s too big a risk for me”, he’s says, “Oh no. I want to make money and this is the only way you can make money is to take a risk now and then, and he does it”. He’s been thinking about money long enough that he’s willing to risk a great deal for it. Isn’t that true? Here’s a person who’s living for the pleasures of the world and the flesh. He thinks about that sort of thing all the time. He’s going to end up, you know this to be a fact, you’ve seen in it happen, he’s going to end up risking his own happiness, his home, and his health, and the well-being of his loved one, he’ll risk the whole bundle in order to satisfy that about which he’s been thinking. Isn’t that true? You see him later on after the world has fallen in on him, and his world has crashed and he says ruefully, “I just didn’t think”. Well yes, you thought but about the, about the wrong thing. What you think about becomes the basis on which you are willing to risk everything.

Now, that’s why he said, “God’s peace. Who wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee. Think on these things”. Why? Because what you think about becomes the basis for your trust. By trust we mean the willingness to risk the whole bundle on something. Have you got that in mind? That’s why it’s important to read your Bible in the morning, that’s why it’s important to pray before you start the day, that’s why it’s important to pray your way through the day. Pray before you answer the phone, pray before you open a letter, pray before you make a decision, pray before you start a conversation, pray before you sign a contract, pray before you call on a client, pray your way through the day. Why? Because when God is in your thoughts, you’ll find yourself risking the situation on His will and beloved, when you do that you’re Alright. You’ll never fail when you’re in the will of God. There are no failures in the will of God. Hallelujah. It’s a great truth isn’t it, think on these things.

Now, just a practical note. Do you ever set aside time to think? Most of us are so busy doing, that we don’t do an awful lot of thinking. Set aside time to think about God and about His word. I mean not just reading it, yes to read it, of course, but to think about Him. To pray and then to listen as God the Holy Spirit whispers to you. Have a, have a notepad and a pencil or pen near you and sit down and just be quiet before the Lord and think about Him and about His Word and pray, then listen, and pray and listen, think about God. You will be delighted to see what God whispers to your heart. Yes, you can hear from Him. Yes He can whisper to your heart by the Holy Spirit. He does this and you will be learning some of the, the precious secrets of walking with your Lord, if you just take time to think about God.

Every success book you’ll ever buy, has in it somewhere an exhortation to carve out some time alone. Why? Because the time you spend alone thinking is probably the most productive of your whole day. “Think on these things”.

Now, the third of the triad of courses is to obey. “Those things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in Me, do”. Learned, that’s somebody told you. Received, that means you made it your own. Heard, you’ve observed that it works. Seen in me, you’ve seen a person demonstrating it when you know Christianity, when you know the faith of Christ that well, then He’s says, “Obey what you know”. Well, we’ll get at that the next time we get together.

Father God today, may we be thinking about Thee and doing Thy will, in Jesus’ name I ask this, Amen.

Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!