Robert McLaughlin Bible Ministries |
Why God made us like He did. God's reasons for people testing; personal suffering, Part 10.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Why God allows thought testing or our thoughts to be tested.
2CO 12:10, Therefore I am well content with weaknesses [preventative suffering], with insults [slander and people testing], with distresses [a reference to pressure and thought testing], with persecutions [a reference to system testing], with difficulties [a reference to stress and disaster testing], for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.
Thought has such a powerful effect on the believer’s success or failure in the Christian life that thinking must be considered a major spiritual test.
In all stages of the spiritual life and Christian growth, the believer will face the pressure of thought conflicts in his soul. Human viewpoint will conflict with divine viewpoint. Dilemmas, confusions, and unanswered questions motivate the positive believer to apply the resources of Bible doctrine he has learned.
Thought testing may also exist when circumstances are overtly prosperous and tranquil.
MAT 25:26, reaping where we did not sow, and gather where we scattered no seed.
JOH 4:37, “For in this case the saying is true, ‘One sows, and another reaps.’
When it comes to distresses or pressure and thought testing, a person is not always what he appears to be on the surface; the real person is the thought content of his soul.
What you really are as a person is what you really think, not what you appear to be on the surface, not the way you are dressed or groomed, but what goes on inside the invisible you, which is your soul.
People can hide their thoughts and become masterful at the practice of hypocrisy.
Himself is the Hebrew verb nephesh which means soul.
Hypocrisy is a manifestation of an evil mental attitude.
People use thoughts to justify their wrong doings, and speech to conceal their thoughts.
The real person here is the implacable person and the hypocrite who invites you.
That delicious food they serve will turn sour in your stomach, and you will vomit it and have to take back your words of appreciation for their so-called kindness.
Hypocrisy is a manifestation of an evil thought life.
People use thoughts to justify their wrong doings, and they use speech to conceal their thoughts.
Learn to have more respect for honest arrogance then hypocritical humility.
Courage and genuine humility are straightforward virtues, for they are virtues that hypocrisy cannot imitate.
Scribes and the Pharisees were hypocrites who gave alms, prayed, fasted, tithed, they were overtly moral and righteous, they studied and taught the Bible, but their thoughts were evil,
MAT 6:2; 6:5; 6:16; 23:23; 23:25.
Because a believer is what he thinks, a thought can make or break him, depending on the nature of the thought.
If his thought is consistent with Bible doctrine, he advances in the predesigned plan of God.
If his thought is contrary to doctrine, he is distracted from his true destiny in life.
Rational thinking is the essential human activity that distinguishes man from animals.
When the believer thinks evil, he is evil.
From evil thinking comes evil motivation; from evil motivation, evil actions.
MAT 9:4, And Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, “Why are you thinking evil in your hearts?”
MAT 22:42a, “What do you think about the Christ?”
Mankind’s great enemy is a thought called arrogance.
Arrogance can inflate or deflate man’s opinion of himself.
Both self-promotion and self-depreciating distort and deny reality, which is the realm in which God’s plan is effective.
God’s grace deals with us as we are, but an egocentric believer who does not live in objective reality will never use God’s grace provisions to advance in the predesigned plan of God.
GAL 6:3, For if anyone thinks he is something [arrogance] when he is nothing, he deceives himself.