I am not thinking straight

The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts. (James Joyce)

How do people around you appear to be acting these days? If you have a circle of friends like mine, their actions are pretty consistent, loving, and kind. If you look around you today, you may observe there are a whole lot of unkind actions being taken against individuals. There seems to be a lot of anger amongst people these days - leading to actions that are just not all that good around us. Actions are the direct result of what we think about the most. If fear is your main mode of operation, chances are you are allowing your thoughts to continually dwell on things well outside of your sphere of control. If you want to know what a man is thinking - just observe his actions!

Do not act like the sinful people of the world. Let God change your life. First of all, let Him give you a new mind. Then you will know what God wants you to do. And the things you do will be good and pleasing and perfect. (Romans 12:2)

It is hard to always control our actions, isn't it? It could be a direct result of how hard it actually is to control our thoughts! Thoughts have a way of getting away from us without us being any the wiser. We just let them 'drift' a little, not really paying attention, and before long we find ourselves repeatedly dwelling on things that we shouldn't be dabbling with at all. God's ask of us is that we allow him freedom to do a little 'thought control' in our lives. It isn't that he wants to brain wash us - he wants to help direct our thoughts toward the things that will bring about righteous and holy actions from our lives. 

I am an observer of people. I will sit in a room, watching people as they arrive, observing their body language, where they sit in respect to others in the room, and even their 'non-verbal' cues. In a matter of minutes I can usually begin to size up the crowd. Some people in that room may have become quite skilled at displaying the outward actions they want others to see, but trust me on this one - their inward thoughts will eventually betray their true desires and habits!

We all need a new mind because the one we have has been flawed by our sin nature. It isn't reliable! We need to remember this - God isn't going to move into areas of our thought life that we don't give him access into - he is going to wait for us to allow him in. Once he is given that access, though, we can count on him doing a little housekeeping! He isn't going to allow unclean, impure, or even "more or less harmless" thoughts dwell there any longer. He will reorder our thoughts so we see things from the correct perspective. In the process, we are likely to see a change in our actions - because rightly ordered thoughts will produce better actions from within. Just sayin!