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4A. Our Thoughts (Forsake your unrighteous thoughts, and let Christ think His thoughts in you.)

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  speaker icon   1. Thou Wilt Keep Him in Perfect Peace, excerpt   (1:30)
  speaker icon   2. Our Thoughts   (25:14)
  speaker icon   3. Just a Closer Walk with Thee, excerpt   (2:53)

Selected Verses:

Philippians 2:5.  Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.

Isaiah 55:7.  Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

Opening:

You know, these wonderful words that God gives us in tongues and interpretation are exceedingly precious if you accept them from the Lord.  When you have a hearing ear, and when you desire that “sincere milk of the Word,” you’ll soon discern that it’s Jesus speaking.  And a very simple message the Lord gave one day, in which He said, “Every moment of the day and of the night, I’m thinking of you.”  And it made such a change in my life.  I remember I had to go somewhere on the Elevated.  The Third Avenue Elevated was still in existence, so you can tell how old I am.  Anyway, while I was riding on the Elevated, every little while I had to hang onto my hands when I thought, “Why, Jesus, You are just now thinking of me.”  My hands wanted to go up, right in the Elevated.  That would not have been a very great mistake, you know.  But God was doing something for me just by that wonderful truth, “Thou thinkest, Lord, of me.”  David says, “How wonderful also are Thy thoughts unto me, O God.  They are more than can be numbered.”  To him also it was a great revelation that God was thinking of him, personally. 

And once that truth gets hold of you, you will perhaps turn it around and say, “Well, Jesus, how about my thoughts toward You?”

Selected Quotes:

speaker icon It’s easy comparatively to leave the beer can, and the tobacco pouch, and the pipe.  And it’s easy to forsake a lot of things, and people think they’re top-notch saints while their hearts are full of vile corruption…  And when God says, “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts,” He opens wide His sanctuary and He says, “Let him return unto the Lord…”  That’s a very wonderful call of God to consecrate your thoughts to Jesus.  What good is this exterior religion?  What good is it if I don’t drink beer and don’t smoke cigarettes?  …And many, many people will condemn others for committing a sin openly and publicly while they have the same thing in their hearts.

speaker icon But how is my heart?  Oh, God says, “So shall the King greatly desire thy beauty.”  It’s an interior beauty that Jesus Christ wants, but He creates it.  And oh, what wonderful means God has provided for His people to weed out the thorns and the thistles from this heart, and to make this heart a garden for the Well-beloved!  “My Beloved has come into His garden.”  I’ve invited Him: He can come anytime and find this garden a garden of God, and find it filled with “fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ”—with thoughts that are pure and lovely and just and true and full of virtue and full of purity.  Listen, would you like to present that kind of a heart to your Beloved?  Would you really?  Then you’ve got to do a little bit more than dump your beer can out!

speaker icon But God provides wonderful means and wonderful victories.  And what are they?  Why listen: Bible study and prayer.  I mean Bible study in the Holy Ghost—when the Spirit of God gets hold of your heart and opens your understanding!  “None of the princes of this world have known it.” … “The natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God,” but you can.  And here is “Bread that comes down from heaven.”  Here is the seed of the kingdom.  Here is the Word of God.  And it’s written personally for you and for me.  And it’s “quick and powerful.”

(from 11:10)    The Word of God…  Instead of just reading the things that interest me, to let that sword of the Spirit dig deep, to become a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart!  That’s where God finds his lovers.  Most people are satisfied with an exterior knowledge of religion…as long as they know how to preach sermons.  But the bride is not like that.  She says, “Come into your garden, my Bridegroom… All this mind of mine has been renewed, has been transformed.  Oh, this mind of mine has become the mind of Christ.  “Let this mind be in you.”  Oh, that’s what God offers me.  Think of it: when He gives me His word, he offers me His own mind!  …Is it possible for a human being like we are to possess the mind of Christ?  Not exactly, but that mind of Christ will possess me, when that mind of mine has been renewed and transformed—when you’re not conformed to this world anymore…

That’ll never be unless I want it bad enough to give up my own thoughts.  That’s why He says, “Let the unrighteous man forsake his thoughts.”

How long does it take before the Spirit of God gets possession of those thoughts of yours that have been running rampant?  You know, your thoughts are not your own.  They either stem from hell or from heaven—either the flesh or the Spirit.  “Ye are not in the flesh… if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.”  And Pentecostal people ought to recognize that we don’t need a revival, we have a revival.  And the question is whether we’re going to live in the Spirit or not.  That river is flowing freely, mightily, like a mighty river that grows deeper and wider every day!  What am I doing with You, Almighty God?  “If we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth…we crucify the son of Son of God afresh.”  Beloved, these things are a as serious as heaven and hell.

speaker icon And beside Bible study, prayer.  Oh, how this heart of mine will be cleansed when it becomes a sanctuary!  And that’s what Jesus means when He says, “When you pray, don’t pray like the Pharisees and scribes.  Lots of people pray like that.  “But enter into your closet,”—that means into your own heart—“and shut the door.”  Get alone with God in your heart.  We don’t have time enough to do that.  Our busy life will keep the door open, and all the world marches in and out like a regiment of soldiers.

speaker icon What have I got to do with this world, if I am not “crucified unto the world,” and “the world is crucified unto me”?  I will be damned with the world; that will be my fate.  But God says, “as a man thinketh in his heart…”  Oh, I can think the thoughts of Christ; I can.  God will give them to me.  God will write them upon my heart.  God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, will transform my thinking.  Glory to God!  And oh, how pure must this heart be to please so great a King.  Beloved, then your heart becomes the kingdom of God.  Oh to sanctify this heart, oh to consecrate my thoughts will require that kind of praying!

Illustrations and Extracts:

Church members who judged a beer drinker, but not their own inward sinfulness.  “They were so incensed, ‘Bro. Waldvogel, you ought to put her out; she’s got no room here!’  I said, ‘Listen, I’d rather all of you smoked cigarettes and drank beer than let that “poison of asps” flow out of your mouth!’”    (from 4:19)

An indictment against television.    (from 14:01)

A native on the mission field who was not content merely to read the Sermon on the Mount, but sought to live it.    (from 18:37)

References: 

Thou Thinkest, Lord, of Me, a hymn by Edmund Simon Lorenz (1854-1942).

Higher Ground, a hymn by Johnson Oatman, Jr.

Audio Quality: Fair

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