July 27, 2016
Cell phones are amazing. The small device I hold in my hand has no visible connections. It appears to be self-contained – we could say isolated. But we know otherwise. You can be thousands of miles away when you dial my number and that little unit connects to your signal so we can talk. When our youth team traveled outside the USA, I received daily updates on their activities by way of text messages on my cell phone.
What is mind-boggling is that the atmosphere is filled with millions of messages being sent and received around Planet Earth, but my unit picks up just the ones intended for me. It is selective in what it receives. Think of how useless it would be if all of the messages came to my cell phone and I had to sort out which ones were intended for me.
I thought about the communication process that takes place between Creator God and me. When I trusted Jesus as my God and Savior, the Spirit of God joined with my spirit and lives within me. As I read the Bible, its words enter my thoughts and the Spirit takes those thoughts and motivates my mind to think correctly – to actually think God’s thoughts. When I am thinking His thoughts, I have His attitude and make good choices.
But the reality is that there are a lot of other ideas entering my mind and influencing my thinking. Some of them are not appropriate. I have to sort out which thoughts to accept and ponder, and which ones to reject. My mind is not like the cell phone that does the selecting for me. I have to be diligent to filter the barrage of information coming into my mind and do a continual selection and rejection process.
As time goes by and practice matures this process, I find it easier to recognize which thoughts should remain and those that need to be rejected. But the need to be aware of “intruders” is always present because the counterfeit god, Satan, is very clever at slipping in hurtful thoughts that are intended to cause damage.
The presence of my cell phone reminds me to be selective in my thought life.
Pastor Bill Ehmann