LW Baptist

By Rolland Coburn

Pastor

What controls your thinking these days? “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks,” Jesus said in Luke 6:45. The Bible applies this truth to believers’ lives, “Then those who feared the Lord spoke to one another” (Malachi 3:16). God’s people can have precious fellowship with each other, wonderful sharing in the midst of a fallen world.

The apostle Paul says that is what believers need to be doing all the time, esteeming the Lord’s name. “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, noble, right, pure, admirable, any excellence, anything praiseworthy, think on these things” (Phillippians 4:8).

Colossians 3:1-2 explains, “If you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God, not on the things that are on earth.”

The reason is that the Lord “is the only one worth meditating on and focusing on as the reference point for our life and our thinking.” Christ alone has all these wonderful qualities.

Colossians 4:6 says that followers of the Lord are to reproduce his example in their thinking and speaking. “Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person,” Yes,“let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such as is good for building up according to the need, so that it will give grace to those who hear” Eph 4:29.

What does our Lord do for such people? “And the Lord gave attention and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the Lord and who esteem His name,” Malachi 3:16. “Like the stars of the morning, his bright crown adorning, they shall shine in their beauty, bright gems for his crown.”