PT-5 "Keeping a Pure Mind"

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/16/2025 7:39 AM

 

PT-5 “Keeping a Pure Mind”

 

            The following excerpt comes from a booklet that John MacArthur wrote and in today’s SD we will be looking at the fifth SD from this booklet.

 

            “Don’t think this problem is unique to sexual sins.  Some people like to rehearse memories of the time they got angry and poured out vengeance on someone.  Some enjoy thoughts of the time they lied and got away with it.  All kinds of tempting memories lodge themselves in us and become new sins every time we remember them with pleasure.

 

            “Savoring memories of one’s past sin is a particularly heinous form of sin. In Ezekiel 23, the Lord condemned Israel by comparing the nation to a harlot named Oholibah.  This was His charge against her:  ‘She multiplied her harlotries, remembering the days of her youth, when she played the harlot in the land of Egypt’ (v. 19).

 

            “And the spiritual devastation this practice leaves in its wake is tremendous.  It hardens the conscience.  It corrupts the character.  It can even destroy relationships.  I have talked to young couples who lived a life of fornication before they came to Christ.  They become Christians and get married.  Then they find it very difficult to be singly devoted to each other because they struggle with constant thoughts about all the fornication and sinful relationships they indulged in before they knew the Lord.

 

            “Satan will take all the garbage out of your past and try to drag it back through your mind so that you relive it.  That is precisely why pornography is so spiritually destructive.  Once you implant a lurid image in your thoughts, you cannot take it away.  But it isn’t only pornography that has this effect.  Many of the films and televisions programs produced for the mass market routinely include images, themes, and story lines that tempt people to sinful thought patterns.  Once the suggestive pictures and thoughts are planted in the mind, they reside there as potential temptations anytime we think of them.  We would all do well to emulate Job’s example, and refuse to expose our eyes to anything that might provoke such thoughts.”

 

            Lord willing we will look at the next Sub section, “Sins of Scheming” in the next SD.

 

Spiritual Meaning for my Life Today:  I totally agree with what this booklet is reminding me.  As mentioned I was almost 27 years old before I became a believer, and live a lot of sinfulness during those first years.  Things that I remember, but do not want to do this any more because it is sinful, sinfulness of the mind.

 

My Steps of Faith for Today:  Trust the Lord to use this booklet to cause me to have better control of my mind and if I think sinful thoughts I will confess them.

 

As you read this SD please remember to pray for direction that my wife and I need in order to receive from the Lord direction on how He desires us to go forth with the right people to rid my wife of her new found cancer.  I will appreciate this very much.  Thanks in advance. 

3/16/2025 7:58 AM