A mother was peeling vegetables for a salad when her daughter, who was home from college, casually mentioned she was going to a questionable movie that evening. The mother suddenly picked up a handful of garbage from the trash can and dumped it in the salad. “Mother!” said the shocked college girl, “Why did you put garbage in the salad!”
The mother, “Well, I figured that if you didn’t care about letting garbage into your mind, you certainly wouldn’t mind a little garbage in your stomach either!”
Suppose you take a sponge and dip it into a bucket of dirty water and then pull it back out. When you squeeze the sponge, do you think nice clean water is going to come out of it? No, of course not – what’s going to come out of it, is dirty water, because that’s what you put into it. If we saturate our minds with questionable movies, videos, magazines, music, and entertainment, why do we think happiness, holiness, and Godliness will flow out? It WON’T! We get out of our lives what we put into them!
Proverbs 4:23 tells us; “Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flow the springs of life.” What we allow our heart to seek after controls the quality of our lives!
We too often are blinded by the values, pleasures, and entertainments of this world. Remember what 1 John 1:5 tells us; “God is light, and in Him is no darkness AT ALL.” Not in Him is not much darkness, or just a little darkness…NO DARKNESS PERIOD!!!
We can’t be filling our minds with the things of this world, and expect to keep living a life in fellowship and communion with Jesus Christ. We may be able to “keep it up” for a little while, but sooner than we think, one side is going to take over, and it’s usually the side that will drag us down and destroy our lives.
God’s love for us is beyond human comprehension. I couldn’t begin to describe it. Just the fact that He even loves us is amazing, and He CERTAINLY deserves our best. We should keep our hearts and minds clean and open to Him, and allow Him to fill us, guide us, and control us.
It’s a daily struggle, yes…but it’s well worth fighting for. When God has all of us, including our hearts and our minds, we have all that we need in Him.
“For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly.” (Psalm 84:11)