THOUGHT LIFE

Imagination is the hotbed where…sin is too often hatched. Guard your thoughts, and there will be little fear about your actions.

J.C. Ryle

Thoughts for Young Men.

Thoughts lead on to purposes; purposes go forth in action; actions form habits; habits decide character; and character fixes our destiny.

Tryon Edwards

You must keep your memory clean and pure, as it were a wedlock chamber, from all strange thoughts, fancies and imaginations, and it must be trimmed and adorned with holy meditations and virtues of Christ’s holy crucified life and passion: That God may continually and ever rest therein.

Robert Leighton

Rules and Instructions for a Holy Life.

Increasingly our world is short on thinking and long on experience. Mix this with inner turmoil and a desperate need for answers from some higher source, along with the infiltration of eastern religions, and you can easily see why the mystical aspects of our culture are so predominant. Our generation would certainly far rather load all of their information in a computer and forget the agony on thinking, especially thinking biblically.

Jim Elliff

Led by the Spirit, Joshua Press, 1999, p. 34-35, http://www.solascriptura.ca/shop/store.php?crn=215.

The Bible indicates that our thought lives ultimately determine our character. Solomon said, “For as he thinks within himself, so he is” (Pro. 23:7).

Jerry Bridges

Holiness begins in our minds and works out to our actions. That being true, what we allow to enter our minds is critically important. The television programs we watch, the movies we may attend, the books and magazines we read, the music we listen to, and the conversations we have all affect our minds. We need to evaluate the effects of these avenues honestly, using Philippians 4:8 as a standard. Are the thought stimulated by these various avenues true? Are they pure? Lovely? Admirable, excellent, or praiseworthy?

Jerry Bridges