Proverbs 23:6-7  – says, for he is the kind of person who is always thinking about the cost. “Eat and drink”, he says to you, but his heart is not with you.

Of course these verses are speaking about someone who is stingy with their money, but it is also a revelation about what happens when we could perhaps be thinking about one thing yet speaking something entirely different. The American Indians used to have a saying for this… “You speak with forked tongue!”

The often interpreted version of Verse 7 above is …”As a man thinks, so is he.”, which is not a mistake or a misinterpretation, it is just used in a more general sense to demonstrate the fact that our thinking drives our actions. Yes, everything that we do starts with a thought – good or bad!

The point here is that whatever we are thinking we become! We can speak all kinds of false words, and fool some people, but never do we fool them all.

So, the message is, be careful about what you think and how you think! What we think can be random, but how we think is usually what forms our attitude, or a pattern in the way we think, which is also known as a paradigm (Acts 17:11 and John 14:26). In order to change these attitudes, we need to dedicate ourselves to maintaining a teachable spirit (or heart).

This requires us to build a new attitude. An attitude of hunger for truth as we read in Acts 17:11 like the Berean’s mentioned, always receiving the word with eagerness, and “examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so”. And added to this we need to develop an ear to hear what the Spirit of God is saying to the church (Hebrews 5:14), because if we are not 100% teachable we risk missing God’s truth altogether.

As Christians, these really are the things that we need to do in preparation for hearing what the Spirit is saying to the church and to ourselves. We cannot hear the Spirit of God when we are harbouring doubts and fear.

It’s not enough to act like a Christian, because that is truly not Christianity! If we are going to be a Christian, we need to “be” one from the inside out. It all starts on the inside – Luke 6:45 – “…out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”. God is concerned about the attitudes in our heart, and we cannot fool God. He looks and makes judgements about us from our heart, not from the actions on the outside, but on the heart, which is inside (2 Chronicles 16:9 and 1 Samuel 16:7).

This is why David cried to the Lord after committing his sin with Bathsheba in Psalm 51:10 – Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.

So, let’s be a true Christian and walk before God by keeping tabs on our thinking and repenting and asking forgiveness when we fall. If we do, we will ensure that we always walk in the victory and power that Jesus died to give us. Yes, we will face trials, and we will fail at times (Psalm 34:19), but we will also prevail over all things as God has promised. God bless you richly!

Ps. Colin Grigg

Director – Full Gospel Churches of Australia