What are the drips of your thoughts creating in your mind?

As a clinical therapist, and as a pastor, there’s something I have to address with every person I counsel: their thought life.

We can benefit ourselves greatly with a “pure” and healthy thought life, but it’s also true that nothing has done more damage to ourselves than our own thinking. That’s because it is our thoughts that create our emotions and the combination of our thoughts and emotions create our behavior. James describes how it’s the entertaining of our own desires that leads us to ruin:

“Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death,” James 1:14-15.

An unidentified person wrote descriptively about the process of what we’re constructing with our own thoughts as follows:

Every traveler should visit the mammoth caves of Kentucky and other parts of the South. Here one can see enormous pillars which have been formed by the steady dropping of water from the roof of the cavern. This masonry, formed of solid rock, made by the slow and silent process of nature, is truly marvelous. A single drop of water, finding its way from the surface down through the roof of the cave, deposits its sediment and another follows it and still another, each adding its imperceptible contribution, until the icicle of stone begins to grow, ultimately reaching the pillar which likewise has been forming on the bottom of the cave. It becomes a massive pillar which will stand until the end of the world.

There is a process just like that going on in each one of our minds. Each thought that stirs for a moment sinks into the soul; as each little drop of water, with its limestone deposit, makes its contribution to the pillar in the cave. Other thoughts follow and yet others, until a habit of thought along a given line of reasoning, arousing similar emotions, is formed, erecting within our hearts monuments of purpose or pillars of ambition …

As one thought drips into our minds, followed by another, what are we creating?

I think the Apostle Paul suggested our minds form pillars of truth, as he referred to the church of God as just that:

“I am writing these things to you now, even though I hope to be with you soon, so that if I am delayed, you will know how people must conduct themselves in the household of God. This is the church of the living God, which is the pillar and foundation of the truth,” 1 Timothy 3:14-15.

Imagine what might form in our minds if we followed the description of those the psalmist describes here:

“Oh, the joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or stand around with sinners, or join in with mockers. But they delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night,” Psalm 1:1-2.

Paul knew for the drips of our thoughts to create anything good and beautiful, we would need to be intentional about what we allow to drip into our minds:

“And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise,” Philippians 4:8.

King David allowed the following to keep dripping into his mind:

“I remember the days of old. I ponder all your great works and think about what you have done,” Psalm 143:5.

Asaph encouraged himself with a steady drip of these kinds of thoughts:

“But then I recall all you have done, O Lord; I remember your wonderful deeds of long ago. They are constantly in my thoughts. I cannot stop thinking about your mighty works,” Psalm 77:11-12.

Just as the drips of water in a cave form mighty pillars, the drips of our thoughts do their own creative work in our minds. Daniel Maurice Robins described that process in “War Cry”:

The mind is like a crowded street
Where phantom thoughts, like people, meet:
Some hard at work, some idle are,
Some stay at home, some wander far.
Some thoughts wield power that ever lives-
A power that inspiration gives,
While others dwell with us awhile,
Then pass, as transient as a smile.
Thus come and go these thoughts of Ours,
Some, perfume-laden as the flowers,
While others sear our lives with blight
And bring no pleasure or delight.
Our thinking lifts us to the stars,
Or seals our hearts with prison bars;
Confers on us both joy and strife,
For as we think we fashion life.

What are you fashioning in your mind by the thoughts that you allow to drip in, forming emotions and shaping behaviors? What kind of life will that fashion?

Scotty