Christian Living

---

Larry Lilly's Letter Monday July 26, 2010

In the last few weeks several folks have written and suggested that I, Larry Lilly, may be going off the deep end. I replied that I did that years ago. The truth is simple; our thoughts whether they are tied to God's Word, or to some evil idea, exert an enormous power on our life. Solomon wrote, in part:

Proverbs 23:7: For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he:

A person may pretend to be all manner of things, but he really is no more or less than what or who is going on inside. My purpose in addressing the thoughts and dreams of our mind and heart is simple; just being automatons does not count for much in God's world, He instructs us to think and to feel, to act with controlled (mental) passion (heart) in the doing of things in which we engage.

Commenting on this our Third President, Thomas Jefferson put it this way:

"Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude."

We often commend someone for having "heart" and others for being "upbeat" and still others for their "courage" under fire. Each of the superlatives we use to describe character traits have their root deep down inside the people to whom we refer.

When I was hardly more than a boy I worked for a man in a large sales organization who had stowed away on a Banana Boat from a dock in Puerto Rico. Upon landing in the United States he earned his way in several menial jobs and then launched his sales career with the Electrolux Corporation. Eventually he became the president of the company. He was among the most positive men I have met over a long life of meeting and knowing men and a few women who are/were world renowned due to their positive attitude about life. His oft repeated mantra was; "If you think you have failed, you’re right."

If our mind and heart were not important God would not mention the mind or the heart and He would not show us the value of keeping the mind and heart in harmony with His Word. Inner conflict between the mental and the passion creates confusion and the "double minded man" James talks about as "unstable in all his ways."

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2010 Use with credit

---

PLEASE ENCOURAGE AUTHOR BELOW LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE