Fani Willis DESPERATE Attempt to Save Herself
Friday, March 8, 2024
Thoughts
Virginia Brandt Berg
1970-01-02
Greetings again, and the Lord bless you. We do delight in the letters that you send. Sometimes we comment about these letters because they’re so typical, and tonight one or two sentences from one, I want to talk just a little bit about. This one wrote:
“I just cannot get victory in my thoughts. You remember that I wrote to you some time ago about someone I was living with that was very hateful and sensitive and says such unkind things, and I wrote that I had victory over saying anything back again. I was able to control my tongue and not answer back at all. But I haven’t changed my thinking any. I may have self-control so far as it’s concerned outwardly, but I’m just seething and boiling on the inside.”
I won’t read the rest of this, but it reminded me of the story—perhaps I’ve told you one time—about the little boy that was punished for something that his mother had told him again and again not to do, and finally she said, “You sit there and sit there until I tell you to get up.” And he sat there and he was very angry about it and hurt and so willful about the whole thing. At last the mother said, “Now, Jimmy, do you feel better about it and are you ready now to obey?” He said, “Well, I’m sitting down, but I’m still standing up so far as the inside is concerned!” She had wanted him to sit down and not stand up anymore, but he was still standing up on the inside.
So many times it’s that inward struggle of the mind. That’s why God’s Word makes it so plain in Romans 7:25 and Philippians 4:8. I was listening to John Brown the other morning, and he said one of the greatest gifts God has made to His children was the power to think. Our thoughts are a vital part of our earthly life; our thoughts are things. Oh, how true it is.
So many people don’t realize that thoughts are really things that accompany us wherever we go. We can no more get away from our thoughts than we can get away from our shadow. If our thoughts are pure and holy, they come to be the best and dearest of our traveling companions. But when they’re evil and degrading, they’ll dog our footsteps and they’ll haunt you when you try to go to sleep at night. It’s the old foundation fact that our desires are the direct outflow of our thinking.
I read a book some time ago, I wish I knew where it was or could find amongst my things again, and it was called Thinking White. Thoughts are things, and we exhaust our energies dealing with the facts and we fail to deal with the source, which is in the mind, to keep it pure, to think loveliness and godliness, to “think on these things,” God’s Word says.—The persistently, fixedly, intelligently setting your mind on that which is lovely and pure. “Whatsoever things are lovely,” God’s Word says, “think on these things” (Philippians 4:8).
You know that scripture so well, but let’s meditate on it again for just a little bit. “Whatsoever things are lovely, think on these things.” All high and holy aspirations really come from high and holy thinking. We’re just heads about with so much that’s lovely and beautiful and so wonderful, that it’s a shame when the thoughts go wandering amongst tares and brambles and on the vicious and upon ugly things.
That’s an awful thing when you think how beautiful God has made the world and how He has given us so many lovely things to think about, so many lovely things to see. You know that we’re too busy today to do any thinking properly, to meditate. Like the mother that went to visit her son living in a Chicago apartment. He rushed here and there and he was so busy, and it was, “How do you do, Mother” and “Good-bye, Mother.” Oh, he was so terribly busy. And one day she said to him, “Son, when do you do your thinking?”
Well, many of us today as I fear are just too busy to stop to really think, and whoever wrote that book on the “Lost Art of Thinking” certainly wrote a truth. We’re just so busy that we can’t sit down and really meditate on the Word of God and think Godward and “set our affection on things above,” as God’s Word says, and “not on the things that are upon the earth.” For God’s Word says, “Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. Set not your affection on the things that are below but on the things that are above” (Colossians 3:2–3). Your mind has to be centered on the things that are above.
The battles of life are first fought on the battleground of the thoughts, and the issues of life are determined in the mind. I really believe that that’s true. Murder is committed within the precincts of the mind first of all. That shot that assassinated our President recently, that man meditated upon that and that was all fixed in his mind before he ever fired the shot.31 The unseen thief puts out his hand and steals the watch, but first he has stolen it somewhere there within the precincts of his mind.
We teach our children they mustn’t do this and they mustn’t do that because it’s Lord-defiling. But I wonder why we don’t talk to them about the thinking that their thoughts have to be pure, that their thoughts have to be centered upon the things that are of God. It was a charge of God made in the old times that His people would not think. He said, “My people will not consider” (Isaiah 1:3).
Thinking just seems to be such a lost art, and people don’t think as they should these days, don’t take the time just to sit down and think the thing out. God would show you a plan. He would show you how the thing is to be done or He would unravel the whole situation for you if you would just look to Him and sit down in His presence, or kneel down before Him would be better, and give Him a chance.
These thoughts of hate and revenge and criticism, and like this woman said in this letter, that she still has those awful feelings of resentment and that feeling of hate in her heart. It seems to me that it’s almost unpardonable that we should allow our minds to linger, even for the briefest space of time, on that which is so hateful and defiling.
The battles that are fought in the mind: How can we overcome? What is the secret of the overcoming? Well, of course, the only way to get rid of impure thoughts is to throw over against them thoughts of purity and loveliness, transplanting. The way to get rid of lying thoughts is to throw over against them thoughts of honesty.
Someone has said the only way to reap a proper harvest from these fertile gardens of the mind is to carefully sow the seed and carefully tend the crop. I remember my father made me learn as a little girl, and perhaps you learned the same:
Sow a thought, and you reap an action;
Sow an action, and you reap a habit;
Sow a habit, and you reap a character;
Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.—Author unknown
God’s Word says that “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7). Thoughts may be the most insignificant of things known only to your own self. Yet thinkers today and great psychologists tell us that each thought influences the sum total of the brain.
I read the story the other day of a man who had been so long a stagecoach driver that his fingers had fixed in such a way that they were stiff. He had held the lines for so many years, and so as his hands grew old, they were crooked and hooked, and they wouldn’t straighten. Well, there’s a similar process that goes on in man’s mind when they continue to think the same things over and over.
If one’s trained from childhood to be gentle, kindly, patient, to control the temper, to speak softly, to be loving and charitable, of course they’ll grow into a radiant, beautiful, lovely one. But one who accustoms himself to think habitually of that which is low and vile and to think downward, and ugly tempers and resentful feelings and bitterness and anger, the life will shape itself into that which is not beautiful, but debasing, unholy, and unclean. They’ll find their whole soul bending and growing toward the earth in a sort of a permanent moral curvature, we might call it, while the other is growing into that which is noble and worthy. It’s that he “set his affection on the things above and not on the things of the earth.” “Whatsoever things are true,” God’s Word says, “whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, think on these things.”
What is the secret of it all? The secret of it all is to forsake your thoughts and put your thoughts in God’s Word and upon the Lord Jesus Christ. There is the whole secret. As you think upon Him, as you lift your mind to the lovely Christ and set your affection on the things above, He’ll give you a new mind, one that’s wholly opposite from the old mind. Just as long as you get rid of that old earthly mind, then God can transform you. As you look at the Lord Jesus Christ and all His sweetness and purity and holiness, you yourself will grow to be like the Lord Jesus. That’s the way to get the victory and the only sure way.
God bless you and keep you prayerful, reading His Word, that you might grow like Him. He’s still on the throne. Prayer does change things.
Thursday, March 7, 2024
Today
Virginia Brandt Berg
1970-01-02
God bless you and may He hearten you with the message of today.
Someone has said that today is a marvel of opportunity, crucified between two thieves, yesterday and tomorrow! Today, this very day, is one of the most wonderfully precious things you will ever have.
Today you can do some of the things that you’ve been putting off for so long. You can’t do them yesterday and may not have the chance to do them tomorrow, but today is yours! Today you can be the kind of person you always dreamed you’d be “tomorrow.” This is that tomorrow!
You’ve always intended some “tomorrow” to get right with God; this is that tomorrow. Your yesterdays are left with God, and none of its disappointments should be dragged into this day. Tomorrow is still unborn and you shouldn’t borrow from it. Today is yours.
Today—filled with golden opportunities and pregnant with great possibilities! This is the golden tomorrow that you dreamed about yesterday. We bring you this little poem of our own:
Long have I dreamed of some of the things
I’d like to do tomorrow.
Dreamed them and planned them, resolved,
And then discovered to my deep sorrow,
Time would not wait, but moved swiftly on
As I heard my conscience say,
“This is the golden tomorrow
That you dreamed of yesterday.”There are many things I want to say
To friends I love, tomorrow.
But they’ll have to wait another day
Till more leisure I can borrow.
Thus I delay, until conscience calls,
“See how time’s passing away?
For this is the golden tomorrow
That you dreamed of yesterday.”I’ve always dreamed of tomorrow,
Today I somehow forget,
I just keep on dreaming and waiting,
Though I know I shall regret.
For in the power of some crisis hour
I will hear my conscience say,
“This is the golden tomorrow
That you dreamed of yesterday.”Then when I reach God’s great tomorrow
At the end of the long, long trail,
I’m sure that someone will ask me,
“Why in this thing did you fail?”
And I know I will read the answer
In my record there at last,
That I always dreamed of tomorrow
Until each today had passed.So I paused today in my dreaming
To breathe an earnest prayer
To One who has seen all my failing,
To One that I’m sure will care:
God help me each hour to remember,
And every step of the way,
That today is the golden tomorrow
That I dreamed of yesterday.
Now all of this would have little weight, said in such human, feeble words, unless we would bring you God’s Word, and here it is. Listen carefully and give your soul a chance. Hebrews, 3:13 through 15, and I’m reading from the Amplified Version, thus:
“Warn, urge, encourage one another every day as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened into subtle rebellion by the deceitfulness of sin; that is, by the fraudulence, the stratagem, the trickery which the delusive glamour of sin may play on him.
“So while it is still today, if you would hear his voice, and when you hear it, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, when the people provoked and embittered God against them.” Now note carefully that this passage admonishes a number of times against putting off until some other day the hearing of God’s voice and obeying it, because this causes a hardening of the heart, the Scripture says.
If as you read God’s words you are impressed by the Holy Spirit that you should obey something which is written there, and you say in your heart, “I will, Lord, but not today!” if God in His still, small voice speaks to you to draw nigh unto Him, and you say, “Oh I intend to, Lord, but I’m not ready today; some things I’ve got to make right first, I’ve got to get myself ready.”
You can’t get yourself ready anyhow; you’re never fit to enter His presence. Only God can get you ready; only He can do that. He says “Today.” Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation. “Today if you will hear his voice, harden not your heart.” (Hebrews 3:15)
When God speaks to the Christian’s heart to stop all the feverish rush and tension and get quiet and spend some time in prayer and the reading of His Word, and that Christian says, “I can’t today, but tomorrow I surely will, Lord. Not today, I’m too busy.” and this happens again and again, the hardening process does begin to take place.
For this is really a resisting of God’s Spirit. Soon the Holy Spirit will not speak of this. What’s the use, when we don’t listen and obey? He says, “My Spirit will not always strive with man.” (Genesis 6:3)
There is a little sentence I wish that you’d write down this moment; keep it where you can often read it. Here it is and I can vouch that through long experience I’ve found this invariably true: “Truth resisted loses its power over the mind.”
That is a known and accepted law of the mind: “Truth resisted loses its power over the mind.” The truth that once had power in your life, if you now resist it or through procrastination it is constantly put off, someday it will lose its power over your mind. You will be unaffected by it.
If God flings a truth at you and you say, “No, not now!” If God wants you to do something, and you say, “I’m not ready, not today; tomorrow maybe, Lord.”—Some day that truth will have no appeal, no power over your heart and mind, and the hardening process is taking place, just as I read to you in God’s Word.
If you keep neglecting to read the Word of God, promising you’ll read it some other day, you’ll soon lose a hunger for that Word. Ask the Lord now, today, to create a fresh hunger for His Word. Oh, my friend, read it today! Only today is yours.
You began the day without reading His Word? Well, what can you expect of a day that begins without the reading of God’s Word and prayer? God in His wisdom gave us this life one day at a time, for He knew that anyone could stand the trials of one little day, leaning on His strength. Surely we can live victoriously just one day?
If we could only do this: Take life just for the day! It’s letting life mass up on you and thinking that this thing has to be borne for many days that oppresses you and burdens you. God’s Word says, “As thy day, so shall thy strength be” (Deuteronomy 33:25).
You can have faith for almost anything if you’ll take it a day at a time. In the morning of any day, today, look up and put your hand in the hand of the Lord Jesus Christ and say, “Lord, I believe Thy Word. Thou hast promised strength for today. This day I will trust Thee; this day I will, with Your help, walk step by step in obedience. I will be kept in perfect peace this day because I keep my mind stayed on Thee, today.”
If we confront the trials and burdens thus in detail, it is easier to live victoriously; and if you should die tomorrow, you are best prepared by walking in the Spirit today, and faithfully discharging the duties of today.
Can you trust God utterly just this one day? You have to trust in the end, why not right now? He has promised to sustain you. Have you claimed some precious promise from His Word? And you are expecting the fulfillment? Perhaps putting it off till tomorrow for its fulfillment? Why don’t you accept it right now?
Hope puts the answer in tomorrow, but faith takes hold right now. Faith is a definite transaction at a definite time, and after that counts it done. Accept it now!
Take from God today what He has promised. God’s Word says, “This day has salvation come to thy house.” (Luke 19:9) Anna Johnson has written this:
One day at a time, with its failures and fears,
With its hurts and mistakes, with its weakness and tears,
With its portion of pain and its burden of care:
One day at a time we must meet and must bear.One day at a time to be patient and strong,
To be calm under trial and sweet under wrong.
Then its toiling will pass and its sorrow shall cease,
It shall darken and die, and the night shall bring peace.Just a day at a time; a day seems so long,
And the heart is not brave, and the soul is not strong.
So wonderful Christ, be Thou near all the way,
Give courage and patience and strength for today.Not yesterday’s load we are called on to bear,
Nor the morrow’s uncertain and shadowy care.
Why should we look forward or back with dismay?
Our needs, as our mercies, are but for this day.One day at a time, and the day is His day,
He hath numbered its hours, though they haste or delay.
His grace is sufficient; we walk not alone,
As the day, so the strength that He giveth His own.—Adapted from “One Day at a Time.”
Instead of praying my own words in the closing prayer, I want to take this beautiful prayer written by Jane Bingham-Abbott. The words and the music together she wrote so beautifully.
Lord, for tomorrow and its needs I do not pray;
Keep me, my God, from stain of sin just for today.
Let me no wrong or idle word unthinking say,
Set Thou a seal upon my lips just for today.Let me both diligently work and duly pray,
Let me be kind in work and deed just for today.
Let me in season, Lord, be grave, in season gay,
Let me be faithful to Thy grace, just for today.In pain and sorrow’s cleansing fires briefly my stay,
Take me in Thy loving arms lest I should stray.
So for tomorrow and its needs I do not pray,
Keep me, guide me, love me, Lord, just for today.—Adapted from "Just for Today", 1880
God bless you and keep you just for today. Take just one day at a time. Look up in His face for today, and He’s looking down at you and longing to help you! God give you grace. God bless you and keep you.
Remember, He answers prayer. He’s still on the throne and prayer changes things. God be with you, bless you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
