Don't Get Yourself Stuck in a Rut

CBN.com -- A friend of mine who is a deadly putter at golf told me his secret the other day. He said, “Before I stroke the putt, on the screen of my mind I see the ball rolling into the cup.” Well you know Proverbs 23:7 teaches, “As he thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

Small wonder Paul told the Corinthians, “Bring every thought into captivity!” You and I are controlled by the way we think.

In my kid days in Iowa, I remember cars and trucks moving along those old clay and gravel roads. The first few times they did so, there was scarcely a trace of their having passed that way. But before long, the earth was worn away until the road was rutted.

Then my Grandpa Harshfield, who worked for the county highway department, would go over those roads with his big grader until they were smooth again. Otherwise, the grooves would have become so deep that vehicle wheels would have been like a needle tracking a record.

It makes me think of the Grand Canyon, formed by the Colorado River digging away through the millennia at the rock strata until that vast chasm was at last formed. My friend, thoughts do that to your brain! One expert has written, “As a man at first is master of his thought, so, at last, the thought becomes the master of the man.”

Big thoughts make big people. Shallow thinking forms hapless ones. There has never been a person who reached lofty heights of noble living who was not driven there by dominating thoughts.

What about your thought life? Does it bring you better life? Or are you a prisoner of unworthy thinking?

Used with permission by author, Dan Betzer. Previously published on ByLine OnLine, copyright © 2005 Media Ministries of the Assemblies of God.