Hold That Thought! Whatsoever is Pure…

Hold That Thought! Whatsoever is Pure… 

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is TRUE, whatever is HONORABLE, whatever is RIGHTEOUS, whatever is PURE, whatever is WINSOME, whatever is ADMIRABLE, if there is any MORAL EXCELLENCE, if there is anything PRAISEWORTHY… dwell on these things.” (Philippians 4:8).

Dwell – (Greek, “logizesthe”): an accounting term that literally means to carefully use your reason as you take full account of something; to thoughtfully evaluate something in a sensible way as you consider the worth of something; to calculate with focus and discernment; to personally measure what counts in the eyes of God. In this passage, to dwell on these worthwhile realities is to fix your mind on them, to meditate on them, to fill your mind with them, to focus deeply on them. To dwell on these heavenly realities is to dwell within them, to find a home inside these godly attributes, to think about these things to the extent that you are living into them. To dwell upon these things also means that your mind is creating a home for them to reside deep within you. To dwell upon is to allow these spiritual realities to become a part of your life, dwelling in you and shaping you. These virtues are not merely “passing fancies” or temporary mental events, but are fixed in your mind to the extent that they become a part of your character. The root word for “logizesthe” is the rich, meaningful Greek word “logos.” So, to dwell on these aspects of divine goodness means we are to become “logos-like” in the life of the mind, to think and reason like the heavenly Logos. To be logos-like is to truly use the mind of Logos-Christ which has been given to us. To be logos-like is to actively participate in the renewing of our mind (Romans 12:1-2) within by filling it with that which fills the mind of Christ Himself. To be logos-like is to continue daily the holy process of thinking deeply about those realities that are pleasing to God and would keep drawing us into a personal relationship with Him. Naturally, to choose to dwell on these life-giving realities implies that at the same time we are rejecting those thoughts that are unhealthy, destructive, and unworthy of God’s presence in our lives.

Interesting Thoughts about Thoughts:

(1.) I am what I think. I become what I choose to think about. My character is shaped by the life of my mind. My attitudes are built on the foundations of my thoughts. My lifestyle is determined by whatever I fill my mind with. My destiny begins with my thought life.

(2.) According to the latest brain imaging studies (2022), we each have about 6,200 different thoughts a day. They are called “thought worms” and are distinct, measurable shifts in brain activity that represent the transition from one idea or image to another.

(3.) We each can rewire our brains by how we think. It’s called “cognitive reframing,” based on the plasticity of our brains that are able to build new neural pathways by choosing to think differently. We each have the ability to train our minds to identify harmful thoughts, replace them with life-giving thoughts, and then practice those healthier thoughts through repetition until those new thoughts become a mental habit.

(4.) When dwelling on thoughts like what St. Paul suggested above, we are making new neural pathways that become dominant and succeed in rewiring the brain to have the ability to naturally filter out harmful thoughts and welcome life-giving thoughts.

(5.) When we are “in Christ,” we are inviting God’s Holy Spirit to renew our minds and enable us to rewire our brains, our ways of thinking, which determine our attitudes, behaviors and feelings. Each person hs the ability to do a lot of the legwork in this process, but only the Spirit of God can do the heavy lifting and enable us to think with the “mind of Christ.”

(6.) In this sinful world, harmful thoughts assault us every day, and there’s not much we can do about that. But we can try to keep them at a minimum by not entertaining these thoughts, by not welcoming them into our minds in such a way that we dwell on them and fill our minds with them. As Martin Luther once said about temptations… “We can’t stop the birds from flying overhead, but we can stop them from building a nest in our hair.” 

Pure (Greek, “hagnos”) = Concentrate on that which is morally, physically, spiritually undefiled; free your mind from corruption in thought, word and action; seriously consider those ideas that are inwardly and outwardly clean and untainted with smudge or dirt; occupy your mind with thoughts that are blameless and have moral integrity; don’t get distracted with those attention-grabbers that have divided loyalties or mixed motivations; dwell on those character qualities which are untainted and single-minded according to God’s standards; fill your mind with unblemished realities that will add innocence to your thought life; keep away from what appear to be minor “guilty pleasures” that are sold as being harmless. This word for pure is rooted in the word for saint or holy, which means set apart for God’s purposes.

Thinking About Words that are Pure. Psalmist David wanted an effective way to proclaim how pure God’s Word was, so he used the refining process in Ps. 12:6: “Every word God speaks is sure and every promise is pure. His truth is tested, found to be flawless, and ever faithful. It’s as pure as silver refined 7 times.” Seven is the Biblical number that represents perfection, completeness, wholeness, fulfillment, finished. So David is pointing out the profound contrast between human speech and divine speech. Every quality of God’s words: pure, flawless, trustworthy, faithful, truthful, contrasts with men’s words: dishonest, impure, deceitful, devious, malicious. God’s words are pure silver refined 7 times, completely and perfectly pure. We can trust our lives to God’s words. When silver is refined one time in a furnace, it is fairly pure. At its 7th refining, it is utterly and unquestionably pure of any impure, harmful or foreign matter. Clearly David loved God’s Word, he delighted in God’s words. He expanded on this major theme in his life in his Psalm 19:7-11:

“The instructions of the Lord are perfect, reviving the soul. The decrees of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The commandments of the Lord are right, bringing joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are clear, giving insight for living. Reverence for the Lord is pure, lasting forever. The laws of the Lord are true, each one is fair. They are more desirable than gold, even the finest gold. They are sweeter than honey, even honey dripping from the comb. They are a warning to your servant, a great reward for those who obey them.”

The Refining Process. The refiner’s goal is to remove the dross from precious metals like silver through a fire’s intense heat. The refiner’s fire does not consume the silver, it does not destroy anything that is worthwhile or precious in the metal. The fire is completely constructive and purposeful, and results in perfectly pure and highly valuable silver. Dross is an old word that means impurities, foreign objects, waste materials, worthless and unwanted substances imbedded within the metal. Dross is anything that is keeping the precious metal from being completely pure. The process looks like this:

1. The refiner places the silver ore into an intensely heated furnace at 1,800 degrees F.;
2. When the metal reaches the needed temperature, the refiner adds oxygen by blowing air over the molten metal, usually by a refiner’s bellows;
3. As the metal melts down, the dross rises to the top surface of the molten metal;
4. The refiner either blows the dross off of the surface or scrapes it off before it cools;
5. The more this process is repeated, the purer the silver becomes, until it literally has a glowing light. Usually, two or three repetitions are enough.

Pure vs. Impure. The internet is offering to everyone who has a computer an easy way to get personally involved in an activity that will: (1.)  become an addiction that might develop into an obsession that would be tremendously difficult to break; (2.) rewire your brain in such a way that you become increasingly self-centered, distant from others, prone to depression and anxiety, and lose your willpower and self-control; (3.) cause you to think of women as sex objects and not made in the image of God; (4.) warp your appreciation of pure feminine beauty; (5.) make it very difficult to have healthy, self-giving romantic relationships; (6.) give you a flawed understanding of masculinity and manhood; (7.) make it difficult for you to distinguish between love and lust; (8.) increasingly separate you from the ones who love you the most, such as parents, siblings and grandparents; (9.) trade your 12 minutes of pleasure for a lifetime of loneliness, emptiness, and twisted thinking; (10.) give you increasing cravings that still prove to be unsatisfying at a deep level; (11.) enable you to support a billion dollar business dependent on degrading and using women who then lose all sense of dignity as a sacred human being; (12.) make you develop an impure version of God’s great gift of sexuality; (13.) numb you to the glorious reality that surrounds you. This doesn’t sound like such a great deal for yourself, does it? Pornography, which is viewing or reading explicit material intended for the sole purpose of stimulating erotic feelings and producing sexual arousal, does all that and more. Yes, sexual brokenness has been around forever in human history, but why is it so pervasive now? Porn seems to have been accepted now as an innocent, victimless recreational activity because, with the onset of the internet, it is anonymous, private, easily accessible, and culturally accepted at an increasingly younger age. The porn industry rakes in $13 billion a year in the U. S., and one porn site reports 81 million visits per day. The relaxing of laws and guidelines regarding obscenity is only making matters worse. And the slippery slope to depravity has only regressed to child sex videos (in 2023, there were over 500,000 child sex videos shared online), and reports of bestiality sex videos on YouTube. The biblical idea that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak has never been more pronounced. We live in a hypersexualized culture, and the triggers of temptation have never been more obvious. Now with smartphones in particular, we find that 97% of teens have been exposed to porn before the age of 18, with first-time usage as young as 12 years old. It is now a proven fact that the younger a boy starts to dabble in pornography, the more difficult it is to break free from it later on. Over 60% of adults in the U.S. use porn on a regular  basis, and 77% of weekly users are unaware of the harm it does to them. Professing Christians are proving to be just as vulnerable to porn as the general population, with 75% of pastors reporting that they regularly minister to believers in their congregation about their struggle with porn. Tragically, only 19% of professing Christians using porn on a regular basis are trying to stop. The harmful effects of pornography on mental health are well-documented, yet the temptations are too much for too many. The demonstrated cultural decline that comes with pornography is obvious. This is another battleground in a spiritual warfare, and every one of us must go out of our way to intentionally combat it. Jesus Christ is the only One who can overpower the enemy, transform hearts, and renew minds. So fervent prayer, biblical counsel, worship, the support of wide believers, and the porn user’s strength of will might be the only way to win this war. God bless us, everyone, as we all combat the great human weak spots of “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life (1 John 2:16 ).” None of us are immune, and we all need each other exercising the power of the Spirit in this increasingly pornographic society.  “The eye is like a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is healthy your whole body is filled with light. But when your eye is unhealthy, your whole body is filled with darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is.” (Jesus, from His Sermon the Mount, Matt. 6:22-23).