All sin begins with a thought. Before we sin we have to decide that we are going to do it. This is good news, because if we have to think about it first it means we have time to head it off. Although before we sin we must first think about it, we don’t necessarily have to think very long. However, the more ingrained a particular bad habit is, the less time we usually think about it; basically we just let it happen. But then there are other sins like the sin of adultery or the process a person goes through to divorce their spouse. These kinds of things are thought out a long time in advance. You can be assured, a person who commits adultery has thought about it first. At first, the thought might be repulsive. It might even frighten. But if we stay on that track, it soon becomes a viable option. We sometimes have the idea that a person falls into adultery. This isn’t true. A person who commits adultery doesn’t fall into adultery—he or she walks there. There must first be a breaking down of resistance by familiarity.

God created man in His image (Genesis 1:26). One of the important capacities we have that links us with God is the capacity to imagine. Imagination enables us to experience things even before they happen. Imagination enables an inventor to create something that has never existed except in his thoughts.

It was man’s corrupt imagination that caused the earth to be destroyed by the flood. “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5).

The controversy between good and evil began in the mind of the archangel Lucifer. “For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north” (Isaiah 14:13). Sin is committed first in the mind (that is, in our thoughts) before it is ever carried out.

One of the biggest problems we have with sin is that we have the notion that sin is out there someplace, that it is something we do or touch. If only we can avoid it as though it were a bacteria, we won’t become infected.

You’ve heard the saying that we are what we eat. How about this one—from the Bible: “For as he [man] thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Pr 23:7). In other words, what we think about is the way we will be. I don’t know how you feel about it, but this is good news for me. It tells me that I’m not stuck being what my father, my grandfather, or my uncle were, if they were less than admirable. I can use my power of choice to think in another direction.

But it also means that a Godly life is impossible unless we are able to get a handle on our thoughts. You see, a person doesn’t fall into sin. We slide into it or we walk into it. Sometimes we actually run to it. Sin is not a pit we tumble into or a moral precipice from which we accidently plunge. Sin is a slide that begins in the mind.

Let’s look into this matter of thought. Our thoughts come from two sources. Thoughts are born from deep within ourselves, and thoughts are stimulated by the things we expose ourselves to in the environment.

Listen to some of the things the Bible has to say about thoughts:

• 1 Chron. 28:9 – “For the Lord searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts.”
• Ps. 10:4 – “The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God; God is not in all his thoughts.”
• Ps. 19:14 – “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord my strength, and my Redeemer.”
• Ps. 94:11 – “The Lord knoweth the thoughts of man, that they are vanity.”
• Ps. 139:23 – “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts.”
• Prov. 12:5 – “The thoughts of the righteous are right, but the counsels of the wicked are deceit.”
• Prov.15:26 – “The thoughts of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord.”
• Prov. 23:7 – “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.”
• Isa. 55:7 – “Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return unto the Lord.”
• Isa. 55:9 – “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.”
• Isa. 59:7 – “Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity.”
• Rom. 12:3 – “For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly.”
• Heb. 4:12 – “For the word of God is quick and is a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart.”
• Matt. 15:19 – “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts.”

Probably the most powerful text in the Bible that has to do with our thoughts is Philippians 4:8 – “Finally brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue if there be any praise, think on these things.”

For many Christians, their thoughts and imaginations have become surrogates for a sinful lifestyle. To a large extent, I believe this whole thing about being a hypocrite has a lot to do with the matter of our thoughts. The Greek translation of the word hypocrite is “ one who plays a part, an actor .” So, a hypocrite is a person who is attempting to separate their thoughts from their actions. They act one way but think another. You have probably already discovered that a hypocrite will not be able to hide his hypocrisy forever; sooner or later his thoughts and his actions will get together.

A few paragraphs back, I proposed that thoughts come from two sources: from deep within ourselves (our attitudes) and thoughts that are stimulated by the things we expose ourselves to in the environment. To flesh out this idea, let’s consider what is perhaps the most common thought that comes to us from the environment as a temptation and also the most common thoughts that comes from our attitudes. Then let’s see how we can apply the principles of God’s word to deal with them.

First let us consider the thoughts that spring out of our wrong attitudes. One of the most common wrong attitude is bitterness and resentment. Not only are thoughts corrupted by these attitudes but entire lives are affected. Bitterness and resentment set the stage for dysfunction in almost every area of our lives. This twin scourge will make a marriage difficult, if not impossible. Bitterness and resentment will hollow out a person’s relationship with God.

Here is the heart of the matter. Bad thoughts that come from bad attitudes cannot be dealt with by trying to control the thoughts themselves. We must address the cause. The wrong attitude of bitterness and resentment produces wrong thoughts, which in turn will result in wrong behavior.

By the way, bitterness and resentment are as natural a reaction when we are hurt as bleeding is when we are cut. The damage caused us might have been enormous. But if we allow ourselves to continue to harbor bitterness and resentment, the problem will last a lifetime. A person may feel that they need to go through all kinds of therapy, and indeed therapy may be helpful. But the bottom line of getting past our hurts is to forgive the person who inflicted it.

That is asking a lot. In fact, it is humanly impossible. We just don’t have it in us to forgive. But here is the wonderful part: forgiveness is ultimately a gift of God. A good therapist or support group can steer us toward forgiving the person; but we can never fully and permanently forgive as we should unless we go directly to the source of forgiveness, and that is to God.

As if that weren’t hard enough, we must realize that, in order to be completely healed of bitterness and resentment, we cannot go to God and say to Him that we have the right to be bitter and angry but would He please give us forgiveness. Though there may have been a cause for our reaction, in the eyes of God one bad turn doesn’t call for another. Ultimately it is just as wrong to be bitter and resentful as it is to hurt another person.

And so if we really want to be healed from bitterness and resentment, we must confess to God that we are wrong in our feelings and ask for forgiveness. We can say something like this: “God, whatever these people did to me in the past, I recognize that my feelings of bitterness and resentment are wrong. I ask that You cleanse my thoughts and give me in their place a spirit of forgiveness.”

Now, you might not agree with this. Or you may choose some long way around or even the keep-a-Band-Aid-on-it -approach. That’s up to you. But if you want to get the bad experience out of your head so that you have thoughts of peace again, then go directly to Jesus. Follow His example. Jesus was the One who said, even when they were physically abusing Him in the extreme, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).

When we are aware that our thoughts are not as they should be, we must ask ourselves the question, “Are my thoughts the result of wrong attitudes? and if so, what attitudes are they?” Bear in mind that, although we may have had an experience (or are even now having an experience) that results in a bad attitude, we must never excuse our bad attitudes or try to rationalize them.

Several years back I was counseling with a couple whose daughter had been murdered by her husband. The former son-in-law was in prison and couple were raising their grandson. Now, these dear ones had every justifiable reason to be bitter and resentful. But what was happening was that the lady had such strong bitterness and resentment toward her former son-in-law that it was actually causing her to be sick. Not only that, she was beginning to resent the grandson, and altogether it was destroying her faith in God.

I prayed with the couple and asked God to give them the gift of forgiveness. The lady told me she had not wanted to pray for forgiveness toward the murderer because she thought that if she forgave him it would mean she didn’t mind that her daughter had been murdered. This may be an extreme case, but we can probably all confess to reasoning like that. If she wanted to be healed of her bitterness and resentment, she had to pray that God would heal her, or she would feel the pain as if her daughter were being murdered anew every day of her life. So praying for forgiveness is an example of how to deal with thoughts that come from wrong attitudes.

Another source of thoughts is, of course, the environment. One type of thought that is getting us into really big trouble and is affecting not only our spiritual lives but our very personhood is the matter of impure thoughts.

The huge phenomenon of sexual exploitation and abuse is the result of impure thoughts. I don’t know whether you are aware of it or not, but the temptation to sexual impurity is one of the most difficult to overcome, because this temptation has a built-in response capacity. To smoke, you have to go buy cigarettes. To drink, you have to go buy liquor somewhere. And it’s the same with abusing drugs. But this is not the case with the sins of sexual impurity. The devil, of course, is aware of this; and that is why the temptation to moral impurity is probably the most prevalent temptation in the society.

Jesus said that a person didn’t have to get physically involved in sexual misconduct to be guilty of it. A person can even lack the hormones and the physiology for moral impurity and still be, as they say, “a dirty old man.” That is because it is at the level of our thoughts were moral impurity first takes place.

The person who is seemingly overcome with sexual desire is the person who is thinking about sex all the time. It may sound like an oversimplification of the matter, but the secret to overcoming sexual impurity is to not think about it! Of course, living in our society with the television, the magazines, the music, even the pictures on the wall where you work, to say nothing of the dirty jokes floating around you, makes it very difficult not to have impure thoughts.

But a fleeting impure thought is just a nuisance until we begin to pick up on it. Remember the saying, that you can’t keep the birds from flying over your head but you can keep them from nesting in your hair. The temptation for impure thoughts may be all around us, but whether or not we choose to carry on with them is up to us.

When I was in college, I worked one summer on a really big plastering job. The construction company was building a lot of apartment buildings in Alexandria, Virginia. It was a rough bunch of men on that work crew, and it seemed as though many of them could not put two clean words together. They talked about a lot of things, but it was only a variation of the same theme.

I was so glad to come home after working all day. I should say that working on a plastering crew it is not like an office job, to say the least. The first thing I would do is take off my plaster-covered work clothes and take a shower. Then, I would sit down and take a mental shower to wash out of my mind all the filth I had heard that day. I did that by sitting down and reading the Bible for a while. If we are going to live Godly lives, we have to be clean not only on the outside but on the inside, too.

We wouldn’t go more than one day without taking a shower or a bath. But many people are not nearly so careful about keeping clean at the level of their hearts and minds. Then they wonder why they stink spiritually.

If we think that the trouble we may be having with the people in our life is caused by bad breath or body odor, we might want to consider that it could be caused by some kind of contamination in our hearts and minds, and we need to ask the Lord to clean us up. And prayer puts us in connection with the Divine Healer. Prayer is the process by which God changes my life and keeps my thoughts on the right path. In fact, prayer is our cry for help. And when a person cries out to God in prayer for help to overcome bad attitudes or impure thoughts, his prayer will always be answered.

So gaining the victory over impure thoughts is like being victorious over poison ivy--stay away from those things in our environment that cause them, the things that make impure thoughts happen. And then when we are for some reason exposed, we must ask God to wash out our minds. Prayer is the way we do this.

While on a business trip some time ago, I spent a night in a motel. That evening I had read a little from the Bible, said my prayer, and turned out the light, when the phone rang. I answered, and a woman on the other end of the line began immediately to talk dirty. Undoubtedly she was a prostitute. I immediately hung up the phone. Then I turned on the light, got out the Bible, read some more, and said my prayer all over again. Do you know why? Excuse me for saying it this way, but she had spit on my soul, and I felt contaminated.

As sons and daughters of God, we are called not to be just hearers of the word but doers of the word. We are call to Godliness. To be forewarned is to be forearmed. We must be aware that the battle against sin is primarily fought in the mind.

Listen to 2 Cor. 10:3-5: “For though we walk in the flesh we do not war after the flesh (for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds.), casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.”

A person who doesn’t have Godly thoughts will never be able to live a Godly life. What Einstein’s theory of relativity is to science, Philippians 4:8 is to victorious Christian living and to the Godly life: “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”

This text, my friends, is not an option for the person who is serious about being a doer of the word. It is not an option for the person who is serious about living a Godly life. Philippians 4:8 is not just a suggestion, it is a command. Those who follow it by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit will know by experience the secret of being a doer of the word and of living the Godly life. A person is able to live a Godly life when they discover the secret of how to have Godly thoughts.

We ought to go on from being students of the word to figuring out how to be doers of the word. The text in Phil. 4:8 shows us where practical Godliness begins; and that is, it begins in our thoughts.

We will not stop doing wrong until we stop thinking wrong; and we will not stop thinking wrong until we stop exposing ourselves to things that stimulate wrong thoughts and until we reject attitudes that make for wrong thinking.

Our thoughts are very personal. People may judge us or criticize us on other things, but they cannot rightly judge or criticize our thoughts, because no one knows what they are. But God judges our thoughts, so we had better be honest with ourselves and be judges of our own thoughts, so that we can ask God, as David did, “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer” (Ps. 19:14).