“God tells us to make a sanctuary
of our thoughts in which He can dwell.”
— A. W. Tozer (1897–1963)
The absolute pivoting centre of a
Christian’s life is their heart sacrosanct and owned by God—a heart kept with
all vigilance, through which acts of all kinds of obedience spring (Proverbs
4:23).
From the heart, thoughts come.
When the heart is appropriately founded upon and centred in Christ, there is a
thought-life sanctuary created. Such a sanctuary is safety of solidarity and stability;
a rich devotional life. From the heart, thoughts come, apportioned to their
source.
What is nurtured inwardly springs
forth outwardly (Matthew 12:34).
The Thought-Life As a
Sanctuary
There are two interacting facets
of the A. W. Tozer quote, above. By conforming our thoughts to Christ we invite
the Holy Spirit to dwell at peace within us. Only in conforming our thoughts to
Christ will the Holy Spirit choose to dwell. There cannot be a home for
holiness within a morally ignorant, crude and unrepentant vessel.
When we do something the Holy
Spirit does something also.
By keeping certain that our cognitive
space is sacrosanct—for the Lord’s use and access alone—we are graced with the
congruence of heart and mind aligned. We are keeping our hearts pure, and our
minds, therefore, have a poignant clarity about them.
This is God’s blessing. How can we
be any better blessed than by the provision of a beautifully clear mind, able
to think, to reason, to create, to care, and to discern?
The mind that has learned the
practice of keeping the thought-life as a sanctuary for God alone to embellish
is the nerve centre behind the joyous and abundant life.
Even further, when we partition
life in ways that we can protect the source of our joy and abundance, we
sustain the blessing—the gift given of God.
Enjoying God’s Presence
In Our Minds and Hearts
God is the most personal prize by
his Presence. When the Lord dwells
in us through the Holy Spirit, we have a resplendence about us, in that life is
purposeful, meaningful, and satisfying—even without cause for the pain our
situations bring sometimes.
Sometimes we enjoy God
significantly in the presence of others, but the prize of God’s Presence in our
minds and hearts transcends the need of others. We are taking God with us everywhere.
Wherever we go, there God is also.
Enjoying God’s Presence in our
minds and hearts is available at our alignment to things of the Divine.
***
Our thoughts are most precious.
When we guard our hearts with vigilance, the Holy Spirit makes a home within us
to dwell.
© 2012 S. J. Wickham.
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