Thinking is not just entertainment on the stage of life where nothing is real. It is really useful in knowing the God who is really there. It is useful in knowing what God has revealed about himself and about this world and how we should live in it.

This is the path toward change. We are called to take it and not wait passively while our minds are drawn away with all kinds of passions that wage war against our souls (1 Peter 2:11). It is when we focus our minds on the glory of Christ that we are transformed from one degree of glory to another (2 Corinthians 3:18). Take this moment to resolve that you will be intentional about what your mind considers. It will dwell on something, and what it dwells on, it becomes like.

Now there was only one hope, the sovereign grace of God. God would have to transform my heart to do what a heart cannot make itself do, namely, want what it ought to want. Only God can make the depraved heart desire God.

Know the spirit of the age and consciously resist conformity to it (Romans 12:2). As D. L. Moody said, "The ship belongs in the water of the world, but if the water gets in the ship, it sinks.

Mental health is, in great measure, the gift of self-forgetfulness. The reason is that introspection destroys what matters most to us- the authentic experience of great things outside ourselves.

The really wonderful moments of joy in this world are not the moments of self-satisfaction, but self-forgetfulness.

True saints have their minds, in the first place, inexpressibly pleased and delighted with . . . the things of God. But the dependence of the affections of hypocrites is in a contrary order: they first rejoice . . . that they are made so much of by God; and then on that ground, he seems in a sort, lovely to them.

O come with me to the Word of God! If this way of carrying it with you does not work for you, then find your own way. Whatever it costs, do not read it and leave it. It transforms us by its presence in our minds, not by staying on the bedside table.

Thinking for the Sake of Global Faithfulness: Encountering Islam with the Mind of Christ THABITI ANYABWILE

My feelings are not God. God is God. My feelings do not define truth. God's word defines truth. My feelings are echoes and responses to what my mind perceives. And sometimes - many times - my feelings are out of sync with the truth. When that happens - and it happens every day in some measure - I try not to bend the truth to justify my imperfect feelings, but rather, I plead with God: Purify my perceptions of your truth and transform my feelings so that they are in sync with the truth.

The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night.

Bottom up thinkers try to start from experience and move from experience to understanding. They don't start with certain general principles they think beforehand are likely to be true they just hope to find out what reality is like.