The Smiling Mask

Mt 15:8 -'THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME WITH THEIR LIPS,
BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR AWAY FROM ME.

A man sings of God’s love and provision while worrying about his job. A boy tells his mother, “Happy Mother’s Day” after a year of showing a resistant and disrespectful attitude. A wife sings “Just as I Am” while her thoughts are checking the clock. I have personally sung, “Jesus loves me. This I know for the Bible tells me so” while not really knowing what the Bible said. It is incredibly amazing how we can disconnect our words from the reality of our thoughts and attitudes.

1Sa 1:13 - As for Hannah, she was speaking in her heart,
only her lips were moving, but her voice was not heard.
So Eli thought she was drunk.

While her lips were silent, Hannah was speaking faith and truth in her heart. It is infinitely better to speak the truth in our thoughts and have silent lips then to speak the truth with our lips and have thoughts that dwell on fears, lies or fantasy.

Our thought life is fed by what we take in through our eyes and ears. The future direction of our thoughts is affected and chosen by the books we read, the images we watch, the friends we have, and the teachings we “take to heart”. We don’t get the mind of Christ from pornography or a weekend of watching football and beer commercials. We can choose the frothy, imitation "truth" of the world or we can dig into solid truth found in Scripture, godly friends and wise teachers. If we neglect Truth we will inevitably begin to believe and invest real treasure (our time, energy, and life) in Lies.

Little children are attractive partly because of their transparency. When they are little, their words will often give a clear view of their inner thoughts. As they get older, they learn to be careful what they say because of understanding what is “politically correct” in various circumstances. Recently, one of our children started his day by saying, “This is going to be a terrible week.” His words revealed his thoughts. But, such thoughts and words can become self-fulfilling. Many of us have similar thoughts but don’t actually say them out loud. Those thought patterns can end up causing us to have a terrible day, week or life because, at the least, they make us Feel terrible. A proverb says, “As a man thinks so is he.” The significant factor in each of our lives is what we actually THINK. To become the people we would like to be, we need to daily feed on genuine, solid truth and have thoughts that walk in the paths of God’s thoughts. Otherwise, we may eventually be covering sad, despairing or evil thoughts with a smiling or innocent-looking mask.

Project:
Ask God to reveal whether your lips are speaking your real thoughts.
Ask God to help you change your thought patterns.

Daily - Replace some of the world’s input with Real Truth.
Daily - Go to sleep meditating on a truth from God’s Word.
Daily - Wake up to God’s Word.