8Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Philippians 4:8  

You know those guard rails we all see going around highway curves? Notice how shiny and new they look? One day, those guard rails may save your life.

So many times we underestimate the forces beyond us everytime we turn on the computer and surf the internet. A little click here and a double click there soon sends us to web pages we never intended to see, or worse a message letting us know that our system has been infected.

Our mind is like a computer hard drive. Just as we need those highway guard rails to protect us each time we travel on the roadways, our mind needs to be protected each time we surf the web.  I'm told by those in the IT industry to always set the security settings on one's computer high enough to keep those unsuspecting pages from finding it's way to our browser.

 Garbage in, garbage out. 

 Our minds are so vulnerable to the influences of the outside that unless we go to great measures to protect it, that in time what we feed our minds will play a major role in how we react to the world around us.

We gamble, we end up broke.
We watch too many violent movies, we wake up angry and toss out disparaging comments to every innocent person in our path.
We see images we were not meant to see, we are filled with shame that sends us into a darkened world of isolation.

Garbage in, garbage out.

 Conversely, the more of the good things in life we fill our mind with, the happier we will be and the greater God will be able to use us in the lives of people around us.

We get in the habit of reading God's precious gift of the bible and we wake up refreshed and brand new.
We listen to Christian praise music on the radio on our way to work, we feel positive and optimistic about the work day ahead.
We memorize bible verses from time to time and in time are given the ability for God to help us fight our Spiritual battles in our mind.

 We often underestimate the power of bible verses in our lives. We may know it would be beneficial to memorize verses, but the distractions of life often get in our way from achieving that goal. I often remind myself that all of us have the same number of hours in a day, but how we choose to live those hours determines whether we will be victorious or defeated.

What we choose to focus our minds on is often the determining factor in how we perceive life.

Garbage in, garbage out, grace in, grace out.

On the other hand, if we learn to appreciate the bible as the owner's manual of life given to us by God and we learn to savor the verses within those pages, our minds will soon be filled with beautiful things.

As we fall in love with scripture,  we grow satisfied with the things God gives us.

We watch movies that build up our souls, we begin to see the world through God's eyes, not man's.
We read scripture and God gives us the desire to honor him on the Sabbath by bringing us to a great church nearby.
We pray more and we begin to see God's answers to our prayer.

Grace in, grace out.

Just as it is important to build extra security into our computers to prevent outside influences from taking over our hard drives, we must be diligent to protect our minds from the outside influences that distort us from seeing the world from God's eyes.

In front of me as I type are a stack of bible verses. Just as I'm going to do this coming week, I encourage you to take a fresh look at scripture and memorize key verses so nothing but edifying things flow out of your mind, in time.

Just before nodding off I glanced at my phone with a text message asking if I was available this Saturday morning to gather with friends to go over those bible verses. My lips smiled as I turned off the light.

Thank you Jesus for the precious gift of your word.