Strain It!

He then called the crowd together and said, "Listen and take this to heart. It's not what you swallow that pollutes your life, but what you vomit up." (Matthew 15:11, MSG).

When you cook pasta, you boil with a lot of water, but when it's served, there is no water in it. This is because the water had to be strained from it, to get the relevant content. Filtering lets us retain what is useful and dispose of what is unnecessary.

The thing you do with what goes inside of you determines what stays in your heart and what stays in your heart now determines your character and living in general. A scenario played in front of two people can have different interpretations of each of them because of the mindset they've developed.

We sometimes put a knife to our throats and pick what goes into our body physically, for healthier living. But for the real-life given in God, we sometimes ignore and let things that go into our spirit unstrained, and expect the Holy Spirit to do the sorting and deleting for you. No! It doesn't work that way. 

You have to deliberately and consciously allow some things to go into your heart, and others strained away. You know why? Because out of it flow the issues of life. Every action can be traced to a thought. 

Every thought was first introduced by our contact with the physical world. And sometimes even the things we don't put attention to find there way into us unconsciously. It comes back as a thought and we find ourselves brooding on it, over and over again. Those things have the power to become an imprint of thought joining the rest of our thought pattern. Then sponsor our actions.

What's your response when you hear vulgar words from the radio or television? Do you count them as normal or see a degrade in our culture and lifestyle?  You can't blame anyone for exposing you to a thing whether by sight, listening, or any other senses, but you have to be responsible for the things you permit? What do you do with the information you are exposed to? What have you unconsciously and consciously stored?

We can't walk into clubs and come out the same, even if you went there on assignments or met clients. Do you know the number of unfiltered things that can be registered in your subconscious? Jesus said "what comes out of the mouth gets its start in the heart? It's from the heart that we vom­it up evil argu­ments, murders, adul­ter­ies, for­nications, thefts, lies, and cuss­ing. That's what pollutes."(Matthew 15:18-20, MSG).

What are you taking in? You can blame anyone for it because it's a buffet, you get to choose what you want. The world will constantly have anything and everything on the table? What will you allow us to go in?

Whatever you pick determines what builds the essence or core of your mindset. You always have a choice to pick what goes in. Even if it slips in, you still have a choice of what stores in your heart. Because after the storage, actions and consequences follow unless the stored thoughts are deleted, even in the recycle bin.

So my dear friend, are you conscious of what you are storing, deleting, and recycling? You have to strain to get the useful resources needed for your life.

Shalom!