December 8, 2025

Minding Your Thoughts

A Biblical Overview of Obtaining and Maintaining a Biblical Thought Life

1 Corinthians 10:12  Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.

I once read a story of a woman who was teaching her daughter to cook. They were preparing a roast for a big Sunday lunch. The mom cut off about two or three inches of meat from the end of the roast and threw it away. The daughter, who was always full of questions, asked why she cut the end of the roast off. The mom said that the end of the roast was not an acceptable piece of meat and if left on it would spoil the taste of the rest of the roast. The young girl did not seem satisfied with that answer and began to ask her mom many questions about it. “How do you know it will spoil the rest?”  “Would that end piece poison the roast if cooked?” “How do you know how much to cut off, what if you don’t get all of the bad meat?” And other questions that only a young girl could come up with.

The mom became exasperated because she did not know the answers to all of her daughter’s questions. She resorted to the stock answer that all parents use from time to time, “We do it because that is the way it has always been done!”  Later in the day the mom became bothered by the lack of answers she had for her daughter so she called her mom, the expert. “Mom, why do we always cut off a few inches of meat from the roast before we cook it?”  The “expert” replied, “Because the roast is always longer than the roaster pan I have to cook it in.” 

The mom thought she performed a very important, even lifesaving act, by cutting off the end of the roast. In reality, it was only because the roast would not fit in the roaster. She would have bet anything she had that there was a more significant reason. She was convinced that there had to be something more to it, but there wasn’t. Lesson? Get a bigger roaster and you can cook the entire roast. Or, …let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. Sometimes we are so sure of what we think only to find out later that the issue was not what we thought at all.

May the Lord bless and be pleased with your thought life today.

Dr. William Howe