“This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth; but you shall meditate therein day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall have good success.” (Joshua 1:8) “And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Cor 13:13)

There are three things that more than anything else I know of, seem to determine where we end up in life. They are the things we think on, the words we speak and the actions we take. This is a profound truth and will be the object of much study for me in the months to come.

Each of those three things are choices we make each day and involve a deliberate action. There are three other things that are unseen that also greatly affect the outcome of our life and they loosely parallel, what’s in our mind, what’s in our mouth and what motivates our actions. They are first of all, hope which is an anchor for our soul (Heb 6:19) and in its simplest form is a positive attitude about the present and the future. It arises from the things we think about and the beliefs we choose as a result of those thoughts.

The second unseen parallel is faith. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4:13 “We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak;” Faith before it runs toward the challenge, speaks. It declares the outcome. This is a big topic for subsequent blogs. Faith however, without works is dead (James 2:17) and thus action always follows. But Galatians 5:6 says that faith works by love. It is motivated and empowered by love and love voluntarily labors. (1 Thess. 1:3)

And what does that labor produce? The harvest of what you think, what you expect and what you say. I will leave that with you for now and look forward to developing these thoughts with you in the weeks ahead. In the meantime, change your thoughts, change your life. Selah.