Conscious Effort

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing and acceptable to you, oh Lord, my rock, my strength and my redeemer. Psalms 19:14

I recently wrote on the meditation of my heart and how thoughts flit through my mind without any conscious effort on my part—that while I am not held accountable for their appearance, I am responsible for what I do with those thoughts. However today as I consider this again I realize there is another take on the conscious effort part. How much more pleasing to my Lord would the meditation of my heart be if I were putting in the conscious effort to have thoughts that are acceptable and pleasing to Him?

You are what you eat. What you put in, you will get out. Plant a seed, reap a harvest.

There are many sayings that feed this idea that what we put inside our minds is what we will contemplate. So I submit that we actually plant in our minds what would be pleasing and acceptable to our Lord. 

When my feet hit the floor in the morning what is my first activity? I suggest this sets the tone for our day. Before my feet even hit the floor, am I dragging and I think about how good an extra half hour of sleep would feel? If so, I’m much more likely to hit the snooze button and drag out of bed a bit later…and quite likely I drag through the rest of my day. When my feet hit the floor and I quickly put on my workout clothes 9.9 times out of 10, I’ll end up doing a workout. When my first thoughts are toward ingesting God’s Word I am setting my thought life up for success.

Like many good habits it starts out with discipline. Michael Jordan spent his off seasons taking hundreds of jump shots a day. One of the habits of highly successful people is that they spend 15 to 30 minutes each day on focused thinking. Billy Graham shared three foundational life lessons that shaped his life and ministry: Follow in the steps of Jesus; Read the Bible every day—study it, memorize it, meditate on it, quote it, and study it again; Go to your knees and pray until you and God have become intimate friends. None of these are easy habits to build, but in the building you can become an extraordinary person with whom God is well pleased.

What will be your conscious effort to make the meditation of your heart pleasing and acceptable to Him? Don’t even wait until tomorrow. Start now!