When the human soul was created it was able to hear spiritual thoughts. The three sources of your thoughts are: Satan and his minions, God (the Holy Spirit), and yourself. God normally requires an invite. Satan doesn’t care about that. He’s attacking. Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to learn how to tell all of them apart.

The basic problem is that the enemies’ thoughts are evil and nasty. Your thoughts are not trustworthy, at best. There are good reasons why you gave yourself to Jesus to serve Him. We present our self as a living sacrifice, and then we work at getting transformed by the renewal of our mind. The goal is to allow the Holy Spirit to redo our spirit and mind to align with Truth. Until we get pulled out to marry our fiancée, in this life on Earth our thoughts are simply not trustworthy. There’s too much we simply cannot see. I’ve written about a method to get rid of the sin. But until we get our glorified body, our thoughts cannot be trusted to make good decisions other than to follow and serve Jesus.

Examine your thoughts to determine which of the three sources provided it

When you ask yourself a serious question, listen to the answers you get. Let’s take a simple question like, “Should I marry this woman?” Or “Should I accept this job offer or wait for a better one?”

How would you know? You certainly cannot trust something as fleeting as emotion. Only God knows the good answer to questions like these. So you need to hear from Him. You need to carefully examine your thoughts about matters like these. To do that, we will practice with lesser questions so we’re ready when the big ones arrive.

When making a decision, we eliminate all thoughts which are not from God. He has the only answers you can trust. You don’t know enough, and the enemy is trying to hurt you. The same is true of opinions offered by other people. They are in no better shape than you are—walking by faith—unless they are obviously more mature than you, unless God has told you to listen to them, and unless the Holy Spirit tells you their words are true.

All three of these should be true. Yet even then, you need to test their advice also. In the flesh, our hearing isn’t that good. We misinterperet what we hear. At this time near the end, we need to be careful. The Lord has the power to guide us into what He has designed us to be. We are living in the beginnings of the Great Delusion. Jesus can keep us clean and holy. We need to ask Him to do this. And, we need to ask Him how to cooperate. Philippians 2: 14 NASB tells us: “for it is God who is at work in you, both to desire and to work for His good pleasure.” Other translations say both to will and to work. In other words, the Lord makes us willing, and then He makes us able. It is all The Lord.

Discerning thoughts from God

They will manifest his character. We have several ways to discern that. Some things are obvious, covered by a specific verse.

Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed, and no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. I Corinthians 12: NKJV

The main help Biblically is that Paul has given us two descriptions of The Lord’s character.

I Corinthians 13:4–7 [RSV]

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Galatians 5:22 & 23 [NKJV]

…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control…

These descriptions tell us a lot about who Jesus is. Obviously, we need to learn what each of these words mean in the original text. Strong’s Concordance and Vine’s dictionary help a lot. I use blueletterbible.org. It includes Greek and Hebrew lexicons.

How does this work out in real life as you listen to your thoughts? About the Lord there are three general points to start with—after you have settled the fact that Jesus is Lord, He is God. He has called both you and I to come into relationship with Him.

But we start with God is a loving gentleman. Jesus is kind, patient, generous. He is never in a hurry, never pushy. From that base we develop a relationship. He’s an amazing person to work with.

Beyond all these things is experience. As I have said many times already, you need to practice hearing God. You need to watch the results. If a word is from God it will happen. What God tells you is never false or wrong.

Just the law of averages means that some of our thoughts, the thoughts of a friend, and the insinuations of the enemy are true part of the time. However, they are not trustworthy. Well, that’s not true. You can trust the enemy’s thoughts are trying to destroy you.

You and I are being repaired and remodeled by the Lord. We are a new creation of the Lord. That’s what rebirth is. We have chosen to serve Yeshua, our Messiah. As Messiah, we have given Him absolute control over ourself. Thank God, He is completely trustworthy.

The main thing is that God always has time for a good decision. If you are not sure, tell God that you are not sure and do not decide until He makes the truth clear. He will do that for you.

A simple prayer which works very well goes something like this, “Lord, I believe (this decision or action I am going to take) is correct. Change my mind if I am wrong.” I have seen Him radically change my opinion by showing me truth, in a matter of seconds after a prayer like this.

Discerning thoughts that come from the enemy

They manifest his character. He is a clever, cunning liar. He’s not only a liar, but a cheat and thief who comes to kill and destroy. He hates the people of God, plus he knows those who are faking it and only look like a child of God. He can use them freely because they have no defenses against him. He can easily use any one of them (who don’t know Jesus) to attack you because of the lack of defenses or awareness on their part. His primary tool is the flesh.

Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. Galatians 5:19–21 RSV

You need to learn what all the words mean here also. These don’t even mention his character: liar, flatterer, conniver, schemer, accuser, nagger, threatener, gossiper (often with fiction), bully, manipulator, and on and on. But you’ll find out that studying the enemy is counterproductive. It’s much more useful to continue to study the Lord and His character.

Often thoughts from God will pop into to your mind fully formed. The enemy’s thoughts usually worm their way in. The enemy usually has a nasty, pushy edge. He has no real control, so, many of his words are over the top, unbelievable if you listen carefully. The enemy often tries to insist that you can’t wait and must make a decision immediately. God does not “push” us like Satan. He’ll try to confuse you with lies, misdirection, and trickery.

Like right now as I am writing, it’s been tough this morning. Obviously, the Creep [my derisive nickname] is upset by this entire new menu item. Specifically, I’ve been fighting little nudges of fear, confusion, frustration, and all the rest this entire morning as I have been proofing, editing, and rewriting this article. So, I’ve been praying a lot, talking with the Lord, asking for help, and receiving that help. But, it’s been a fight for sure. It makes me grateful that I serve an omnipotent, omniscient Messiah.

I finally went and took a nap praying that the Lord would heal and comfort me, that He would enable me to see clearly and be focused when I woke. He seems to have done that. Thank you, Lord.

Your thoughts

They sound like you, with all your foibles. Often when you get started on this quest to talk with Jesus, you’ll discover that many of your thoughts are based on faulty assumptions. You’ll be regularly asking the Lord to tell you the truth. It’s like when you study the Bible and ask the Holy Spirit to show you what He wants you to see—teach you what you need to know. Jesus knows you like the Holy Spirit knows the Bible.

A large part of the agenda of your life as a believer is learning to know and understand who you are. You need to know what you have been designed to do. That never stops. The past five years have been some of the best in my life, from 75 to 80 years old. The Holy Spirit has taught me a lot, and shown me wonderful new revelations.

One of my favorite phrases is: if you’re not growing, you’re dead. We can expect to continue to grow throughout eternity. The Lord’s knowledge and wisdom are also infinite. What a glorious life we have been given. I’m certainly pleased that the glorified body is waiting for me. Maranatha!