Thinking Godliness - Chambers, Oswald

Philippians 4:5–8; 3:7–14

In physical life we do best those things we have habitually learned to do, and the same is true in mental and spiritual life. We do not come into the world knowing how to do anything; all we do we have acquired by habit. Remember, habit is purely mechanical.

Thinking habits (philippians 4:5)

Our thinking processes are largely subject to the law of habit. Let your forbearance, i. E. , self-control, be known unto all men (rv ). Self-control is nothing more than a mental habit which controls the body and mind by a dominant relationship, viz. : the immediate presence of the lord for the lord is at hand. The danger in spiritual matters is that we do not think godliness; we let ideas and conceptions of godliness lift us up at times, but we do not form the habit of godly thinking. Thinking godliness cannot be done in spurts, it is a steady habitual trend. God does not give us our physical habits or our mental habits; he gives us the power to form any kind of habits we like, and in the spiritual domain we have to form the habit of godly thinking. To a child the universe is a great confusing, amaz- ing out sideness; when the child grows to be a man he has the same nervous system and brain, but the will has come in and determined his tendencies and impulses. It is natural for a child to be impulsive; but it is a disgraceful thing for a man or woman to be guided by impulse. To be a creature of impulse is the ruin of mental life. The one thing our lord checked and disciplined in the disciples was impulse; the determining factor was to be their relationship to himself. We are so made that our physical life gives us an affinity with every material thing; our thinking life gives us affinity with everything in the mental realm, and it is the same with our moral and spiritual life. We are held responsible by god for the way we deal with the great mass of things that come into our lives. We all have susceptibilities in every direction; every- one is made in the same way as everyone else; consequently it is not true to say we cannot understand why some people like to devote themselves to pleasure, to races and dancing, etc. If we do not understand it, it is because part of our nature has become atrophied. Whatever one human being can do, either in the way of good or bad, any human being can do. There are things we must deny, but the negation that is the outcome of ignorance is of no value whatever to the character; the denial by will is of enormous value. If thy right eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck it out, and cast it from thee . . . (matthew 5:29 rv); determine to select those elements of your conscious life that are going to tell for the characteristic of godliness.

Trending habitually (philippians 4:6)

We have to watch the trend of things. The trend of our conscious life is determined by us, not by god, and Paul makes the determining factor in the conscious life of a godly person the determination to pray. Prayer is not an emotion, not a sincere desire; prayer is the most stupendous effort of the will. Let your requests be made known unto god. And the peace of god, which passeth all understanding, shall guard your hearts and your thoughts in christ jesus (rv),The poising power of the peace of god will enable you to steer your course in the mix-up of ordinary life. We talk about circumstances over which we have no control. None of us have control over our circumstances, but we are responsible for the way we pilot ourselves in the midst of things as they are. Two boats can sail in opposite directions in the same wind, according to the skill of the pilot. The pilot who conducts his vessel on to the rocks says he could not help it, the wind was in that direction; the one who took his vessel into the harbour had the same wind, but he knew how to trim his sails so that the wind conducted him in the direction he wanted. Never allow to yourself that you could not help this or that; and never say you reach anywhere in spite of circumstances; we all attain because of circumstances and no other way.

Let us not always say
Spite of this flesh to-day
I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!
Robert Browning

Touching habitual fundaments (philippians 4:8)

There is a difference between thinking and grinding. Such subjects as languages or mathematics require grinding, and it is no use saying we have not the men- tal power to grind, we have; and the more we grind the more the mechanical part of our nature will come to our aid if we keep at it uninterruptedly. When it comes to matters of imagination, different faculties are needed. Some minds are more easily put on the grind than others, and some are more easily taught on the imaginative line than others. We have to discipline ourselves along both lines. Insubordination is another name for mental laziness. Watch the difference between listening to a language lesson and to a sermon or lecture; you will be worn out in no time by the former unless you have learned to grind; but with the latter, after a few sentences, your mind is kindled through the connection of previous thinking. It is not that we are gifted in this way but that we are created in this way. Paul insists on this very law. . . . Whatsoever things are true, . . . Think on these things. Glean your thinking; dont allow your mind to be a harbourage for every kind of vagabond sentiment; resolutely get into the way of disciplining your impulses and stray thinking. The law of attention controls the mind and keeps it from shifting hither and thither. The forming of a new habit is difficult until you get into the way of doing the thing, then everything you meet with aids you in developing along the right line. It is good practice to sit down for five minutes and do nothing; in that way you will soon discover how little control you have over yourself. In forming a new habit it is vitally important to insist on bringing the body under control first. Paul says, i maul and master my body, lest, after preaching to other people, i am disqualified myself (1 corinthians 9:27 moffatt ). The natural man is created by god as well as the new man in christ, and the new man has to be manifested by the natural man in his mortal flesh. Paul puts it very practically in romans 6:19, your members have been used to serve the disposition of sin; now that you are made free from sin, use your members to serve the disposition of righteousness. In 1 corinthians 10:31 he puts it still more practically: so whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, let it be all done for the glory of god (moffatt). It is difficult to begin with, but as you go on you find it becomes easier until you are able not only to practise the presence of god in your spirit, but are able to prove by the habits of your actual life that your body is the temple of the holy ghost.

Native and acquired interests (philippians 3:7)

There are some subjects that are natively interesting and other subjects for which we have to acquire an interest. A childs mind is only natively interested; an adult mind if it is well formed has voluntarily acquired an interest in other subjects. We imagine that a native interest will develop into an acquired interest all at once, but it wont. It will only become a dominant interest when it has come into the very make-up of our being. Think of the things you are interested in to- day, the things that are really forming your mind, you can remember the time when you had no affinity with them at all, they awakened no interest in you. What has happened? The spirit of god by the engineering of gods providence has brought some word of his and connected it with your circumstances in such a way that the whole of your outlook is altered. The old things are passed away; behold, they are become new (2 cor- inthians 5:17 rv). God alters the thing that matters. The interests of a child are altogether in the senses, and in teaching a child you must begin by interesting him. The teacher who succeeds best with children is the one who does things before them; it is no use teaching children abstract stuff. That is why it is necessary in teaching a young life, whether young in years of the flesh or the spirit, for a teacher to attend more to what he does than to what he says. The crys- tallising point of our lords teaching lies here, and the reason our lord condemned the pharisees was that they say, and do not. Everyone has a perfect right to come and ask those of us who teach whether we practise what we teach. The influence of our teaching is in exact proportion to our practical doing. In philippians 3:78, paul states that he has flung overboard the things that were natively interesting to him in order to acquire other interests which at one time were of no value to him; and now the whole of

His attention is set on jesus christs idea for him, i press on, if so be that i may apprehend, seeing that also i was apprehended [mg] (philippians 3:12 rv ). A man can go through any drudgery under heaven to attain the object he has in view. Pauls object was to win christ, and he counted all things to be loss (rv ), and suffered the loss of all things, counting them but refuse, to attain his object.

Nurturing appreciation (philippians 3:10)

These words never fail to awaken a thrill of emotion in the heart of every christian, but the question arises how can i become interested in these matters to the degree that the apostle was interested in them? The only way in which a truth can become of vital inter- est to me is when i am brought into the place where that truth is needed. Paul calls the people to whom the gospel is not vitally interesting, dead; but when once they are brought under conviction of sin, the one thing they will listen to is the thing they despised before, viz. , the gospel. There is a difference between the way we try to appreciate the things of god and the way in which the spirit of god teaches. We begin by trying to get fundamental conceptions of the creation and the world; why the devil is allowed; why sin exists. When the spirit of god comes in he does not begin by expounding any of these subjects; he begins by giving us a dose of the plague of our own heart; he begins where our vital interests lie in the salvation of our souls. In every christian life spiritual sentiment is at times carried to the white heat of devotion, but the point is how can we so attend to these things that the devotion is there all the time. In spiritual life most of us progress like frogs; we jump well at times, but at other times we stay a long while in one place until god in his providence tumbles up our circumstances. The apostle pauls life was not a frog jumping business, not a spasmodic life kept going by conventions and meetings, but an abiding, steadfast, attending life. If we are alive spiritually, the spirit of god will continually prod us to attend to new phases of our salvation, and if we sit down, we sit on something that hurts. There will be always something that bids nor sit nor stand but go! The people who are of absolutely no use to god are those who have sat down and have become overgrown with spiritual mildew; all they can do is to refer to an experience they had twenty or thirty years ago. That is of no use whatever, we must be vitally at it all the time. With paul it was never an experience i once had, but the life which i now live.

Negotiating associations (philippians 3:1214)

We have to build up useful associations in our minds, to learn to associate things for ourselves, and it can only be done by determination. There are ideas associated in each of our minds that are not associated in the mind of anyone else, and this accounts for the difference in individuals. For instance, learn to associate the chair you sit in with nothing else but study; associate a selected secret place with nothing but prayer. We do not sufficiently realise the power we have to infect the places in which we live and work by our prevailing habits in those places. The law of associated ideas applied spiritually means that we must drill our minds in godly connections. How many of us have learned to associate our summer holidays with gods divine purposes? To associate the early dawn with the early dawn on the sea of galilee after the resurrection? If we learn to associate ideas that are worthy of god with all that happens in nature, our imagination will never be at the mercy of our impulses. Spiritually, it is not a different law that works, but the same law. When once we have become accustomed to connecting these things, every ordinary occurrence will serve to fructify our minds in godly thinking because we have developed our minds along the lines laid down by the spirit of god. It is not done once for always; it is only done always. Never imagine that the difficulty of doing these things belongs peculiarly to you, it belongs to every one. The character of a per- son is nothing more than the habitual form of his associations. Learn to beware of marginal pre-occupations that continually provoke other associations. For instance, there are people who cultivate the margin of vision; they look at you, but out of the margin of their eye they are really occupied with something else all the time; and in the mental realm there are people who never pay attention to the subject immediately in hand, but only to the marginal subjects round about. Spiritually there is the same danger. Jesus christ wants us to come to the place where we see things from his standpoint and are identified with his interests only. My one thought is, by forgetting what lies behind me and straining to what lies before me, to press on to the goal . . . (moffatt ). Concentration is the law of life mentally, morally and spiritually.