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To comprehend how a correct understanding of the character of God makes the difference between success and failure in our Christian walk, we must spend a little time discussing how mental reasoning plays into that scenario. Most of us don’t realize how dangerous reasoning can be.
2 Corinthians 10:4-5 is a foundational warfare scripture and one of the advantages of this warfare weapon is in taking every thought captive. The type of thought we will be addressing is reasoning. My objective for this topic is the potential it has for ruining one’s life. It can do so much damage in just a matter of moments. I am going to share with you a very personal, and somewhat humorous, experience on my journey of learning about reasoning. When we first moved out to the country, there weren’t homes around us. It was so secluded that we hadn’t even taken the time to hang our curtains. I had cooked this huge pot of red beans for a large party the next night. Since it was late, I just set the beans, pot and all, into the refrigerator. I didn’t know that you had to let them cool down gradually, so the next morning I found that the internal heat had made them sour. Have you ever smelled soured beans? I pulled them out of the refrigerator and bubbles were coming up and bursting on the top layer of beans. I cannot even begin to describe the horrific odor. I was headed outside to pour them out to get the smell out of the house when Jack reasoned that we needed to get in the pickup and take them way off from the house before we poured them out. Then, he reasoned again that if we put them in the cab of the pickup, it would smell up his whole truck. He decided it would be better to put them in the bed of the pickup. Again, he reasoned that if they spilled it would be a mess, so he put down the tailgate and sat there holding the pot of beans to keep them from spilling. The thought crossed my mind that I should go in and get dressed first. I had just gotten up—my hair was sticking out in every direction, I had no makeup on, and I was dressed in this old flannel gown that I probably had received on our first Christmas. But then, that little voice of reasoning said: it’s not even 6 o’clock in the morning. No one is within miles—even the cows are still asleep; I jumped on the back of the tailgate and off we went. Again, Jack began to reason that if we poured those sour beans out in the pasture, one of the animals might find them and get sick. With that thought he decided to go out the cattle guard and pour them in the bar ditch on the road. Well, just about the time we stopped to pour out those putrefied beans, this new car pulled up right beside me and the driver rolled down his window. Suddenly, just as he asked what we were doing, I realized that this very nicely dressed man was someone we had gone to school with years before. Where do you hide? If I had been in the cab of the truck, I would already have been on the floorboard; but there I was, sitting on the tailgate in my flannel gown with my hair looking like I had stuck my finger in a light socket, desperately holding onto a pot of rotten beans. Before I knew what had happened, he picked up a camera off the seat of his pickup, he was an insurance adjuster, and he took my picture, then later drove off with this big, wicked grin on his face. For the last fifteen years, no matter where I see him in town, he hollers to me, “Say, I’ve got a picture you might be interested in.” This incident, though humorous and relatively harmless, all started with a series of reasoning thoughts. But I am very serious when I say that reasoning can ruin your life—it can destroy you in a matter of moments! Part 2 is coming next week. -Peggy Joyce Ruth
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