Dirty Minds Are Worse Than Fatty Foods
Today's Three-minute Bible Study
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Title: Dirty Minds Are Worse Than Fatty Foods ------------------- Date: 3/17/2003
Keywords:
"defile" "mouth" "clean" "unclean" "speak"
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Passage: Mark 7:14-15, 17-23*
14. Then he called the crowd again and said to them, "Listen to me, all of you, and understand:
15. there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile."
17. When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable.
18. He said to them, "Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile,
19. since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?" (Thus he declared all foods clean.)
20. And he said, "It is what comes out of a person that defiles.
21. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder,
22. adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly.
23. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person."
Questions
1. Do you watch your weight more than you watch what you look at on your computer screen?
2. Make a list of the behaviors that can come from a corrupt human heart. How many of these character traits are glamorized in pornographic websites, magazines and movies?
Practical help
Do you want to know how your heart is doing? Study what you say. Are your words full of encouragement, forgiveness, gentleness and love? Or are your words arrogant, negative, dirty, self-serving, etc.?
What you eat might make you fat, but what you look at is even worse. Corrupt images go directly into the mind and are lodged in the core of who you are as a human being.
When Jesus speaks about the heart, he is not referring to the organ that pumps blood, he is talking about the center of who you are.
Viewing porn is like pouring acid right into your brain and defiling your very nature. Eventually you and others will see the crud come right out of your mouth — and life.
Fortunately, the one who speaks in this passage is the one who died to set you free. If you want to know more, click here.
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*"New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of
Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States
of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved."
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