The meditation of my heart

“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.” Psalm 19:14
These words of David are worth spending a bit of time pondering over. We know that our words come out of the overflow of our heart (Luke 6:45). And we also know that God doesn’t only look upon our words and our actions, but He looks at what is going on in our hearts (1 Sam. 16:7).
When we consider these two things – the words of our mouth, and the meditation of our heart – I would say that the words of our mouth are much easier for us to control. We can think of satisfying revengeful comebacks, or crude jokes, or think of what we (in our flesh) would like to say to that person who hurt us, but then decide to not say it. Nobody knows what we were thinking... but God knows.
Now, there is a difference between thinking and meditating. Sometimes we have all kinds of ungodly thoughts pop into our minds – some from our flesh, but sometimes they are temptations from Satan. Even Jesus was tempted, yet He was without sin (Heb. 4:15). So it is not the initial thought that is the issue, but rather what we do with it. When a lustful thought comes into our mind, do we entertain it? When a thought of how we could get away with stealing something comes into our mind, do we dwell on it? The ‘meditation of my heart’ is what I choose to dwell on. The Bible says we are to take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ (2 Cor. 10:5). And really, if we are able to control the words that come out of our mouths, we are on the way to being able to control what our minds dwell on – through the help of the Holy Spirit. “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things” (Phil. 4:8).