Last week was a whirlwind week for the Bentons.  Gaylon and I drove about four hundred miles to Baton Rouge to see our daughter-in-law Alica receive her Ph. D.  We would not dream of missing this great accomplishment.   We returned home on Friday night, and left Saturday morning to travel more than four hundred miles to Hickory, NC, for a ministry engagement, and we would also see our grandson Tucker.   We got back at 10:30 Sunday night.  We drove seventeen hundred miles over four-and-a-half days.

On Monday morning, while in my garage, I looked at my car, and the front was covered in bugs, scores of them.  My windshield was also a graveyard for many bugs.  I was shocked at how many bugs were on my front bumper.

One thing I knew – I had to wash my car that day.  The longer the bugs stayed on my paint job, the greater the damage, and the more difficulty to remove them.  So, off to the car wash I went!  Before going through the wash itself, I had to stop at the “bug station” to remove bugs.  It was no small chore. It took a lot  of elbow grease, under a scorching sun.    I was hot; I was tired; but I could not let the bugs remain.

I didn’t intentionally get bugs on my car.  I just picked them up on the journey.

As a believer in Jesus Christ, and one who tries to live by the word of God, I find that I often have to go and wash in God’s presence.  My mind often gets “bugged.”  I don’t intentionally set out to pick up bad attitudes and wrong mindsets; but as I journey through life, I am exposed to things that fly into my mind and heart.  It is a never-ending battle, but one that must fought.

At times the battle of the mind is so fatiguing, and it never ends.  Satan knows that he can do his best work if he can “bug” our minds and stay there. In 1965, Donald Grey Barnhouse wrote a book about it called The Invisible War.   Quoting Barnhouse, “It is the battle for your mind, and that battle is vicious. It is intense. It is unrelenting, and it is unfair because Satan never plays fair. And the reason why it is so intense is that your greatest asset is your mind.”

Beloved, none of us is exempt from “bugs” hitting our minds.  As soon as we know they are there, we can go to God and wash them off.    Don’t believe everything you think.  Don’t act on everything you think.

Guard what you allow in your mind.  Let me give you an example.  I would never let someone walk into my living room, start using foul language, pull out a bottle of liquor and begin to get drunk, and then undress and get in provocative positions. I’d never allow that!  Yet, I have the opportunity every day, to watch these very things on television or film.   I must guard my mind.

When those “bugs” want to splatter my mind, the answer is to run to God, and allow Him to fill my thoughts with, “… whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”

God’s presence is a good place to wash off the bugs.