“I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me.” (Psalm 101:3)
We make choices as to what our eyes or mind dwell on. These choices are connected to what we value and call good. Our heart will be where our treasure is.
We have a very hard time letting go of things that highly matter to us. The more important we deem something, the more we want it, and the more we cleave to it. Our soul becomes tied to our treasure in an obsessive way.
Job knew the danger of obsession. He made a covenant with his eyes that he wouldn’t “think” on a maid (Job 31:1). Why did he have this commitment? Because he was “a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?” (Job 1:8)
To honor God is to let Him determine for us what is good and what is evil. We are not wise in our own eyes. If God says something deserves our attention, our thought, our gaze, then we meditate upon it. If He says something is nothing, as the “small dust of the balance,” we despise it – we don’t set it before our eyes.
What cleaves to us is what we cleave to. What we give ourselves over to will fill us. What we value we will eventually make ours, even if we have to do it in a wicked fashion. Obsession leads to compulsion. It starts with a failure to honor God by loving what He loves, and hating what He hates.
Avoid being driven down an evil way. Honor God enough to make a covenant with your eyes. Let the meditation of your heart be acceptable in His sight. Fear God and eschew the planting of any evil thing in your mind. What you sow, you will reap.