Tell Your Mind Where to Go

Colossians 3:2 “Set your mind on things above, not on things that are on earth.”

The mind goes where it wants to go. In our flesh, even as believers, we often will let our attention, and therefore our affections, drift to meaningless, or maybe I should just say less meaningful things. 

Sometimes we do let it “rest” on meaningless things, mindlessly scrolling through social media videos, watching Hulu or Youtube for far too long. But oftentimes it just wanders to work, to hobbies, to wherever it wants to go, because we don’t direct it. We don’t set it where it needs to be, we don’t correct our gaze and scold ourselves for our immaturity. We set our minds on things that are on earth, and oh boy does that lead into a tailspin. 

I am coming off about a two year stint of poor spiritual health. My zeal for the things of the Lord had diminished, but busyness and hobbies and projects had increased. It was bordering on building my own little kingdom instead of seeking first His Kingdom. 

I love to learn. I almost never listen to music, but have something playing in my ear whenever I am driving, doing dishes, running, etc. And during this extended stint of complacency I listened almost exclusively to youtube and audiobooks, mostly on business or on learning some topic I was interested about. I had often admitted to myself I should listen to the audio Bible on my phone at least half of the time, and yet I could never bring myself to do it. I always reverted to something else. I even told myself on Sundays, on the Lord's Day, I should exclusively listen to the Word. And yet I would end up on something else. 

Things started changing a couple months ago. 
I joined a friend of mine and his evangelism team at a food drive. I came across a lot of arguments against the gospel, and a lot of nominal Christianity I was not fully prepared to give a quick and accurate response to. So I went deeper in the Word, looking for answers. In other words, doing what I should be doing for once (evangelism) caused more doing (going deeper and focusing).

I also was asked by my Pastor to start teaching an adult Sunday School class at our church, which led me to put a lot of time into the book of 1 Timothy. My morning time in the word went from 20-30 minutes of trying to not space out and think about work to about an hour of intense discoveries of true gems in the Word. 

About this time I also felt convicted that our church was not praying enough, so my wife and I opened our home twice a month to host a prayer meeting. It is still, according to the world's standards, a huge embarrassing failure based on participation from the church, but God has sure used it in me.

I started this “business” (Make the War Visible) of creating products that would remind us of the very real but invisible war around us, and have spent a lot of time finding and reflecting on scriptures that have helped me, and wager that it will help others.

And I’ve gone back to spending a volume of time in the Word (I hope it wasn’t just because my Audible subscription only had one download left). I have been listening to preaching or the Audio Bible 90% of the time now - simply saturating my attention on things that matter. 

I believe a combination of all these things have led to me very slowly crawling out of the valley of complacency. None of this is meant to brag on this wretched man that I am. I was in a very sick and dangerous place, and I am still not “out of the woods”. I still have many miles of difficult road before becoming the man that I should be in Christ, before I am reflecting the image of His Son to any recognizable degree. 

And yet by the grace of God I have learned the following: you set your mind on what it needs to be set on, or nothing will change. You make it go where it needs to go. You flood your mind with the Word of God until your desire is actually there for it. You force yourself to pray continually until you don’t have to force it anymore and you are naturally just talking to God in an ongoing conversation. You do the things you were commanded to do and that will redirect your priorities to things above. You don’t get deeper than doing, for as our Master said: “You are my friends if you do what I command you (John 15:14)”. 

Your mind goes where it wants to. So what does that tell you about your desires today?