Get Your Mind Right

2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 5 Put to death, therefore,  whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. 7 You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived.       Colossians 3:2,5,7

This is something I have been struggling with lately and I felt others might be able to relate as well. One would think that once you decide to focus on God and submit to Him completely, everything will be easy breezy and your old life and ways will just fall away from you. However, this is definitely not the case. Life actually seems to get harder when you actually fight the temptation of things that you learn are not pleasing to God. What I’ve found is, you have to do a mindset change in order for you to successfully change your life through the power of God. Once you make the decision to live for God you have to go from thinking in a carnal (relating to the physical body) mindset to thinking in a spiritual way. Hence the first scripture, “set your mind on things above and not on earthly things”. In today’s world everyone seems to be screaming “Do you, Be you, and everyone HAS to accept you for who you are.” Depending on the way you feel about that, it can be unfortunate that the Christian lifestyle says the opposite. You have to die to what your mind is telling you to do to bring pleasure to your flesh and start focusing on what your spirit needs to make it to heaven. No doubt this is hard, but not as hard as you think. It’s basically a mind reset. You have to get rid of just about everything that you’ve learned from the secular world and begin to search the scriptures (with the Holy Spirit interpreting) for the correct way of going about everything.

It is a prevalent issue among modern day Christians to try to have both lives. You can’t be in the middle though, God does not work like that. If you need deliverance from sins, ask for it! 1 John 5:14-15 says “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us, And if we know that he hears us– what ever we ask — we know that we have what we asked of him. I would venture to say that it is God’s will to deliver us from those things, all you have to do is believe that He will do it and by his power begin to remove yourself from those situations and conditions. Did you understand that? You have to do work as well. Learn to say no, learn to separate yourself until you find a group of people that are trying to go in the same direction as you. And it may seem crazy but in those moments of solitude, pray that God would take that fleshly desire from you and look for a scripture to encourage you like Hebrew 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. You will be rewarded for seeking Him, and part of you seeking him is wanting to live pleasing unto him. Sounds to me like this is a better deal. (Just saying)

So lose yourself in the eternal moment. Think about your reward in heaven, then you will realize the hard work is worthwhile. But it starts in your mind. Once your mindset changes, some things will no longer be a temptation to you because your desires will change as well. Sometimes you will need a tune up, but just listen to your spirit and know where to go when you feel like you’re falling off.

I hope this helps you to repent (to change your mind) so that you can begin to be the ‘You’ God wants you to be.