You once were characterised by your evil deeds, but now it’s time to eliminate them from your lives once and for all—anger, fits of rage, all forms of hatred, cursing, filthy speech, and lying. Now that you have embraced new creation life as the true reality, lay aside your old Adam-self with its masquerade and disguise. Colossians 3:8-9 (TPT)
Think About This – Thinking High Series – Part 6
Go to PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6 | PART 7
When you tell someone not to think about something, they typically can’t help but think about it. If I say to you, don’t think about the biggest ice-cream you’ve ever seen, your mind will go straight there. You might even think about it by congratulating yourself on the fact that you aren’t thinking about, which means that you are thinking about it. Haha!
“Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” Colossians 1:2-3
Don’t stop thinking.
Don’t become a robot Jesus follower, who doesn’t engage their brain and THINK about life and faith and God. One who doesn’t lean into the mess and muck of life with faith and grace and questions and doubts and invite CHRIST into the situation. Or rather, be present with him in it. Because He is, indeed, there already. Don’t deny that you have temptations and addictions and failings and faults and weaknesses. Don’t ignore them. When we ignore them, we only give it the power to grow stronger in our lives. Ignorance is not bliss. It’s destructive on every level. When we face our failings with all of Heaven within us and around us; when we engage our temptations and weaknesses with the grace that we have been given by Christ, redemption begins. Restoration follows. Healing makes progress.
Think higher, deeper and wider.
When the Ancient Hebrews used the word “mind,” that weren’t just talking about brains and thoughts. The mind is the heart of a person. They did not separate intelligence from emotion and experience. It was all one. Partners. The fulfilment of the law was not to make them more acceptable to God but was to show God their love and devotion for him. Living well was not about atonement, it was not about accomplishment or becoming acceptable, it was about bringing heaven to earth right here, right now. Making this life as healing and whole as humanly and divinely possible.
You cannot work your way into God's favour. You cannot behave your way into eternity. If you never do another thing wrong for the rest of your life, God will not love you any more than he loves the vilest sinner you can think of.
Before we were “saved,” Christ died for us. The life we now live, we live in Jesus, and it is an expression of our love and gratitude for the Divine and all that he is and does for us. What we do here matters. How we live NOW matters. Not because it's going to get us a better seat in heaven (wherever that is, and however that works), but because God loves his children. All of them.
SO yes, it’s time to eliminate “evil deeds” from our lives. But we don’t do that to become more acceptable to God. It’s a revelation of our soul and body that takes place and outworks itself in our living when we realise we are loved and that others are loved just the same as we are. Our behaviour becomes less “ego” and more community focused the more we realise just how high and wide and deep God’s love for all of us is.
Be heavenly minded about your hang-ups and sins. Get to the source of them. You don't overcome a porn addiction (or any other addiction) by purely abstaining (although that is a part of it). You overcome by getting to the source of the problem: why you need it in the first place. There is always a story behind the behaviour. Christ has embraced my FULL story, the entirety of my life, and healed me from the ground up. Not by ignoring the evil within, but by redeeming it.
Day by day.
Go to Part 7 – Touch for Good »
OVER TO YOU! Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.
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