The Mind Battle

Those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit.  So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace.  For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God’s laws, and it never will. – Romans 8:5-7

These past few weeks I was in Hawaii.  I have always enjoyed being in Hawaii.  The vistas are always beautiful and are always changing.  At any time of day you can see a rainbow, rain falling in the distance, mountains and waves crashing on rocks or flowing into the beaches.  It was on this trip that I first saw white rain.  It was something I’ve never seen before.

But, overall it was a less than enjoyable trip, aside from when I was with my family.  I was surrounded by someone who was incredibly negative and complaining about everything.  They spiraled themselves into such that the beauty all around them was unobservable and even the unconscious observance of the creation around them was overcome.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  Unfortunately, I had to spend time every morning, car rides to the work, car rides back from work, and evenings with them and that attitude and inability to just relax and take in the creation was too much for me to really enjoy being in such a grand environment.  I like this person, but this was just over the top.

However, this has caused me to look at daily life differently.  We live in a wonderful Creation daily and we live in the realm of the Spirit of God.  God tells us that He is always with us and Jesus tells us that His Spirit dwells within us.  Too often, we fail to see the beauty and rest in God’s own Spirit and we let the physical world ruin our attitude and overwhelm us.  How can that be except that we are focused on the wrong things?

³ If the Good News we preach is hidden behind a veil, it is hidden only from people who are perishing. ⁴ Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God.  ⁵ You see, we don’t go around preaching about ourselves. We preach that Jesus Christ is Lord, and we ourselves are your servants for Jesus’ sake. – 2 Corinthians 4:3-5

Sometimes I think we let the world fool us into believing that we are perishing.  We begin to believe that we can’t have hope, that our circumstance can’t change, that we might be lost forever.  But may it not be so!  We as God’s elect have an eternal hope because Jesus the Christ is alive, now and forever!  Only a lack of faith believes that nothing will change.  We must never lack faith, but be stronger still until our dying day that there is nothing real in this world except for God Himself.  All else will fade away.  He holds us forever and we are never uncared for – He loves us with an everlasting love.

No matter what negative influences you might have today, look into the Spirit of God and see through and beyond them.  I pray that those yelling at us will drown out to the song of worship in our hearts seeking His presence.