How not to love God with your mind
To understand what it means to love God with our minds, I believe that it is beneficial for us to look at an example of how we can use our minds to not love God. Paul gives us great insight in the book of Romans.
For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
Romans 8:5-8
The natural bent of our minds is to focus on things which feed our flesh. Here flesh refers to the sinful nature we all inherit (Romans 5:12). In other words, we naturally will use our minds to think on things that are against God. We see this in the fact that Paul states that "the mind set on the flesh is hostile to God."
I cannot love God with my mind if I am using it to pursue those things which are hostile to Him. How could I? Would I not be considered an enemy of America if I sought to align myself with the thinking of Osama Bin Laden? Would I not be labeled anything less than a mutinous traitor?
So I must set my mind on things of the Spirit. I must meditate on Scripture, not merely read it. I must dive into difficult portions of Scripture and wrestle with them for meaning instead of avoiding them like the plague.
Setting our mind on the flesh doesn't necessarily mean that I sit around thinking of all kinds of evil things that I could do. In fact, I can set my mind on the flesh by simply being to lazy to use it for Christ. After all, the flesh says the it is too hard and not worth the effort.
I want to please God with my mind. That's where we will head next time.
Posted by Jack
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1:59 PM
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