Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober,
and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is
to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
1 Peter 1:13
Your mind is a wonderful thing! You can memorize life-changing passages of Scripture that can undergird you in your daily life; you can meditate upon God's Word, discovering His magnificent truths; you can discern between truth and falsehood; you can recall God's past blessings.
Some of God's most effective servants were those who disciplined their minds for His service. Moses, educated in the best schools of Egypt, assembled the Books of the Law for the Israelites. Isaiah used his scholarly mind to write an exalted prophetic book in Scripture. Paul learned under Gamaliel, the outstanding teacher of his day, and it was through Paul that God presented much of the theology found in the New Testament.
Sadly, many Christians today do not exercise their minds to be of service to God. They allow others to do their spiritual thinking for them. If they can find their theology from a book, they will not bother to study God's Word themselves. If a speaker makes an authoritative statement, they readily accept it without verifying whether it is biblical. Paul urged Christians to strive for maturity in their thinking (1 Cor. 14:20). He said there was a time when his spiritual thinking was immature, but he had prepared his mind to know and understand the great truths of God (1 Cor. 13:11). He had not allowed others to do his thinking for him. When you became a Christian, God renewed your mind (Rom. 12:2). Be certain to use your mind in a way that brings glory to God. - Blackaby Experiencing God Day by Day
My friend, look around you, look not at the voices of those who utter their purported words of wisdom but look at lives.
Look at the how. How the lives are lived, not just that they are living.
Jesus spoke on the harvest. That it was plentiful but the workers were few. What was He looking at? What was He seeing that the Disciples were not? Souls.
You have popular slogans of shoe apparel saying to just do it. You have commercials saying and showing you what you deserve, urging you to just go for it. Don't worry about the cost. You have lots of supposed vacation spots that are crying out for you to come spend your money and time there. Don't think about it any longer just do it.
Don't get me wrong there comes a time for refreshing. But what they are after is much more. Consider Scripture. All discipline for the moment is not joyful but sorrowful. We are encouraged by Paul to discipline ourselves in this life.
Our society has tried for decades to ingrain the concepts of spending money you don't have on things you really don't need. To work for your retirement. You deserve it you earned it. Truthfully the only retirement plan in the Bible is leaving this world to be in the presence of Jesus. Either in death or the Rapture of the Church.
So few purported Christians are avid Bible readers. So few really pray. So few...and yet so many who have fallen prey to the world's philosophy on living...and wonder why their countries have fallen so far from God.
Scripture says to return to God and He will return to you. That's a promise that so few believe in who called themselves Christian. They self-evaluate and deem their lives as too far gone for God to care enough to come after them. Another lie of Satan. I know. That was me. No matter what I did I never left that fallen state that my life was in. I was a doer n not a thinker. I wasn't thinking on Scripture or God's promises. Satan had me believing so much junk. Until the day that God pinned me down n I had but one place to look. Then and only then did I dare to try to hold God to that promise. In an instant He was indeed there to get me. He ran to me as He ran to the Prodigal Son.
He can run to you too. Don't compare your life with other. In Christ you become a new creation. In Christ He works to make you more like Him. In Christ we hope in our future state. In Christ are the promises of life in God.
When I set my mind to doing what God wanted after He ran to me, then life began changing in ways that I hadn't dreamed possible. He was keeping His promises.
You too my friend, once you come to Christ, will find the same. He never tires of running to people who call upon Him. He never tires of coming to our rescue. He is the ultimate First Responder.
We indeed live in a world of great opportunities. I would say unlike at any other point in history except that I believe that before the great flood written in Genesis, the world was incredibly advanced. We have found solid proofs that point to electronics and power nodes that we have yet to create today. Technology doesn't save. Only Christ does.
We spent billions a year on pleasures. On health improvement. Yet the basic requests of Jesus about taking care of widows and orphans isn't resolved. We have vast amounts of money that could be used to free other Christians from financial bondage yet it's horded rather than used for God's purposes. We live the lies of the world that realistically teach to live for yourself not for others.
In the great revivals of the last 2,000 years what really happened was people stopped their doing things and returned to thinking.
Look at your life today. What are your priorities? Does God have any part of your day-to-day life? Is He a fleeting thought? Only an afterthought until something goes wrong? God isn't a car jack that only supports you in an emergency.
Are you thinking at all about what you do and why you do it? Are you a sheep that just keeps doing but never stopping to think on why?
Stop and return to Christ today. He promised to run to you. He keeps His promises. Let go of your doing and start living. Start realizing what a life with Christ is supposed to be about.
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