With the busyness of life our
daily focus is often on the things of the world. Politics, government and
physical ailments can consume our minds. It occurs to me that even Sunday
mornings the sermons we hear and the Sunday School lessons we’re taught are
more about earthly things than they are about things above. “Since, then, you
have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is
seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things
above, not on earthly things” (Col 3:1-2 NIV).
3 comments:
Gail;
-----Set your minds in what way on things above? October 15 is a drop-dead line. I have a number of tax returns to prepare before it arrives. I assure you that during those days before the 15th I will be spending giant swaths of time with my mind deeply embedded in my work. Many people drive vehicles for a career. I certainly hope their minds are on their work, because each morning I do drive to work with my mind engaging the road and its immediate surroundings. Each evening I must do the same going home. And when I get home, a small construction project awaits me which I’ve been designing on the fly (which takes a good deal of concentration.) Even before I finish with that I must go retrieve an ‘84 Mustang GT convertible for which I traded some consultation time. And after that construction project is finished, I must must must must replace the hubs on my ‘80 F150, if indeed that is why the 4wheel drive is not working. For our driveway involves at least fifty yards of 15 to 20 percent grade. Two or three times every winter I must run the snow off that section of driveway, or my sweet bride will not be able to get her car home. Gee. All this is just some of the more major things I must think about. I also need to replace the rotor, brake pads, and caliper bracket on the left rear of my daughter’s car. And all this has not summed into it my daily duties: showering, eating, household chores, sleep, etc. Where is there enough heart left to set upon things above?
-----That was a question I pondered much through the middle stretch of my adult life. Fortunately, my favorite hobby is pondering.
-----A few years ago, a good friend in the mental care business said, “Steve, you’re what’s called a meta-cognitive.”
-----”A what?” I asked, “A metal cog in a sieve?”
-----”No. A meta-cognitive. That’s someone who can observe the working of his own mind as well as experience the thoughts and feelings his own mind is making. It is kind of an ability to sense the mechanics of it.”
-----Every human brain is made of networks of neurons. The most basic level of bio-mechanical function of the brain works the same in every mind. Although how that bio-mechanical function emerges into consciousness is not absolutely identical within everyone, it is rather similar in us all. We can, and often do, allow our minds to operate like a simple little box in a dark room. What’s occurring inside the box is consciousness. What’s occurring in the darkness of the room is sub-conscious. Moment by moment stuff in the box is being exchanged with stuff in the darkness of the room. Since thought has many aspects involving everything from pure intellect to pure emotion running the gamut of feelings to attitudes to notions to inclinations to ideas. We can actually find and make use of little boxes inside the box, within which we, through self-control, can learn to maintain attitudes and feelings and dispositions and such made of the beliefs holding together the knowledge we learn from God’s Word.
(continued…)
(…continued)
-----Prescribe by self-control some of these littler boxes within the box in the dark room for specific attitudes and inclinations about the truth of what we’ve been called to. That is the perfect eternity to where we’ve been called, the sanctity of today’s relationships through which the Lord moves, and especially inclinations of the reality of God’s Word in man’s history, His angels in history’s workings, and His Holy Spirit moving men for deeds He needs done. Then learn to control more and more of the exchanges between the box in the room and the dark room unto going through these prescribed boxes for a dog-gone good bathing in truth before they intertwine with the ongoings of your conscious stream of thought. Then every thought and feeling in your soul will be more and more captured for Christ to reflect the reality of God upon the rest of the things you must do which seem so earth-bound. Even the stuff in the darkness of the room, that is, your sub-conscious, will begin straightening up. And from one degree of glory to another we will go on towards heaven growing into His likeness, with hearts set upon heaven.
-----”But the fruit of the Spirit is…self-control…” also (Gal 5:22.) God is brought more deeply into your life through self-control of not only the things you do and say, but even more, of the things you think and feel, and even more yet, of the ways in which you think and feel the things you think and feel. We serve an immense, unending, kind God whose wisdom and genius are to die for.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
(…continued)
-----Prescribe by self-control some of these littler boxes within the box in the dark room for specific attitudes and inclinations about the truth of what we’ve been called to. That is the perfect eternity to where we’ve been called, the sanctity of today’s relationships through which the Lord moves, and especially inclinations of the reality of God’s Word in man’s history, His angels in history’s workings, and His Holy Spirit moving men for deeds He needs done. Then learn to control more and more of the exchanges between the box in the room and the dark room unto going through these prescribed boxes for a dog-gone good bathing in truth before they intertwine with the ongoings of your conscious stream of thought. Then every thought and feeling in your soul will be more and more captured for Christ to reflect the reality of God upon the rest of the things you must do which seem so earth-bound. Even the stuff in the darkness of the room, that is, your sub-conscious, will begin straightening up. And from one degree of glory to another we will go on towards heaven growing into His likeness, with hearts set upon heaven.
-----”But the fruit of the Spirit is…self-control…” also (Gal 5:22.) God is brought more deeply into your life through self-control of not only the things you do and say, but even more, of the things you think and feel, and even more yet, of the ways in which you think and feel the things you think and feel. We serve an immense, unending, kind God whose wisdom and genius are to die for.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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