Set Your Mind

Yesterday’s post encouraged you to meditate on Colossians 3.

There is a decision to be made in living the Christian life – a decision to “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” (3:2); a decision to “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” (3:5)

This principle of making a firm decision is a step in putting to death the earthly in you (Colossians 3:5), a firm decision of putting off the old man (Ephesians 4:22).

But a once-made decision is not the end of it.

Then there is the carrying out of the decision as best as able in the day to day. We will slip and fall but we get back up (Proverbs 24:16) and keep working out our salvation in Him (Philippians 2:12).

I have gleaned many lessons about the Christian life through the writings of Lilias Trotter and her book Parables Of The Cross. (I highly recommend this book – it’s available free from https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22189 or for purchase through Amazon and other book vendors.)

She draws many correlations of how Christians grow through the natural world of plant life:

The first hour that the sap begins to withdraw, and the leaf-stalk begins to silt up, the leafs fate is sealed: there is never a moment’s reversal of the decision. Each day that follows is a steady carrying out of the plant’s purpose: “this old leaf shall die, and the new leaf shall live.”

So with your soul. Come to the decision once for all: “every known sin shall go-if there is a deliverance to be had, I will have it.”

Put the Cross of Christ, in its mysterious delivering power, irrevocably between you and sinning, and hold on there. That is your part, and you must do it.

There is no further progress possible to you, till you make up your mind to part company with every sin in which you know you are indulging-every sin of thought, word, or deed, every link with the world, the flesh, or the devil, everything on which the shadow of a question falls, as God’s light shines in: to part company, not by a series of gradual struggles, but by an honest act of renouncing, maintained by faith and obedience.

And as you make the decision up to your present knowledge, you must determine that this is henceforth your attitude towards all that is “not of the Father,” as His growing light shall reveal it.

I encourage you this week to continue meditating on Colossians 3 and asking God to help you grow in His wisdom and grace. Little by little, line upon line, in the journey of life growth happens. (Isaiah 28:10 For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little.” )