When I started writing this post, I was headed in a very different direction with the topic but the Spirit began to work out something else through my fingers. If this post isn't just for my own heart to contemplate, then I pray it will reach your heart too. While sitting in a new class this past week, a highly esteemed professor of mine challenged her students. She said that in order to become effective communicators and story tellers, a person must step back, become totally engaged in the moment, and force yourself to go beyond any temptation to dull your senses. The constant urge in our culture is to become totally enwrapped in our own mind and thoughts, placing our agenda ahead of your physical present circumstance. People begin to miss out on living life in the here and now because they are so consumed with their invidual preoccupations, needless to say the addictive virtual relationships happening through technology. The temptation to constantly be somewhere else mentally rather than where you are physically is almost never denied. No wonder why the creative people are so applauded. They simply notice things and seek to express them in the best way they know how, a rare aspiration in our world today it seems. Now, I am in no way above this critique on our culture. However, I do believe the Spirit is convicting my behavior and is pealing back a layer of blindness that I did not even know existed (sanctification often hurts). After realizing my fault, I have to put into practice a verse I memorized a long time ago, "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" (Colossians 3:1, 2 NIV). As believers, there is a higher standard that Christ has called us to. Not only by disconnecting myself from the physical world with my iPhone, email, texting, planning, ect. But I am closing off the space to allow God to use my actual physical capacity due to my mental capacity being fixated upon my own agenda. Since I am raised with Christ, my heart and mind should not be on my agenda, my agenda was put to grave on the cross. I have wrestled a lot with the practical execution of this verse while being a student in a communications program. Everything is about communicating in this world. In fact, there is one relationship that without communication can change your eternal destiny. Therefore, if my agenda is gone, I must constantly be in communication with Christ and His agenda; meaning that whatever space I have in this life isn't mine to claim anyways, it was his all along. So, what does your mind dwell on? What is your mental state? Is it on your agenda, your plans, distracted in lala land, or is it on the things of The Lord? I am convinced that if you too have been raised with Christ that these are questions that should swarm your heart and mind, as they are doing so in mine. Praise Christ for his grace.
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March 2018
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