When Jesus set us free from sin, He made us His own slaves to serve Him, to worship Him, and also to enjoy Him. But this goes much beyond just the general spiritual notions. As I wrap up this series, I want to look at one more absolutely critical aspect of life: our thought life. Our thought life includes not just the things we think about but also the teachings that guide and direct how we think and operate. If we are to be followers of Christ, then our thinking needs to follow Him as well. Paul puts it this way: we are to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ Jesus.
What do we think about? I can safely say that few of you reading this, including yours truly, do not think about what Christ would have us think about on a regular basis, let alone as much as we know we should. I wish it were more, but we have to be honest. None of us, while we live in sin-cursed bodies, will ever get there. But are we going in that direction?
The next book I am going to write is going to be on Proverbs 3:5. It will be a whole book on that one verse and its applications, and it won’t be a little booklet either. What does this verse teach us? That we are to trust in the Lord with all our heart and lean not on our own understanding. We don’t have the information or the thinking skills on our own to process things correctly. We need God and God’s knowledge, and we need to depend upon Him wholly and only. We rely too much on our own experts and own education and we turn out to be outright fools when we do so.
Many people praise me for the wisdom I show through my writing, but if anyone gets anything of value in my writing, it’s not me. The only way I can describe it is the Holy Spirit bearing witness to my spirit and it just flows out. By no means am I claiming any form of divine inspiration, but it’s simply the truth God has plainly revealed through Scripture. It’s not my wisdom or insight but God showing His truth to those who love Him and follow Him. All it takes is child-like faith and submission to God, and He will show you deeper and deeper truths that have always been there. However, many times, my thought life is not on the Lord, and there are times when what I write and what I think about are not healthy. Many times, I feel like a hypocrite because I know to speak such great truths, but my own private life does not match up. Our thought life can bring life, or it can bring death. The only way it brings life is when it is subjected to the will of Christ.
The classic go-to case when dealing with such topics is pornography. Understand that just watching porn or avoiding it is not enough to deal with this. Where most struggle is adultery in the heart – the thought life of undressing another and being engaged in sexual activity with them or watching them engaged with others. We know that this is a sin, a sin of the heart. But why do so many struggle with it? We have to realize that this foe is bigger and stronger than we are. We know this intellectually, but as I wrote about last week, the slave to Christ has Christ’s power available to drive out and keep out. That truth is not a reality to us yet. But when you listen to those who escaped porn, they don’t talk about how they “beat” porn. They talk about how they were delivered, rescued, freed, etc. It was someone else’s power that did it. That someone is Christ. It will be a battle, and we have to get up every time it knocks and exert that power and authority Christ bestows. How do we do that? We take every thought, every idea, every temptation, and every teaching and force it to submit to the will of Christ.
Most people think this is for the bad thoughts, but it is for the good ones, too. EVERY thought is to be taken captive and submitted to the will of Christ – even every teaching and every doctrine. We must put Word of Faith teachings to submission to the will of Christ. We must put Cessationist teaching to the will of Christ. We must put our eschatology (end times) teachings to the will of Christ. We must submit our politics, our science, our history, our teachings of the Gospel, our social media, our emotional reactions – all of it – to the will of Christ. If that means we have to stop, slow down, and be slow to speak, slow to action, and guarding and checking every thought, then we need to do that.
But I can say this: Jesus is not a bad master. Paul even gave us guidelines on how to think. Philippians 4:8 is a great place to start. When we submit our thought life to Christ and when we submit all teachings to Christ, not only will we see true freedom and we will have true life, but we will be able to tear down the strongholds that hold others captive, too. Again, the life of slavery to Christ is a life of power. By being a slave to Christ, we actually get to rule. Our rule is submitted to Christ, but it is in that submission that we get the power. The centurion understood this. He saw Jesus operating with power, and he knew that the only way he could get that power is by being under authority. The same is true for us. When we submit ourselves to be the slave of Christ, we are equipped with the authority of God’s slave, and the position of God’s slave is far higher than any prince or ruler of this earth. When it is all said and done, let us take the position of the slaves of Luke 17:7-10. After doing all we ought, we say, “We are but unworthy slaves. We have only done that which we ought.”
Let us remember our position as Christians. While we are to rule, that rule only comes by serving and taking the position of a slave. We are to take every thought captive to the will of Christ. We are to do things God’s way. We are not to play God and proclaim to be the arbiter of truth. We are to be loyal slaves, those who submit to our Master, who is a good Master, and let Him take care of us. He will do above and beyond what we could ever imagine, we just have to trust Him. He is worth it, and the life of a slave to Christ is worth it. He will never let us down, and He will take us to places and realms we could never imagine otherwise.
This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration. All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved. Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.
0 comments:
Post a Comment