July 13
“For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace…” (Romans 8:6)
We have discussed the importance of renewing our minds in the scriptures in Rebuild Principle 4, RENEW your mind daily in the Word of God. That principle you could say relates to the preemptive work of overcoming temptation by preparing our minds each day, preferably in the mornings, for the battle to come. We do this by filling our minds when they are fresh and rested with the Word of God. The scripture, God’s truth and His message directly to us, is the most potent preventative medicine we have available to us in our fight against sin.
This Resisting Principle 10 is related to the RENEW principle, and in reality it is essentially the same thing, but what is in view with this principle is what we do when sinful thoughts have taken over in our minds, and what to do when they become lodged there, and it is difficult to stop thinking about the things by which we are tempted. In this state, we might not even be interested in God’s Word, and it may seem dull and even distasteful to us. Such is the fleshy mind: it wars against the Spirit and His Word, and will resist any attempts to bring it under submission to the Spirit. It wants to dwell and focus on the lusts and gratification of the flesh, and the last thing it wants is to be reminded of the wrath of God to come and the destruction that results from sin.
The flesh needs darkness and deceit to retain control of us. It needs to fool us into thinking that what it offers is better than what God offers. It wants us to believe that nothing seriously bad will happen to us if we proceed with the sin that tempts us. That is why it will resist so much any intrusion of the Word of God. Try this as an experiment: the next time you are being seriously tempted to do something you know you ought not do, try reading and meditating on scripture. If you do this long enough, you will certainly notice the desires for sin weakening and passing away altogether.
Cravings and evil desires need us to focus on them to continue their hold on us. If we are distracted by other things, those cravings ebb away. The flesh wants us to fixate our minds on the flesh. If we can pry our minds away, even for five or ten minutes, and focus on something entirely different, especially if it is the Word of God, we will notice we have a much clearer head about us, and the temptation that the flesh offers will often seem dull and unappealing. This REPLACE principle, then, has to do with the practice of uprooting and displacing sinful thoughts that have gotten lodged in our minds. And it is as simple as reading scripture and focusing on other things.
Whatever gets into our minds first will tend to repel opposite thoughts from entering, sort of like oil and water. If the Spirit gets His words into us first, then it will be more difficult for fleshly thoughts and temptations to take over. But once in the morning is often not enough, especially with so many temptations pulling at us in today’s society. Reading the scripture morning, noon, afternoon, evening, before we go to bed, all of these are necessary to keep our minds strong. And if we find that we have slipped somewhere along the line and let fleshly thoughts into our minds, having the presence of mind to stop what sinful things we are doing or about to do and read God’s word will have a tremendous effect in restoring our self-control and enabling us to escape any further sin. More mature Christians will be aware of this and practice this discipline of replacing evil thoughts with spiritual thoughts when they are tempted.