August 19
“For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” (Romans 8:6-8)
Again I will offer my way of thinking of the problem of why we sin and what we can do to help us overcome sin. In my mind I am picturing a glider or a bird like an albatross that rides the air currents long distances. We are the pilots of the gliders, or the birds, if you prefer. Another illustration that might connect even better with some is a hot air balloon with us in the gondola.
As we set our minds on the things above (Colossians 3:1-4), we input into our spiritual and mental “reservoirs” spiritual truths that lift us up. In our illustrations, it is like wind currents that carry the gliders or birds upwards, or it is like filling the balloon with fresh, hot air. Our hearts then feed off of what is in the reservoir and begin to manifest good and pure thoughts, thoughts of God and appreciation for Him. Our hearts begin to desire Him and produce good intentions and love. We begin to move upwards. This in turn, if we let it, prompts our minds to focus more on good and pure things because in our spirits we desire them more; if we then make the conscious decision and put forth the effort to study our Bibles and input more truth and good and pure thoughts into our spiritual reservoirs, so to speak, our hearts are nourished with more good things.
This cycle of the mind consciously inputting truth and good and pure things into our beings and our hearts feeding on that truth and producing good thoughts, good intentions, good emotions, and eventually good deeds, repeated over and over again, produces an upward movement and momentum. We begin to fly, and then soar! We begin to have fellowship with God. We are getting closer and closer to Him (imagine in our illustration that the higher up we go, the closer and more intimate we get to God, and the lower we are, the further away from Him we are).
Now contrast that with the other cycle. When we set our mind on the flesh, when we view pornography or immorality on the screen, when we allow our minds to think and dwell on lustful thoughts, when we participate in any immoral acts or discuss immoral activities with others, these types of things result in a broken wing, a tail spin down, a tear in our balloon. We begin to spiral downward. That negative input sets our hearts on the flesh and so we begin to desire fleshly things more. Less and less do we expose our minds to spiritual truths, and less and less do we think spiritual thoughts. Our hearts begin to develop a taste for evil, and we begin to desire it, even crave it, and so our minds plan how to get more of it, and before we know it, we have hit the rocks below and are no longer even airborne.
I realize this illustration may not be fully theologically correct, but I think it may be helpful to illustrate that we have to consciously feed our souls with truth and pure inputs of various kinds, and we must eliminate and completely close the door to evil inputs, which create punctures and wing failures. A little puncture can easily tear and develop into a much bigger hole or fracture. We have to repent of and patch all holes where evil is getting in if we want to soar and make progress. This is not just a single time practice but a series of habits and even a lifestyle of buffeting our bodies and making them our slaves that we must learn and master, especially when it comes to these difficult and entangling sins of pornography and lust.