Reset Your Mind

Living in a world of superficiality, it is quite easy to look at God's Word as something we do not necessarily need to pursue in a deeper way. We have been guilty, as a body, of not taking change very much to heart. And in doing so, it seemed as if we could get things done “with the help of God” or just by being forgiven for the guilt we felt deep down in our souls. But really, what does it matter? A quick prayer of forgiveness, and we are good, right? By slipping into superficiality, we fail to see the reality of our fallen state.

We don’t pray, or offer only short prayers, and if we do pray long prayers, we expect God to move right away on our behalf. Usually, we don’t pray at home; we prefer to pray in church corporately or on Facebook (where everyone can applaud or like us). We glorify our self-made solutions and call it “God,” even when deep in our hearts we know that something is not right. Looking back at our lives, we still see a trail of failure and bad habits we just can’t get rid of, but we call it “the grace of God” on our lives, while in fact, it is dishonoring God as ambassadors of His Kingdom. We curse people (God’s people), dishonor leaders and leadership, gossip about fellow churches, and condemn them. We still refuse to forgive but smile when we encounter our fellow believers, while in our hearts, we despise them or at least keep them at a distance.

It started with not realizing that living for Christ is a daily death experience. Sacrifices were brought daily in the temple, and we have to come to that place, willing to die to our own ideas, mindsets, and paradigms daily. Otherwise, we will not be able to be led by the Spirit, as we so often claim, but all too often for the wrong reasons. We don’t want other believers to think we are not spiritual (enough), so we try to overrule their arguments with answers like “Yes, but the Lord told me,” “Do you think I cannot hear from God?” or “I just do as God told me.” Such terrible remarks, made without blinking an eye, and the worst thing is that we truly believe them ourselves. Anger, hate, strife, jealousy, bitterness, hard-heartedness, unbelief, stubbornness, pride, lust, envy, unforgiveness, slander, conspiring, crime, backstabbing, dishonesty, lying, cheating, disloyalty—these are all hidden mindsets with hidden agendas never exposed to death.