Spiritual-Mindedness

We ought to tremble before these words. Can you read them and then pass on in a careless way, taking but little thought about yourself to know whether you are carnally or spiritually minded? You say that you cannot give a dictionary definition. We are not asking for Webster’s definition; we want you to give yours from your own experience.

It is in the mind that thoughts are generated. The carnal mind generates carnal thoughts, while the spiritual mind generates spiritual thoughts. Carnal thoughts are thoughts about earthly things, spiritual thoughts are thoughts about heavenly things.

Examine your thoughts. What are their trend? Are they mostly worldward? Do worldly thoughts crowd in on your mind even when in the secret place you kneel to pray? If they do, we say that we deeply sympathize with you, but we must tell you in the greatest kindness but seriousness that you are to blame. It ought not to be that way. You can have it better. Our thoughts can be brought into captivity. Christ, by His grace, wi1l help us to control them. You have been allowing them to dwell on temporal things. You do not have to do it. If you have for a long time been allowing your thoughts to dwell on the things of earth and little grooves have been cut in the brain matter like the grooves on a phonograph record, it will take some effort to change their course, but fear not, it can be done and it must be done. The marginal reading of Colossians 3:2 is, “Set your mind on things above, and not on things on the earth.” That is a plain, comprehensive statement or command. Why do we not all do just what we are here told to do? How can we hope to get on well in the spiritual life and not do what the Bible says? Now let us not make excuses, nor treat this with indifference. There is too much at stake. Death and life are before us. For our mind to dwell on “things on the earth,” it means death; but for it to dwell on “things above” it means life and peace. We can have which we will. We are the framers of our destiny.

“For ye are dead.”* (Colossians 3:3) That is why you set your mind on things above. People who are dead do not set their minds on things to which they are dead. How can your mind be set on earthly things and you be dead to earthly things and your life hid with Christ in God? This is a serious matter and we advise you to take it seriously. We said in our first chapter that we may appear to be sometimes a little severe. If it takes that to get you to thinking and considering, then it is best to be severe. What we fear is that even severity will not get you in earnest about this matter. We fear you will go on letting your mind float around on earthly things nearly all day long.

You are awake from five o’clock in the morning until nine o’clock at night—sixteen hours. Have you given one solid hour out of the sixteen to deep, profound thinking on heavenly things? Now the fact is that a few moments at different times during the day is all that is needed for the proper attending to the things of this life, and to sum up this few moments they would not amount to more than an hour and the other fifteen should be spent in setting your mind on things above.

Maybe you are a preacher and you spend considerable time thinking about the Word of the Lord. That is no more proof that you are spiritually minded than it is for the school boy to think much about mathematics. Each is thinking about the work he is engaged in. A spiritual mind does not spend near so much time thinking about the work of God as it does about God. We make far more effectual preachers by praying our messages down from heaven into our souls than we do by study and sermonizing. We would not break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax, but we exhort you in all sincerity of heart to attend to the matter of setting your mind on things above. If you spend your days here with your mind mostly on things on earth, how can you enjoy heaven if you were to get there? There will be no earthly things there to think about.

Now do not get restless, but in a calm, composed, quiet manner, set to work about heavenly things. Read your Bible more and keep your thoughts on it while you read. While you are about your work think about heaven and the great truths of salvation which God has given us to guide us to heaven. Think about Christ and what it will be to meet Him face to face. Do you find it a difficult thing to do? How strange! You say you love Him with all your heart, but you find it easier to think about the things that pertain to your everyday comforts and conveniences than you do to think about Jesus. We suggest that you begin now and think more about things above. Take time every day to go into some quiet place and turn your thoughts heavenward and think soberly and seriously about the glories and wonders of that beautiful world. If you will attend to this, not in a strained way, but calmly and peacefully, you will soon find it easy to fix your thoughts on God and things above. If you will, a joy and gladness will come into your heart that will make it seem that you have gotten saved again. You will soon get to where, on the moment of awakening in the night or in the morning, your thoughts will soar up to heaven. Your first thought will be on things above, and at the same time you soul will taste a sweetness that is above any sweetness of earth. A fear would come over my soul if my mind gave its first awakening thougths to earthly things. No, no, no; let my mind dwell awhile in heaven before it takes up the duties of the day.

There is a brother who never allows a night to pass by, unless there be an occasional night when his slumbers are unbroken, without rising once or twice, and on his knees has an earnest heart-to-heart talk with God. On awakening in the morning he spends from half an hour to an hour in prayer and holy thought before taking up the duties of the day, and then often throughout the day takes a few moments for thinking on heavenly things.

It is not diffulclt to get into a life like this, and it is heaven on earth. With all the earnestness of soul we exhort you, Christian reader, to get into it, and then go forward to walking closer to God every day, so that some day you will get so close that you will never come back to earth again.