Hey, ya’ll. Hope your semesters are all getting off to a great start and your stuffing your heads full of useful knowledge and your hearts are being pulled towards Christ. In my struggle against sin I seem to find myself continuing coming up against a brick wall and after a while (and some input from guys like MSJ, Willis and guys at BS) I began to realize something. My mental approach to battling sin is all wrong. Reread that last sentence and you’ll see my faulty mindset coming out. I view it as my fight against sin instead of my fight for righteousness. You see if I fight against sin then my mindset all day is this: “Oh, don’t do that”, “Yikes, can’t say that”, “gosh, here comes that guy again I better not think this about him” and so on and so forth it goes. Simply put my focus is on not doing something, which means that I think about the thing I don’t want to do all day long. If my struggle is sexual sin, then I think about sexual sin all day. If my struggle is swearing, then I’m thinking about swearing all day. If my struggle is being harsh and critical of others then I’m thinking about that all day. Rather than viewing myself as fighting against sin, I want to train my mind and heart to fight for righteousness. Rather than thinking about not sinning, I want my mind and heart to dwell on images of perfect righteousness and peace. Then as my mind and heart is transformed by dwelling on those things that please God the desire and thought of sin will lessen (MSJ calls this displacement). Sin will not disappear but when sin comes it’s inherent ugliness will be seen clearly for beauty reveals all thing hideous, light reveals darkness and righteousness shows the true nature of sin. Think about it, none of us were taught to memorize the “fruits of the flesh” in Galatians 5, we were taught to memorize the fruit of the spirit. May the mind of Christ of our Savior fill us and drive out.

David

P.S. the 2 Cor reading for today was awesome. check it out (and these other verses are ok too…Gal 5:26-27; Phil 4:8).