Keeping our heart fixed on God.

The enemy loves to get us stuck in our spiritual walk. He knows that he can pull on the strings of our flesh in order to lure us into his schemes. Sometimes he uses hurt or unforgiveness, while other times he can use discontent. His plan is to get us so focused on something that we will no longer give God our attention but will fix all our attention on that ‘thing’ that is troubling us. When we do that, God becomes smaller and smaller and we are actually magnifying ourselves. This means that, instead of denying our flesh, we are actually feeding it. When we dwell on our pain or the things that we lack, what we are saying is that the enemy has the final word and that God is not enough. In order for our thoughts to glorify God, we need to keep what the Bible says about Him at the forefronts of our minds and labor in prayer until we are empowered to live in the authority of the Word.

God never intended for us to get caught up in peripheral aspects of our lives because He wants our focus to be solely centered on Him because He alone is worthy of our all. When we focus on a circumstance or even on someone else’s life more than we should, we are actually giving the enemy an opportunity to get us fixated on that and we are essentially carving an idol for ourselves. The Bible calls us to focus on positive things, not on negative ones. By God’s grace, we should only be allowing our minds to ponder something if it brings edification to us and it centeres our attitudes on godly things. Philippians 4:8-9a (msg) says, Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse.

How easy it is to constantly look away from God and to other things or people in the culture we live in! Everything around us encourages us to promote ourselves, which breeds a strong spirit of arrogance. Sometimes, we might even feel that humility is a thing of the past. I know the struggle, but I also know that we are to fight for humility at any cost. Without it, we simply cannot truly abide in Christ. Yet, we are powerless in this fight without the Spirit of God. He knows that, but as long as we keep our communication with Him honest and never cover up our fleshly inclinations, we will be granted victory over the pull of the flesh and the strong current of the world around us. Don’t open the door of your mind to everyone that knocks!