Your Gathered Power
Deeply unloving or habitually ungodly behavior, addictions that may be ravaging your life and someone else's life do not just happen out of nowhere.
Season 6, Episode 9 · Your Gathered Power
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The story behind the idea
That slight change in terminology brings it home for us, at least for the first half of today's episode, and it is simply this. Deeply unloving or habitually ungodly behavior, addictions that may be ravaging your life and someone else's life do not just happen out of nowhere. Instead, they are the result of a long and steady gathering of power that occurs inside of a man.
What stands out
I choose to put my mind on people or aspects of people or things or angle on things that just don't meet the criteria of the purity that God has assigned. That becomes the data, the input that I allow into my mind or through my eyes, as Jesus talks about in Matthew 6. From those things I am thinking about or looking at comes feelings.
Why it matters
I thought, who are people in my life that I disagree with, that I really don't understand or appreciate the way that they behave? It's just easier to categorize them as a certain thing or in a certain way and just put that in my mind. From there, every Facebook post, every email, every bit of tone, if they're a preacher and some sermon they present is continuing to feed that in me, which isn't just data anymore.
A faithful way forward
To me, and to turn this towards positive usage, I get to decide what I want to think about. Romans 8 talks about setting your mind on things of the spirit or things of the flesh, of everything in your life that you can control. I would argue the number one thing is in any given moment what or who you choose to have as the object in your mind. Then you have to feed it, which involves external things that become inputs.
Put it into practice
For some time now, we've been talking about grace to faith to life. You start by learning about God, by reading about him and thinking about him and observing his revealed glory and becoming overwhelmed in your mind by his mercy and his love.
Take the idea with you.
- 01What idea from this study most needs my attention right now?
- 02Where does this challenge the way I am currently thinking or living?
- 03What is one faithful step I can take this week?
Prefer listening?
The original episode player is available near the top of this article, so you can listen without leaving the page.