What Are You Thinking?
Colossians 3:1-4
April 26, 2020
What we think is important.
I don’t mean that our opinions about various topics are important — they may or may not be important — but that what we are thinking about in any given moment is important. The millions of thoughts that travel around our six-inch diameter gray matter every day do matter. Those thoughts form our desires and they inform our decisions and guide our actions. It might be true that “you are what you eat” physically, but it’s even more true that we are what we think. How we live is the product of how we think. Our actions are the result of our thoughts. What we think is important. In his book, God’s Battle Plan for the Mind, David Saxton says,
“Perhaps the best advice I could offer someone who desires to become a stable, godly person of meditation is this: turn off the television and fight the temptation to be an entertainment-dominated person. The wholesale surrender of the mind to the world’s programs and amusements led R. Kent Hughes to bemoan, ‘This cosmic potential of the believer’s mind introduces the great scandal of today’s church: Christians without Christian minds, Christians who do not think Christianly.” [134]
This morning I want to ask the question, “What are you thinking?” That’s a good question in general, but it’s a great question for this season of Covid-19 — what are you thinking about potential illness and death, and job change or loss, and financial pressures, and economic downturns, and relational struggles? What are you thinking about your life circumstances in Covid-19?
This message relates to and builds on last Sunday’s sermon from Proverbs 1:7. Last week I said that for the believer, to fear Yahweh is to worship Him by delighting in Him and obeying Him. We want His fellowship and we want to serve Him. Fear of Yahweh is personal. It is worshipful. It is humble. And it is servant-hearted.
How can we cultivate hearts that fear the Lord in a way that honors Him? Colossians 3, without using the word “fear,” informs us how we can honor, revere, and delight in the Lord. It begins where all sanctification begins — with a renewed mind, thinking and meditating on the provisions of God. I summarize the opening verses of Colossians 3:1-4 this way:
Preoccupation with Christ and His provision for us will transform our perspective on life.
Let’s get to the meaning of these verses by asking three questions:
1. What Do You Want? (v. 1)
- God provided for you in the past
- Align your desires with God’s provision
2. What Are You Thinking? (vv. 2-3)
- God is providing for you in the present
- Align your thoughts with God’s provision
3. Where Are You Going? (v. 4)
- God will provide for you in the future
- Align your life to God’s provision
Download the rest of this sermon on Colossians 3:1-4.
The audio will be posted on the GBC website by tomorrow.
Words of Grace 