Fill Your Mind With Good Things
READ MATTHEW 22;34-40
MEDITATION: Now begins the week called “HOLY WEEK” which is the practical manifestation of God’s love for us in the sacrifice of his only begotten son, Jesus Christ. The Passion narrative is the most powerful story of Love ever! As a dear friend of mine would put it: “The things one does for love!”
Through the sacrifice of Calvary Jesus has bought us with His own blood. Therefore, we belong to Him. And we must be like Him. Paul says, “Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus” (Phil 2:5). In fact, God’s goal in saving us is to make us like Jesus. Jesus was human like us but He did not sin. He kept impurities away. Like Jesus, we need to keep impurities away from us. To love the Lord our God with all our mind we cannot fill our minds with the words and works of Satan!
If we love the Lord our God with all our mind, then we need to fill our mind with good things. We need to choose our diet of information carefully. We need to discern what is best and fill our mind with that. We need to think about good things. Above all, this means we need to focus our eyes on Jesus and God and grace. The Bible insists that, “You are what you think” (Proverbs 23:7). You see, our thoughts and desires never remain as simply thoughts and desires. They eventually become reality. There comes a time when we live them out, when we act on them, when we become what we think.
Fill your mind with great thoughts and desires and you will be more of the kind of person God wants you to be and created you to be. Fill your mind with great thoughts and desires and you are taking a step in loving the Lord your God with all your mind. Fill your mind with whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy. When the Bible says that we are to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, it means that we are to love God with all that we’ve got. It means total commitment. It means total obedience to God.
A professor of theological ethics opened his class for the semester by reading a letter from a parent to a government official.
The parent complained that his son, who had received a good education, gone to all the right schools, and was headed for a good job as a lawyer, had gotten involved with a weird religious sect. The father continued that the members of this sect controlled his every move, told him whom to date and whom not to date, and had taken all of his money. The parent pleaded with the government official to do something about this strange religious group.
Then the professor asked the students, “Who is this letter describing?”
There was quite a debate, with the class discussing some off the wall group cults. After about 15 minutes of discussion the Professor revealed that the letter was from a third century Roman parent concerned about a group of people called…. Christians.
The greatest Command of loving God with everything you’ve got means that we’ve got to be willing to follow our freely chosen master to whom we give total and complete allegiance, attention, and adoration. If you love the Lord your God with complete devotion, then people see Christ in you.
Agatha Burgess is 87 years old and lives in the small mill town of Buffalo, South Carolina. She gets up every morning at five o’clock and begins cooking, and she has been doing this for over twenty years. She gets up and cooks for the local Meals on Wheels. At 11:00 A.M. volunteers come by her house and take the food she cooks to elderly people who can’t cook for themselves, or for other needy folks.
By noon, another group of people come to Agatha’s house for lunch. Mill workers, judges, truck drivers, anyone who comes at noon gets to fill their plates and go back for seconds. Agatha runs an all you can eat kitchen. For all this, they pay $ 2.75. She knows that’s too much for some of the folks who come by, so if they don’t pay she doesn’t say anything.
A Newspaper reporter was doing a story on this remarkable woman and asked her the obvious question, why? Why do you do this 5 days a week every week? She said “I do this because I love it. I always wanted to be a person that lived by the side of the road, and could be called a friend to man.” She said that she would continue to do this until she died because this is what she lived for, and these people coming everyday mean so much to her.
When Jesus was asked which is the greatest commandment, he didn’t hesitate. “Love God with everything you’ve got.” But then he added something which wasn’t asked. He told the questioner the second greatest commandment was to love God’s children. I think the reason He chose that one is because it’s the best way of loving God himself.
In 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 Paul explained why we treat each other is so important to God. “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple.” In Matthew 25 Jesus said it this way; when you feed the hungry, you feed me. When you house the homeless, you shelter me. When you visit the imprisoned, you visit me. For some strange, inexplicable reason, God identifies so closely with us that our pain becomes his, when we are loved, he is loved. We are his body, he is our soul.
When one elephant in a herd is hurt, other elephants will help the injured animal stay on its feet. They crowd about the injured elephant and provide a shoulder for him to lean on. Can we do less for people?
Maximilian Kolbe was a Nazi prisoner. He heard his fellow prisoners badmouth their jailers. The priest, who would be executed by the Nazis in 1941, urged them to forgive their captors. “Hatred only leads to more of the same. Only love,” he said, “is creative.” Kolbe, now a canonized saint, loved his jailers because of today’s Gospel. He had learned that when you look for good in others, you discover the best in yourself.
Karl Barth wrote volumes on God. Still he tells us his definition of God is summed up in three words: One who loves. Since God is a tremendous lover, should we be less? When you fail to see God in people, you come to see others as a lost cause.
ACTION: This week give time. Give a friend time like you’ve not done in a long while. Share a meal with someone. Perhaps a phone call. Give hope. Hug a child needing affection. Speak praise to a teenager. Forgive an enemy. Use humor to defuse an argument. Smile. Say thank you. A Hindu proverb sums up the above: “The narrow-minded ask, ‘Are these people strangers or members of our tribe?’ But to those in whom love dwells, the whole world is one family.”
PRAYER: From The Book of Common Prayer. Pray slowly and aloud:
O Lord my God, to you and to your service I devote myself, body, soul, and spirit. Fill my memory with the record of your mighty works; Enlighten my understanding with the light of your Holy Spirit; and may all the desires of my heart and will center in what you would have me do. Make me an instrument of your salvation for the people entrusted to my care, and grant that by my life and teaching I may set forth your true and living Word.
Be always with me in carrying out the duties of my faith. In prayer, quicken my devotion; in praises, heighten my love and gratitude; in conversation give me readiness of thought and expression; and grant that, by the clearness and brightness of your holy Word, all the world may be drawn into your blessed kingdom. All this I ask for the sake of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
