Colossians 1:21 “And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, 22 yet He has now reconciled you…”
Romans 8:7 “the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so,”
A HOSTILE MIND
There’s something about my mind that I have to recognize is hostile toward God. And I tried to think about what that was and as far as I can understand I would define a hostile mind as a mind that tends to be consumed with thoughts about myself – selfish thoughts. Concerns about myself and not the things of God or His concerns.
I believe Colossians 3:2 is referring to a mind that is opposite of a hostile mind:
‘Set your mind on things above, not on the things that are on earth’
The way that I would translate it is: set my mind on things that God wants, that are God’s desires and God’s ambitions, and not on my own desires, ambitions and my own will – the things that I want.
My mind is always active, and has thousands and thousands of thoughts coming through every day all the time, constantly, and what’s the standard that God wants me to have on how I handle these thoughts?
I think the answer to that is in 2 Corinthians 10:5 where it says:
“We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ”
EVERY THOUGHT CAPTIVE
That is a pretty high calling! To take every thought captive. I think of it like there’s an enemy encamped around a walled city, and the enemy is sending in their soldiers, two at a time, three at a time, one at a time, and every time a soldier gets close to the wall it tries to dig through it but the king of the city inside the wall says ‘go take that enemy soldier captive and throw them in jail’. And every enemy that comes, if you let one of them get by and give him enough time to successfully dig a hole then the rest of the army can easily get through and the whole city will be compromised!
Temptations are what I would equate to those soldiers that are coming at us all the time. Temptations aren’t sin in themselves, unless I don’t take them captive, and just go along with them and let them do whatever they want- ‘That’s not too bad, I’ll just let it through’ – that’s when destruction comes in and sin happens (James 1:15).
So what does that mean to take every thought captive?
WATCH AND PRAY
I was reminded of when the disciples were in Gethsemane and Jesus was there pouring out His heart right before He was taken and He gave a single command to the disciples (it was a temptation for them to follow it because they were tired – the constant temptation was to let the flesh take over and fall asleep and forget about what Jesus was about to go through). The only command He gave them was: watch and pray (Mat 26:41). So I think that’s a word directly for me. To be able to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, that means I must watch and pray.