Do you have "the Mind of Christ?"

I have a lot of "favorite" books. However one that stands out among the rest and which I would have to say has impacted my life more greatly than any other book (other than the Bible) is "My Utmost for His Highest" by Oswald Chambers. Chambers was brilliant intellectually...but more important he was brilliant as a diamond is brilliant, spiritually. I think he had a clearer understanding of what it REALLY means to be a Christian than anyone else I have encountered.

Today, I was reading the passage earmarked for this date (I must have worked my way through this devotional five or six times, and each time it is brand new)...and a thought really struck me powerfully that I wanted to share with you. The passage he was discussing was 2 Cor. 10:5, the second part of the verse. It goes like this: "Taking captive every thought and bringing it to the obedience of Christ."

Now, I've often heard that verse taken to mean that we are to "control, by God's power, our thoughts, especially random, distracting or disobedient ones"...However, as is often the case with Chambers, he had a completely different take on it. Based on the way the Moffat Bible translated this verse (that was a Bible paraphrase popular at the time of O.C.), Chambers took this verse to mean something more like this: "Discipline every project and bring it to captivity to Christ's obedience."

He said that Christ did nothing of his own will; he ONLY submitted to the will of the Father. This was supreme discipline. And all that he did was, likewise, disciplined. Christ was disciplined to obedience. And we too, because we are to "have the mind of Christ," need to learn to think like Jesus, ACT like Jesus, and to submit like Jesus. This is what leads to the "renewing of our minds."

What would this mean if it were to be carried out practically in our lives? It would mean that we would undertake NO project or activity, unless we knew it to be the will of the Father. And we would not even think a thought that was not aligned with the mind of Christ and his attitudes in this regard. Now obviously, that is an impossibly high and unobtainable feat....however that is to be our goal!!

To me, this was a novel thought: that I am supposed to want to think like Jesus did and have the same views of things and the same desire to please God that he did.... Now, I knew it was not right to harbor outright SINFUL thoughts...but I never quite thought about what "having the mind of Christ" really meant! And it is clear, from all the verses that I've quoted here, that this is precisely what God desires of us to become. We are to be as obedient to God, even in our thoughts, as Jesus was.

Wow. Do you find this as amazing as I do?? When I think about my mind...the way it works, it's impulses, it's LACK of discipline,...and then I think of what is would be like to be TRULY Christlike, not only in how I act, but in how I THINK....well, it seems impossible, doesn't it??
But thanks be to God, we don't attempt this alone!

Here are the two verses in 2 Corinthians 10 I would like to end with in this regard:

4 for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely
powerful for the destruction of fortresses.

5 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,

We have weapons to accomplish this that are not of this world! They are divinely powerful....