Take a look, drink in what we just read together from Colossians 3: 1-4.

“Set your hearts on what is in heaven…Set your minds on things above.”

Make up your minds to focus on Christ, on heavenly things, on good things. Don’t focus on what’s all around you, the values and ideas and goals of the earth. Make up your minds to focus on Christ, on the right things, on heavenly things.

Do you believe that to be true?

Does it work? Does it work to make up your mind to do the right thing?

I have to admit, I had a hard time with this message at first, because I wasn’t sure I believed this to be entirely true.

I know, I know; it’s the bible, it is true. But in my own experience, and as I’ve walked through hard things with other people, I realize that I’ve become less and less convinced that changing our mind is the only thing necessary to change our behavior.

I even said something like this a few weeks ago. I believe with all my heart that exercise and right eating would make me healthier and feel better, but that doesn’t mean I always do it.

I meet with people fairly regularly who say things like, “I want to have a good relationship with my kids, but I still end up blowing up at them when they do things that bug me.”

“I want to follow Jesus, but I constantly find myself focusing on other things.”

“I want to stop abusing alcohol, but it seems to have a power over me that will power can’t control.”

“I want to have a right perspective about sexuality, but I can’t stop seeking out pornography.”

All of those experiences cause me to look at passages like Colossians 3 and say, “Yes, but…”

I’ve said to myself and others, “Make up your mind to make a different choice”-but that hasn’t completely changed the behavior.

We’re complex people. We’re a complex mix of thoughts, feelings, beliefs, images, values…as well as spirituality, our connection with God who is beyond what we can see.

Sometimes it’s overwhelming to try and sort it all out. We want a simple or a quick fix, and then when we try the quick fix and it doesn’t work, we find ourselves giving up.

The truth is, what Paul writes here in Colossians 3 and throughout the book of Colossians recognizes the complexity of people in amazing ways. If we simplify this down, and think that Paul is just saying to change our minds and everything will be ok, we’ll find ourselves failing.

We’ll find ourselves wanting to give up on following Jesus because it “doesn’t work”, when the reality is, we haven’t really embraced the fullness of what Paul has to say or what following Jesus means.

Remember our theme verse for this series?

Romans 12:1 “Offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship.”

We’re trying, together, to figure out how to offer every part of our complex lives to God. How can we sacrifice, how can we offer ourselves in every way to God, as our spiritual act of worship?

Today’s focus is again on offering our minds to God, but with a different emphasis than last week. What role do our minds play in our actions? How do our thoughts affect the way we feel and live? How does offering our mind to God change what we pursue, the goals we have for our lives?

To get a handle on that means getting a handle on what Paul is saying in Colossians.

Paul evidently feels that a key to our lives with God is to offer our minds. Paul wants the Colossians, and us, to have our minds guide our lives, to have our minds pursue what God wants, and have that make a difference in how we act, think, and feel.

Back at the beginning of the letter to the Colossians, Paul begins this theme as he prays for the people he’s writing to. In chapter 1 verse 9, he says:

We have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

We offer God our minds, and God fills us with knowledge of what God thinks is good and right. God fills us with wisdom. Why does Paul pray for this wisdom and knowledge?

In order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way.

Paul has a very deep understanding of the complexity of what it means to be human.

He’s glad that they’ve heard about the good news of forgiveness through Jesus Christ. He prays for their knowledge and wisdom to grow, so that their lives will be lived differently.

He’s got a great grasp on the spiritual, thinking, and action sides of our lives. They all interrelate, and for Paul, our minds play a key role.

But by no means is life with God just about thinking, just about belief, just about will power. He moves quickly to who Jesus Christ is and what Jesus has done for us. Jesus is the creator of everything, the one who still holds all creation together. Jesus is the fullness of God himself in a human body, and he lived and died in a way that reconciled, that re-connected a messed up world and all its people with God.

Colossians 1:22:

But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish, and free from accusation.

Paul goes even farther.

When we offer ourselves to Jesus, we join him in death. We ARE dead, dead and guilty in our way of life that is completely against God. We join Jesus in dying to that old way of living apart from God, and we join Jesus in a new life, a different life, a changed life!

It’s more than just changing our minds. Something happens spiritually, outside of the realm of ideas and what we see and touch. We join Jesus in death and join Jesus in a new kind of life!

This, Paul says, is the good news! This is the hope we have! More than will power, more than thoughts, this is the new way of living that God offers us through identifying with Jesus.

It’s a reality we experience when we pray and say to Jesus: “I have gone my own way with my life; forgive me, and please be in charge from this point forward.”

We live in that reality, but our minds and our thinking and our actions don’t immediately follow.

And that’s where much of Paul’s teaching about our minds comes into play.

Since you’ve been raised to a new life with Jesus, why do you keep acting like the world does? Why do you keep believing and pursuing the same things everybody else does? It’s time to think differently than those around us, and pursue the things that God thinks are right.

It’s fascinating to look at Colossians and see the lists Paul gives to describe the world’s way of thinking. Later in chapter 3 are what I think of as the obvious ones. The world’s way of thinking involves sexual immorality and lust and greed and evil desires. Those must be put to death.

But the end of chapter 2 has another list, one that is not that obvious, but is quite challenging!

Listen, beginning in chapter 2 verse 20 [READ 2:20-23]

Evidently, there were people, probably Jews, telling the Colossians that the REAL way to live for God was rules and regulations and will power. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. Stay away from anything and everything that might involve passion or temptation.

But Paul says those lists, those rules, that will power, “lacks any value in restraining sensual indulgence.” Hmmmm….

Paul saw my objection to chapter 3’s message before he even wrote chapter 3.

Paul isn’t saying, “Just change your mind about behavior. Just have will power, and you’ll stop abusing alcohol, you’ll stop your misuse of sexuality, you’ll stop yelling at your kids.”

No. Those kinds of lists of rules and regulations “lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.”

Paul must, then, mean something more than just will power, more than just making rules for ourselves to keep us out of mischief.

Would you join me in reading Colossians 3: 1-4 again from your worship folder? [READ]

We’re supposed to join Christ.

Completely. Wholly. All of who we are.

Spiritually, in that type of experience and reality that is beyond what we can see and touch and feel, we offer ourselves to God and identify with Jesus.

We let God change our minds, change our thinking and thought patterns, so that we are pursuing what is important to God, and not to us.

Our minds are a tool, an ally, something which allows us to not be ruled by our feelings and the feelings and images we see in the world around us.

This is key, and it goes against a lot of what underlies the world we live in.

Feelings have taken a dominant place in our world. The ultimate goal is freedom for us to pursue what makes us feel alive.

Because of that, many of us (myself included) find it hard to believe that our thoughts can exhibit control over our feelings. It immediately brings to mind all the abuses of Victorianism, of denying and repressing our feelings.

But…and this is the key…Paul is asking us to repress or deny our feelings. He isn’t asking us to become monks who go off into the desert and never feel anything, who deny ourselves any pleasure from the world.

No, that “lacks any value in restraining sensual indulgence.”

Paul is reminding us that when our mind is rightly focused on God, when it is submitted to Jesus, it can bring proper guidance to our feelings and our actions.

Dallas Willard, in Renovation of the Heart, develops this theme much better than I ever could. I’ll be honest: I really wrestled with what he was saying. I wasn’t sure (and still am not completely sure) I agree with his emphasis on reason and logic.

But looking at Colossians, it’s clear that Paul has something to say to you and me. We don’t become what God wants by ignoring the power of our minds, by ignoring what we focus on. And we don’t become what God wants by making lists of rules and repressing our feelings and saying no to everything.

We become what God wants by spiritually connecting with Jesus, and by setting our minds on heavenly things, not earthly things.

Here’s Willard’s way of putting it:

“Self-control means that you do what you DON’T want to do when that is needed and do NOT do what you want to do when that is needed…The mongoose of a disciplined mind and will under God and good is the only match for the cobra of feeling.”

The mind and the will is where we make decisions.

So today, as we enter a time of open worship, we want to offer an opportunity to offer our minds to God by giving a chance to make a decision. In what way will you choose, decide, to set your mind on things above?

Have you made that initial decision to accept God’s forgiveness through Jesus and to invite Jesus to guide the rest of your life? If you haven’t, a simple prayer right now can join you with Christ.

Are your feelings…are pleasures or emotions ruling your decisions right now? Is your “willpower” constantly being defeated by feelings and desires which you can’t seem to control? The first step toward a disciplined mind under God is to decide, choose, and ask God to help change what you are pursuing. Are their specific areas you need to choose to offer God today?

Community is an important part of the journey with God. It may be that to experience something different than you have before, you need help. You need a community of people to join you in your journey.

That’s what we want to be about. We can’t all be that for each other, but perhaps you’d like to use the time of open worship to make a public expression of your desire for our community’s help in offering your mind to God.

To me, that’s what’s really the helpful part of what has been called an altar call.

It’s acknowledging that we need each other in our journey to follow God and offer our minds to him.

If you want help today as you make that first step to follow Jesus…if you want help today as you make a decision about a specific area of your life that needs God’s control, we want to give you two opportunities for that.

Through these doors here is our prayer room, with people who would love to pray with you and for you. You’re welcome to go join them and ask for their help as you make this decision today.

Or, you can feel free to come forward to the front of the church to pray. Some of our elders and pastors are willing to pray with you and help you find the community you need, the group you need to move forward.

But something else may happen, too. A friend or someone you know here may come and pray with you, too, if you take that step of inviting the community’s help with your decision. I want to encourage each of us to pay attention to God’s prompting to join someone else in prayer, to be their friend and supporter and brother or sister in Christ.

In this time of open worship, let’s offer our minds to God.

Consider what decisions God might be inviting you to make today. Consider whether you need to publicly invite the community’s help in living for Jesus.