19Jul10 What Are the Default Thoughts of Your Mind?

This is another installment in a series that has been adapted from my 11-part CD teaching series on A. W. Tozer’s spiritual classic, The Pursuit of God.

How would you honestly answer this question: When your mind is free to think about anything, what does it think about? The minds of some gravitate to the worries, fears, and concerns of their everyday life. Some minds default back to coveting the lives and possessions of others. And the minds of others drift back to their incessant pursuit of success or significance. But whether your mind is trying to wish something away, or trying to wish something into existence, or just wishing for more of what it already has, our minds and our hearts always return to where their treasure is. That’s why in his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that, “. . . where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Whenever given the chance, your mind and your heart will always follow the treasure-trail to that which is truly loved the most. For either the treasure of your heart is the Creator or it is something in the created order. And treasuring anything other than God is idolatry. You were never meant to worship or serve anything less than God.

My hope for you is that you would focus your mind on the Lord. Whether you’re waiting in a grocery line, or waiting at a traffic signal, or waiting in an emergency room, those moments can be sweeter if you allow your mind and heart to gaze upon the Lover of your soul. As Augustine says, “You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”

Tozer cautions,

“I do not want to leave the impression that the ordinary means of grace have no value. The most assuredly have. Private prayer should be practiced by every Christian. Long periods of Bible meditation will purify our gaze and direct it; church attendance will enlarge our outlook and increase our love for others. Service and work and activity – all are good and should be engaged in by every Christian. But at the bottom of all these things, giving meaning to them, will be the inward habit of beholding God. A new set of eyes (so to speak) will develop within us enabling us to be looking at God while our outward eyes are seeing the scenes of this passing world.”