I think, therefore I am
Romans 8:5, “For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.”
“I think, therefore I am.” French philosopher Rene Descartes said this hundreds of years ago. Philosophic ideals have been built on this idea of being because you think, or being what you think. Grandmamma had another way of putting it; she said trash in, trash out. No matter how you put it we are all made up of what we think about. Whatever occupies our mind always controls our actions. The Apostle Paul is reminding us that if we constantly think about things that will pleasure us then eventually we are going to be so concerned with getting what we want that nothing else will matter. Not even our relationship with God.
Let’s look for a moment at what I think is probably one of the best examples of this. Judas Iscariot was one of the twelve disciples that Jesus chose to help spread the message of God. Judas was a Jew, and he belonged to a sect called the Zealots. The Zealots believed that they should use any means necessary to throw off the Roman shackles that bound them, and they expected the Messiah to fulfill this. (I honestly cannot understand how they didn’t recognize Jesus as the Messiah because it’s pretty clear from Old Testament prophecy.) Anyway, Judas recognized that Jesus wasn’t doing what he and the other Zealots believed He should do, so Judas cooked up a scheme to betray Jesus because he had become disheartened. Judas had his idea in his mind of what he thought the Messiah should do. It didn’t really matter to him if his idea matched up with what Scripture said.
A lot of times we get like Judas, we set our minds on the things we want, and we don’t seek and find what God wants for us. We know that God always wants the best for us, but we get our hearts set on something; and that’s our final answer. God has said that we can find Him if we will only search for Him; I believe that also means that we can find His will for our lives if we will only search. We want what we want no matter what.
Let’s look at another example of this from Scripture. King Solomon in the Old Testament was a great man of God. His father King David was called a man after God’s own heart, and when Solomon replaced him as king it only seems natural that he would follow his father’s way, and the beginning of Solomon’s reign was just as you might think. He followed God with his whole heart, and because of his obedience to God; and his love for God’s people the Lord blessed him more than any king, even his father David.
The Lord gave Solomon so much victory and riches that Solomon started to let it go to his head. He ignored the warnings of God, and followed his fleshly desires by marrying women that the Lord had warned about and they turned his heart from full devotion to God. (I Kings 11) Because of his arrogance the kingdom of Israel was divided into two kingdoms that only recently (1948) was joined back together.
Many times, we get in our head what we want; and we don’t think about anything else. We see a great car, we notice a beautiful woman or a handsome man, and we decide on our own, independently from God’s leadership that we’re going to get that no matter what. We get “tunnel vision”, and we only see what we want to have. Whereas, if we would take off our “blinders” we could see more clearly how that one decision we make will affect others and even ourselves in the long run.
Father, I ask that you make me aware of my decisions that they are always in line with Your plan for my life, so that I may always choose the best path; and not just the good. In Jesus’ name. Amen
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