Mental Discipline

Discipline 101

Colossians 3:1-17

I would like to begin today a short series of messages on "discipline." Discipline is a word used for bringing order to a group of people like a military troop. And it describes the order that God wants to bring into our lives and bodies through practice and exercise. Discipline is the repeating of an activity or exercise or thought for the purpose of making it a habit in our lives. God has given all humans great abilities, great talents, great potential, and He has commissioned us as stewards (as we learned last week), with the responsibility to guard, develop, and maintain the treasures God has graced us with. Discipline enables us to choose between the two types of freedom, the false, in which one is free to do what he likes, and the true, where one is free to do what he ought (from A. J. Cronin, RD, 1956, 55). Without discipline, it is much more difficult to choose true freedom.

I want to talk today about mental discipline — developing habits that will enable you to impose order on your mind. How do we discipline our minds? How do we control our thoughts? I’m sure you have noticed that your mind can go anywhere, at any time. And sometimes it is like a runaway train — out of control.

What can we do to build habits so that our minds are orderly? The picture I want to describe this morning is of a garden. Your mind is like a garden. And we develop mental discipline in much the same way that we develop a garden. Let me focus on three activities today.

It involves first of all —

I. Weeding (3:5-11)

Colossians 3:5 Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, 7 in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them. 8 But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, 10 and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him, 11 where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.

There are two major commands here (verses 5 and 8) that summarize the weeding process. We are to "put to death" certain things in verse 5 and "put off" certain things in verse 8. These commands are not based on our strength and ability but on the work that Jesus Christ has accomplished in our lives. We see this in verses 9-11. We have "put off" the old man and "put on" the new man because of the work of Christ who died for us. When you trusted Christ as your Savior, He separated you from bondage to the old man. You came to Christ as one who was in sin, under the power of these habits of sin, and because of that, out of control. And you found to your surprise that Christ not only forgave your sin, but disconnected the power of the sin nature in your life, so that you could now live the right way, the way everyone wants to live but can’t.

Christ is saying in this passage, "I have broken the power of sin in your life; I now want you to take control of your mind and life. Your first responsibility is to get the weeds out of your mental garden. You do this by killing them and pulling them out."

Elisabeth Elliot said, "Because God is my Master, I am able to master myself. But I cannot be master of myself unless I have a Master" (Confident Living, 6/89, 28). You have the power through the Holy Spirit to kill certain thoughts that lurk in your mind, even sometimes play in your mind, even sometimes take over in your mind — mental weeds.

Let me talk about WEEDS for a minute. Have you ever meditated on weeds? What are they like?

1. You don’t need to buy weed seeds. I couldn’t even find weed seeds when I looked. Why not? No one is selling them. Interesting. You don’t need to plant seeds to have weeds. They grow unattended! They take care of themselves; they come up by themselves. There are some things that you WANT to grow because they are beneficial, and they seem to be more difficult to grow. There are other things that you DON’T want to grow, the invasive, noxious, poisonous stuff. And that stuff seems to grow without any help. 2. You don’t need to give weeds space. They will make their own space. In fact they will make their own space in the very place where you want something good to grow.

3. You don’t have to help weeds get stronger. Do nothing and they will take over. It seems that weeds are often the stronger plant, and they will tend to grow up around the good plant and take over and choke it. That’s why you have to keep weeding your garden.

The same process occurs in your mind. You don’t need to invite weeds to enter your mind; they come uninvited. You don’t need to give them space in your mind; they will create space. And you don’t have to nurture them by thinking about them; they will make you think about them. They come in like pop-up spam on your computer — just popping up all over. And if you let weeds in your mind keep growing, they will TAKE OVER your mental hard drive and all your storage space. Increasingly, you will think on the weed issues; they will control your time and thoughts with no input from you. And you will have to fight with them, and fight with them again and again for victory.

Mental discipline involves pulling weeds. Notice how Paul states it in Colossians 3:5-11:

- "put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry." Five types of weeds listed here. These are big powerful weeds. When these babies get into your mental garden they will take over, they will push out everything else that may be growing there. The command is to kill these things; these thoughts. Put them to death, absolutely ruthlessly, kill them, with no kindness, with no mercy. You do not want these things to ever again appear in your mind; You don’t want them to enter; you don’t want them to engage your thoughts, period.

What are these weeds?

- fornication -

- uncleanness -

- passion -

- evil desire -

- covetousness, which is idolatry -

Fornication is sexual impurity. It involves thinking about the opposite sex in the wrong way; it involves pictures, it involves day dreaming of sexual encounters, it involves illicit sex talk. This is actually the Greek word from which we get our word "pornography." When you allow that kind of stuff into your mind it will take over. And it will lead you down a road that you do not want to go. As Proverbs 7 says, "her house is the way to Hell, descending into the chambers of death" (27).

Uncleanness is a broader word that includes not only illicit sex but every form of unclean thinking or talking.

The next two words are similar, but they appear together for a reason. Passion, the first word is connected more to our affections, to the things that we love, and are attracted to. It’s an attraction that is so strong that I have to have it. It becomes all that I think about, and I develop this passion to have it. Evil desire is the word "longing" of any kind of thing that one should not have. It could be wanting a car, or a person, or a job, or an experience, or a video game. It’s saying to yourself, "I will not be happy until I get that, or that person, or have that experience."

Covetousness is simply a desire for things. It is dissatisfaction with what I now possess, and the desire for more. It is actually a superstitious notion, that instinctively equates money with happiness, and therefore thinks that when it gets more money (things) it will be more happy. We talked about this last week. In reality, covetousness is idolatry, placing something above God, thinking that something is more important for your well being than God is. It leads to spending more time thinking about and worshiping a thing rather than God. God gets replaced by a possession.

Notice the list of five weeds we have here. They focus on your desires, your affections, your wants, your dreams, your hopes. And they warn us that if these kinds of desires and affections are in our lives they are going to choke our relationship with God. We live in a culture that preaches the opposite of Colossians three. It preaches that these base desires and dreams give one life. Beware!

Do you have any of these WEEDS in your mind? Do you yield to any of these thoughts and let them hang around? Are they delicious to you? Do you sort of think that they will supply you with an exciting life? Have you noticed how the thoughts grow on you? After awhile they are able to come into your mind with no effort on your part, they are just THERE? You may be quietly reading your Bible, and all of a sudden these weeds charge in and take over your thinking and you can’t concentrate on what you are reading. What’s happened? They are gathering strength; they are growing in power. And they will continue to grow and develop and take over not only your mind, but soon your will and your actions, and you will be doing some of the things you never thought you would ever do.

God says KILL THEM. Go to battle against these sinful desires. You cannot allow them to grow. You cannot allow them to remain in your mind. They have to be terminated, or you will live in defeat and sin and discouragement.

These are the big five: sexual desire, uncleanness, passion, evil desire of any kind, and covetousness. But there are five more destructive weeds, and then there’s another horrible weed that stands by itself. Verse 8 says, put off all these:

- anger -- a settled feeling of anger and hatred. This seems to be a reaction to the failure of fulfilling my previous sinful desires and dreams. When I don’t get what I have to have, I react.

- wrath -- an outburst of anger, where you pop a fuse and blow up

- malice -- a feeling of anger or hate where you actually want to hurt someone

- blasphemy -- speaking evil, speaking someone down, falsely accusing someone, slander, gossip

- filthy language out of your mouth -- filthy or foul mouthed speech.

- Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds. The command is to stop lying to one another (9). The assumption is that the readers were in the habit. Get rid of false communication. Get rid of the desire to say anything that is not absolutely true and accurate. We put all that stuff away when Christ entered our lives. We need to make sure that we keep it away.

We have a patch of Bamboo in the church yard. I like bamboo "trees." They seem to be so strong and tall and so close together that they look almost majestic. But I understand that some of you have a different attitude toward the plant because you have some of it in your backyard, coming under the fence from your neighbor’s yard.

Now suppose that I have in my thinking processes something comparable to a growing bamboo patch. And let’s say that the bamboo represents anger or malice. I have allowed anger to take over my mind so many times that it is well established, with a patch of trees like our bamboo patch outside. How do I get rid of that anger? It says, "put to death." That’s kind of hard to do because of all of that nice bamboo. I find bamboo to be comfortable; I have enjoyed it for years and it has always been fun. But God says, "put it off, kill it."

So I go in there with a machete and cut all the bamboo down to the very ground. I whack it right off so that there is almost nothing above the ground. "There," I say, "finally I have put to death my anger; I’ve chopped it off at the ground; I’ll never see it again." I have cut it so low that I can walk through the bamboo patch smoothly, I don’t stumble over any stumps. It has disappeared! Praise God. I have obeyed and am free!

I’m sure you know what happens with bamboo. Things are fine — for a week or two weeks. And then? The bamboo reappears, growing right back up as if nothing had happened to it. Some species of bamboo can grow (during growing season) at the rate of a foot a day! Some species can reach 100 feet high and one foot in diameter! Thus here I am one month later, with the same bamboo plant highly productive in my mind! Now what? I need to cut it down again, and again, and again. After awhile, even with bamboo, the rhizomes (the roots) will be unable to produce sprouts because of lack of nutrients, and you will be free from the growing bamboo!

The discipline of your mind is a process of killing thoughts and desires and dreams that you know are not from God, even though they promise you happiness and life. You may have allowed a thought, a feeling into your mind, which plants a seed. And that seed grows every time you come back to think or dwell on that thought. And every time you dwell on it, it becomes stronger, so that some day it can enter your mind almost without your permission, and you find that you are in a battle to deal with it because what started as this little, insignificant seed is now a giant bamboo for sin, or for depression, or for laziness. Now you are in a continual fight, battling this bamboo which threatens to suck all the other nutrients out of your life, and squeeze all the good seeds you have planted. Each time you set out to uproot it, you are exhausted because of its immense size and power. And apart from the power of the Holy Spirit, your chances of success would be quite low. But with the power of the Holy Spirit, your chances of success are nearly 100%!

The second activity that enables us to discipline our mental garden is

II. Seeding (3:12-17).

Think about seeds for a minute. What are seeds like?

1. They cost money, or time and effort. They are more expensive than weeds.

2. They need space, but they can’t create it like weeds can. They can’t force weeds out of their space and take over. The gardener has to create space for them.

3. You have to intentionally plant them. Plow up the ground, get things right and then put the seed or the plant in. If you throw seeds into a garden of weeds, you probably won’t get much. This is why you don’t get as much when you come to church with weeds in your heart.

4. You have to work with a seed a little while before it germinates and comes up and grows strong enough to grow on its own. How long will it be before it "takes?" Often several weeks.

Christ describes the seeds He wants us to plant in Colossians 3:12-17. The way I count them, it looks like He specifies 12 different species of seed.

- put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; 13 bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. We are the elect of God, holy and beloved!

- put on love, which is the bond of perfection.

- let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body;

- be thankful. Live in THANKSGIVING.

- Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

- whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.

These are the kinds of plants that will transform your life and body. You want to see these kinds of things growing in your mental garden. How do you plant them? The text says, "put on." It’s similar to planting seeds in a garden. You need to loosen up the ground, clear weeds away, and put the seed in.

Let’s take a few minutes to plant a seed. Let’s plant the seed of thanksgiving. Take a few minutes to list the things you are thankful for. You should be able to come up with a good list.

Now when you have finished that list, write down some of the difficult things that you are thankful for. Can you come up with a good list of difficult things? Are you thankful for them?

Now when you have finished that list, write down some of the things you have considered bad that you are thankful for. Now, let’s go to God and thank Him for all of these things. Let’s tell Him how wonderful He is for flooding our lives with these things.

If you will do this every day for a couple of weeks, you will plant "thanksgiving" seeds. You will develop a habit of thanking God, which will help you deal with the weeds of unthankfulness. You will obey I Thessalonians 5:18: "in everything give thanks...."

And thanksgiving will change you physically as well as mentally. In 1889, Eli Jones wrote in a book, Cancer, Its Causes and Symptoms that "worrying weakens the nervous system, lowers the nerve power and thus opens the way for the invasion of cancer." Jones believed the number-one cause of cancer is "worriment of mind." Today, over 110 years later, clinical studies that link depression with cancer are being published. Dr. Donald Yance says, "a long-term emotional state of fear, hopelessness, helplessness, depression, and even anger can all contribute to an impaired immune system and susceptibility to cancer. I believe fear is one of the primary contributing factors to ill health of any kind. On the other hand, a positive mental attitude can contribute to the healing of cancer" (from Herbal Medicine, Healing and Cancer, by Donald R. Yance, Jr., with Arlene Valentine, 252).

Good seed is what transforms our lives. That is why we want to get it planted as soon as possible.

III. Feeding (3:1-4)

Colossians 3:1 If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. 2 Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. 3 For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.

You don’t water and fertilize plants only when you feel like doing it. If we only watered when we felt like it, most of our plants would die. We water and fertilize because they need it. We do it whether we want to or not. The same is true in our mental garden. We need to water and fertilize the seeds. How? Here are the commands: "Seek those things which are above" and "Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth." It doesn’t matter whether you feel like doing it or not; put it into your schedule and regularly set your mind on things above.

Corrie ten Boom, in her book The Hiding Place, said that every morning in the concentration camp, she would jump to her feet from her mat on the floor and sing as loudly as she could, "Stand up, Stand up for Jesus." An interesting picture — a middle aged woman jumping to her feet and singing loudly. But she was doing something important; she was making a statement to her feelings; she was telling them where she was going that day, and announcing that her life was going to be lived under the authority of Jesus Christ. Can you imagine feelings that were crowding into her life? In a concentration camp? With German soldiers? Lice, ants, cockroaches, rats, darkness, cold, miserable circumstances, miserable food, if any food at all, the hopelessness of dying there. How would you feel if you lived there? What Corrie is saying is, "my feelings are going to be controlled by my will." "And my will is going to be subjected to Jesus Christ." She is setting her mind on things above, not on things in the prison. She could have set her mind on rats, or on the very present horror of being raped by a German guard, or of dying in excruciating pain. But she set her mind on things above. And what happened? God blessed her greatly with His presence, His joy, and gave her unusual strength and peace, even in prison. This didn’t mean that after she stood up and sang, she didn’t have feelings of loneliness or disgust at the lice in her blanket. But instead of giving in to those feelings and allowing them to shape her whole life, she set her mind on things above. She cried out to Him, recognizing that He was still her Savior and keeper even in the misery of her situation. She realized that though tears may linger for a night, the joy would come in the morning. To paraphrase Elizabeth Elliot: "Because God is your Master, you are able to master the garden of your mind. But you cannot master the garden of your mind unless you have a Master" (from Confident Living, 6/89, 28).

The truth of the matter is that you can set your mind. You can determine what controls your thinking. You can set your mind by singing a Christian song or by quoting a verse, or by turning to prayer, or by calling someone who will encourage you in the things of the Lord. But you can SET. It’s a matter of becoming pro-active and filling your mind with the things of God, the things above, and the things that will keep the weeds at bay.

Setting your mind on things above enables you to get your mind off things of this earth. For example, Job said, "I am taking the initiative of guarding where my mind goes." He said, "I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid?" (Job 31:1). Job was setting his mind on things above by making a vow, a covenant that he desired God to fulfill in him. He was going to keep his eyes and mind off of lust.

Think of how amazing this statement is from Job. He was not an Israelite. He was not under the 10 commandments; he lived years before they were ever given, and yet, he understood the importance of what his mind thought about. Job had one wife, which may have been unusual at that time, and in order to protect the sanctity of his marriage, he not only committed himself to stay away from every adulterous act, and also from every adulterous desire and every adulterous thought.

Do you see what Job is doing? He is acting on the basis of the fact that he is in charge; he is the superintendent over his senses, the king of his thoughts; and as the lord over his mind, he had proscribed this law for his kingdom — no lustful thoughts. His mind was going to be set on things above.

When we take up the position God has given us as stewards of the garden of our minds, we will start to evaluate and control what comes into the garden as well as what is growing. We need to say, "no" to things that easily slip in. For example: "I am not going to watch another murder on TV. When someone points a gun at someone, it is time to turn it off. I don’t want that in my garden. There is certain music that I am not going to listen to. If it is playing in a place, I am not going in there. There are certain pictures I am not going to look at." Each of these kinds of vows enable us to set our minds on things above. And this is our God-given right and responsibility. God has given us the power to direct our minds, and He will enable us to do what is right when we go to Him in prayer.

Are you disciplining your mind? Are you in charge? Or are weeds growing and taking over? Do you have any of the 11 weeds growing in your garden? Are you planting seeds of thankfulness, and love and forgiveness? Are you watering and fertilizing what you have planted? That is the key to mental discipline.

A. J. Cronin, in an article that appeared in Readers Digest 47 years ago, said, "The salvation of this sorely troubled planet lies not in luxury, entertainment and those creature comforts that devitalize the body and enervate the soul. It lies in the heart and will of every one of us. Man, empowered to spin his own fate, for good or evil, has harnessed the elements, has conquered the ocean and the air and has tamed the beasts of the forest. But he will never know true freedom and happiness until he has tamed himself" (from A. J. Cronin, Readers Digest, 1956, 56). "Taming yourself" begins with the discipline of your mind. And that means weeding, and seeding, and feeding.

07/20/03, BBC am

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