The Mind Of Faith

The Mind of Faith

Set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. Colossians 3:1-2

KINGDOM FAITH REQUIRES a complete reorientation of our thinking. One of the reasons John the Baptist and Jesus both begin their words in the Gospels with a command to repent is that repentance—in Greek, changing one’s mind or reorienting one’s vision—is necessary for seeing Kingdom realities. We can’t see the truths and possibilities of God’s Kingdom with old thought processes, perceptions, and assumptions. We have to renew our minds in order to look beyond the oppressive realities of this world.

How? Paul tells us in Colossians. We are to fix our gaze and turn our minds toward the things of heaven, where Jesus sits at God’s right hand over all power and authority. Earth presents one version of reality according to its own logic; God presents another. That’s why his work in Scripture includes logic-defying events—seas parting at a command, walls falling after a circular parade and a shout, ashes being turned to beauty, water being turned to wine, death being turned to life. The list could go on for pages, but the point is clear: God’s ways are often counterintuitive to human thinking. We are called to walk by faith, not by sight.

That isn’t easy. Sight is relentless and often very convincing. Faith, on the other hand, is the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1, NKJV). The contrast can be frustrating, confusing, even excruciating. Yet it still demands a choice. Will we pray and believe according to our natural eyes or our spiritual eyes? Will we honor the voice of God or the arguments of human beings? Will we call the visible “reason” and the invisible “a myth”? Or will we embrace truth as it has been quite reasonably but often obscurely offered to us?

The mind of faith has to make its choice daily, and it begs our vision, feelings, reasoning, and words to follow. When you set your sights on the realities of heaven and not on the illusions of this world, they do.

The great thing is to learn not to be disobedient to the vision, not to say that it cannot be attained.