Day 4 - Captive and Captivated

Oh my goodness! I am getting more and more excited about this journey. I have chosen for these forty days to give up TV and to read the Bible and pray for an hour each day because I want to pursue Christ with such intensity and passion that I let nothing else in. I can already feel a recentering, a love and holy hunger for every word of Christ welling up in me. I'm looking forward to each day of this journey. Is there anything God is calling you to lay before him in this journey? Is there anything you are sacrificing in order to build your relationship with him or is there anything you could offer him as a gift? The part of the devotional today that blessed me most was where Johnson says "This explains why there is such an intense war being waged for your mind and your mental agreement. Every thought and action in your life speaks of allegiance to God or to satan. Both are empowered by your agreement. Renewing your mind means learning to recognize what comes from hell, and what comes from heaven, and agreeing with Heaven." I have known for quite some time that sin doesn't start in our actions, but in our thoughts. I have known how important it is to take my thoughts captive for Christ. I can think of many times in my life where God has called me to take another step in this regard, and this is one of those times. This, like other aspects of my Christianity, has been about what is happening inside of me. It has been about my belief in Christ and my obedience to him. One of the ways in which I have been challenged today is to turn this on its ear a bit. As I shift gears toward surrendering my thoughts to Christ, I want to be less about getting rid of the thoughts that are not of Christ (though this is an important, even critical, first step), and more about saturating my mind in His word. I am reminded of this scripture in Matthew 12: 43, "When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.' When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean, and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of the man is worse than the first." I can no longer just stand against the evil that invades my thoughts; I need to replace the thoughts, to fill my metaphorical house with God's every word. I want to be so full of God that there is no room for anything else. I want to move past the place where surrendering my thought-life to Christ is only an internal process and into a place where I am so suffused in God's Word that it spills over into everything I do. The shift is one that moves me from an outside-in approach to an inside-out approach to giving up my thought-life to Christ. What this means, then, is leaving my sin - my anger, my frustrations, my unrealized dreams, my personal ambition, my unforgiveness, my disappointed hope -all behind. No looking back, no mourning time lost. Johnson says "If you have stepped out in obedience and then stopped when it didn't seem to bear fruit, ask the Lord if there is fear or disappointment there. If he shows you anything, confess it and ask the Lord to restore your hope and expectation to walk into the "normal Christian life" he's provided for you - a life filled with His supernatural, life-giving Spirit and all the goodness that life brings." This is where I'm headed, and I know that this Word of life, planted deep in my heart, will bear all that God promises it will.