7th May 2025

How many choices do we make in a day? Hundreds, thousands? From getting out of bed, to what we eat for breakfast, to picking up our phones or our Bibles, everything in our entire day requires choices. Some of them are easy and need no thought, while some are more involved. Other choices happen by making no choice – we just put them off until it’s no longer necessary or we have a fire to put out.

The same is true of our thoughts. We can choose where our minds go, what we think about and dwell on. Making decisions regarding what to think about can be much more difficult than deciding what to eat or wear. Sometimes my mind goes where I don’t want it to, seemingly all by itself. And then I have a hard time reining in those thoughts and making my mind go in a different direction. I suppose we all suffer from lack of mental discipline in our instant-gratification, 24-hour information overload. We’ve been slowly acclimatised to shorter attention spans to the point we can’t read something if it’s more than a paragraph or even forty characters.

The crucified life is about the daily, hour by hour and even moment by moment choice to put off the old self with its practices, and put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator (Colossians 3:6-7, NIV). Putting off the old self (we all have one) takes work. It’s a real battle and it goes on 24/7. How do we accomplish this? By choosing to redirect our thoughts toward Jesus. As I just read in a devotional, if it were easy, we wouldn’t need him. It might be the hardest thing we ever do, but if we don’t put in the effort, trusting and relying on the help and power of God, through the Holy Spirit, it won’t happen.   

We have already been crucified with Christ (Galatians 2:20) but like Paul, we die daily so we may live the resurrected life with Christ (Colossians 3:1; Romans 6:4; Ephesians 2:6).

First published on 23 March 2021, at www.gemsofgodsgrace.wordpress.com a personal blog which is not sponsored by Grace Communion International.

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