A Year With Oswald – Week 42

A guest post from Angela Howard – amazing friend, writing assistant and woman of God!

VERSE: “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You.” Isaiah 26:3

OSWALD: Is your mind stayed on God or is it starved? Starvation of the mind, caused by neglect, is one of the chief sources of exhaustion and weakness in a servant’s life. If you have never used your mind to place yourself before God, begin to do it now. There is no reason to wait for God to come to you. You must turn your thoughts and your eyes away from the face of idols and look to Him and be saved (see Isaiah 45:22)

Your mind is the greatest gift God has given you and it ought to be devoted entirely to Him. You should see to be “bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ…” (2 Corinthians 10:5). This will be one of the greatest assets of your faith when a time of trial comes, because then your faith and the Spirit of God will work together.

MY THOUGHT: “Starvation of the mind” is a difficult concept to grasp in today’s culture. We have so much to feed upon that at times it can be overwhelming. From books to blogs, Facebook to Wikipedia—the information age presents a vast array of possibilities to consume. And even as we ingest these things, in some effort to increase knowledge and possibly to serve more effectively, we find ourselves exhausted. The problem is that we are placing our minds before all of these other avenues and neglecting to place our minds before God. We “know” more, but are we any closer with God because of it?

Complete devotion to God, a turning away from all other idols, has been God’s desire all along. While the Israelites waited for Moses to descend from Mount Sinai they became impatient and begged Aaron to make them gods who could lead them. When Moses finally came down the mountain he asked Aaron why he had brought such a terrible sin upon them and Aaron’s response was “I simply threw [the gold] into the fire—and out came this calf.” (Exodus 32:24 NLT)

I had to laugh when I read this because obviously the golden calf didn’t just “pop” out of the fire; Aaron made the idol intentionally. He looked for his own way out of a sticky situation. He didn’t look to God to be saved.

But before I got too high on my horse (I like to do that!) I had to remind myself of how often I have turned my mind, my eyes and even my thoughts away from the Lord. It’s easy to do. I have so many great ideas of my own, (Just ask me!) but the Lord is calling you and me to take those same opportunities to place our minds before the Lord, place our eyes before His word and fix our thoughts on things above. When we are intentional we begin to see the character of God in a new light. Our faith grows and the Holy Spirit is free to speak when we are ready to listen.