Mind Control.

Mind control. Who controls your mind? We are told - 'gird up the loins of your mind'. This implies that we are capable of 'girding'. Girding meaning taking control over, because when you gird something you're controlling what you're doing with it. If you are literally girding your loins and not the loins of your mind, you are controlling the fact that you are covering them, protecting them. If my loins are girded then they are covered and depending upon what they're girded with they could be protected, or simply kept warm, safe from any outside influence. Girding our minds and particularly the loins of our mind - is girding - taking control of our mind- what else could it mean?  We need to PROTECT our minds.

We are also told that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind. There again, out mind is being mentioned. We need to have control over our minds. I think recognizing that what we think briefly is NOT necessarily our truth, not necessarily coming from our hearts but thrown into our thoughts by Satan, allows us to take a moment to refute the thought, to tell ourselves it is NOT what we want to think. Too often Satan will try to get us to believe we are hopelessly trapped because we think terrible things, but it's not true! We may think them in an instant and in the next deny those thoughts conceivability. We are girding our minds, our thoughts, we are protecting our minds. We are choosing to love God with all our mind and not indulge Satan's temptations to corrupt our minds.

We can choose to deny our minds the thoughts that are sinful, the thoughts that would lead us to sin. We may be tempted but that temptation to lust is in our mind and as a thought may not be fully conceived in sin unless it is truly indulged. Satan wants us to believe a quick thought is sin, when it is the temptation not yet the sin. We need to seek forgiveness, we need to seek to think the thoughts that our Savior would have us think- things that are good, true, right.

More on this tomorrow, all by the grace of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!!

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1Pe 1:13  Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ

Mat 22:37  Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 

Eph 2:2  Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: 

Eph 2:3  Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. 

Col 1:21  And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled 

Heb 8:10  For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people

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'Every part of the Christian’s life needs to be under reins; that includes the mind even following its renewal. We ought not toss the reins to it lest the evil spirits take advantage. Let us remember that

thought is the seed of action. Carelessness here invariably leads to sin there. An idea sown will eventually grow, however prolonged such growth may require. We can trace all our presumptuous and

unconscious sins to those seed thoughts we allowed to be planted before. If a sinful notion is allowed to stay in the head, then after a time, perhaps a few years, it will result in a sinful act. Suppose, for

example, we conceive an evil thought against a certain brother. If itis not eradicated and cleansed immediately, it ultimately will produce its unsavory fruit. The Christian must exert his utmost strength to deal with his thoughts. Should his mental life be left uncontrolled, he cannot possibly control anything. Hence Peter exhorts us to “gird up (our) minds” (1 Peter 1.13), by which he means to say that we must regulate all our thoughts and never let them run wild. God’s objective is to “take every thought captive to obey Christ.” Hence we ought to scrutinize every one of our thoughts in the light of

God, not allowing one to escape our observation or judgment.' Excerpt- The Spiritual Man- by Watchman Nee