That was a hard exercise wasn’t it? I’ve found that my distracted mind is much like my sin, far worse than I thought it was.  If you tried those exercises from the previous post, that’s probably what you are realizing. So, enough with the guilt!  Lets do something here.

To begin with we have to understand that our minds are connected to our hearts like grass is connected to dirt – the grass only grows if it has good soil.  So your distracted mind grows out of a distracted heart. This is the first problem.

We live in a culture that has everything from Sham Wow to Mercedes Benz telling you that you must have their product and then, then you will be happy.  And though you have the mind of Christ and it tells you that is a lie, underneath it all you still really believe them.  So how do I know? Because I own a Sham Wow (just kidding).

I know because my heart is just like yours – it is so incredibly prone to wander, prone to leave the God I love. Why, why is this? Because, like John Piper says so well, we love to nibble at the table of the world so much that it leaves no room for the great.

We like those “Convenient Pleasures.” We like Little Debbies, 8-minute abs, and porn because their easy, and they provide a quick fix with little investment.  I mean, why work at a marriage and learn to love someone deeply when you can just type in sleeze.com and get what you really want with out all the trouble, right? Wrong! That is but crumbs, brother/sister – there is no great in any of that.

The only way we can make any head way in the construction zone minds of ours is by understanding first that the distraction is fed from the pantries of our hearts. And our hearts have learned to nibble away at the pantry instead of learning the joy of a feast that takes time, dedication, and love to prepare. But when we sit down and enjoy it, oh how good it tastes.  How much better it is than those crumbs we have been nibbling on for so long?

Jesus said: “What comes out of a person is what defiles him/her.” (Mark 7.20).  And our distracted minds come out of our hearts.  They must be fixed first before we go anywhere else in restoring these broken down houses.

How do we do that? Repentance.  Its going to cause you to be still before the Lord and do the hard work of stopping long enough to repent of specific ways you stand and eat at the pantry when a feast is prepared for you by the Lord Himself. Then look to a bloody cross and an empty tomb and be reminded of what true love is, and where true pleasure is really found. Take some time to do that today and we will talk more tomorrow.