As Christians, we are called to be different, to think different, and act different because we are different.  We have been given the Spirit of God and the mind of Christ so that we can combine and articulate spiritual thoughts with spiritual words (1Corinthians 2).  Though this is a gift from God, it is seldom as easy as it sounds.  In order to be in the world, but not of it takes some discipline to develop habits from the word of God.

I have been thinking a lot the last few years about the idea of decluttering my mind.  It started when I was trying to declutter my home and I realized that while the outer-man was looking to simplify, my inner-man also need to lighten the load.  As it became apparent that one season of my life had come to an end, God had made clear that this was going to be a time of restoration and preparation for the next phase of my journey.  Looking around, I had too much stuff taking up space, things I wouldn’t use and things that others could put to good use.  It was a little obnoxious, so I started getting rid of clothes, furniture, pet supplies, kitchen appliances and much more.  I am not sure how I ended up with 4 microwave, three blenders and two crockpots, but there they were!  More recently I was able to get rid of my pool table, the last remnant of my former life.  At this point in time, the obvious stuff is gone and now I am working on the nuances of stuff to further simplify my life.

This process has been good for my soul, but the real work would be to stop accumulating useless stuff in my mind.  Living in the age of the Interweb and smart phones, we receive an onslaught of information daily, that is in addition to the stuff that we voluntarily put in our heads.  In the discipline of taking every thought captive, I decided to launch a preemptive strike on the traffic coming into my mind.  It started by closing my Facebook account, then turning off talk radio in my car.  I had been a talk radio junky listening to a lot of political and religious commentary, topics that can easily get you riled up, but really reached a point in life where I just wanted silence.  This was followed by removing television from my home.  I also made a decision to take a long look at the books that I was reading.  One of my true joys in life is reading and building my library, but I decided that I needed to set aside my books.  I made a commitment to God to spend more time in the Bible daily and only read books that would be significant in growing my faith.  This would not only reduce the clutter of the world going in my mind, but also restored many hours a week to my schedule.  It was truly amazing when I saw the time difference.  This is something that was common with money.  I would spend $4 or $5 “occasionally” at Starbucks, fastfood or a convenience store, then at the end of the month I realize that I spent $300 on things I really didn’t need. Recapturing my wasted time was very similar to recapturing wasted money.  Actually, it was not wasted, just not well spent!

As I engaged in this recommitment to read Gods word, it became increasingly apparent that I needed to start my days with scripture, no excuses!  As a spiritual discipline, I committed to not read anything before reading the Bible every morning.  This is not something new and something that I would always desire to do “if I could”, but I had the conviction once again to put God first.  God had changed my heart and gave me His peace to set aside all other distractions.  This was challenging because I have clients all across the country, so it is not uncommon to wake up to text messages, voicemails and an onslaught of emails from folks who start their day two to three hours before me.  As this discipline grew to be common place, God would then build on it by allocating my recaptured time to be with Him for extended periods.  This time would often include journaling, praying and listening.  This was not always easy and my desire to keep sleeping or shorten my time so that I could get to work was and is an ongoing challenge, but I am often reminded of Romans 7 and the battle of our two natures.  There have been days when I miss my time, but every time it happens, I am painfully aware of it and I crave it all day, sometimes anxious to leave the office so I can get home for solitude with God.  Psalm 119:20 says “my soul is crushed with longing after God’s word” and that it truly the best way to describe missing this time.  It hasn’t always been that way, but during this season of life, God has called me to slow down and enjoy the relationship, to not allow my busy schedule to reduce God to a checklist item.

do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

– Romans 12:2

Romans 12:2 calls us to no longer be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our mind.  Well I believe it starts with what we put in our minds.  For me, it started with the conviction of removing things that were taking my time away from God.  Things that seemed harmless, TV shows, magazines, talk shows, status updates, etc., nothing egregiously sinful, but things that would take my mind off of Christ and consume time that I could be spending in His word.  Though this seemed harmless on the surface, what I actually doing was building an inventory of thoughts that were innocuous at best or lies about God and/or myself at worst, often in an innocent, fun or entertaining way.

We tend to hang on to thoughts because they came from a trusted source, they sound good or they just make us feel better, but sometimes this Conventional Wisdom can lay a foundation of false beliefs about God, His plan for us and our identity in Christ.  This is a discipline that I had to learn and still practice everyday, and for me, this discipline started with the command to “examine everything carefully and hold on to what is good” (1Thesolonians 5:21).  This lends itself well to the second part of the verse in which we are instructed to be transformed by the renewing of our minds so that we would know the will of God.  In order to transform our minds, we need to be Firmly Rooted in the word of God.  So I share this to encourage fellow believers who are finding it hard to spend time with God amidst their busy schedules to take some inventory of your time, sort of a Spiritual profit and loss statement.  For me, the fruit of going through this process has been to let go of some conventional wisdom, strengthened my theology so it could be applied to my life and further revealed the kindness and sovereign grace of God!

(Writing a piece such as this can be a little challenging because it’s very personal, but I share this with the hope that this would be a source of edifying encouragement for a deeper walk with our Lord).

(Further reading: Psalm 119; 1Corinthians 1-2; Colossians 2; 1Timothy 6:3-6; 6:20-21; 2Timothy 3:10-16-4:6).