4. Minds Above and Politics

Do you know that you have the ability to tell you brain what to think? Like you’re the boss of your brain. And you’re in charge of what it thinks. If it starts thinking something that you don’t like you can make it stop. Or if you start thinking about things you love and make you happy, you can keep thinking about those things. 

 

Well, when we’re talking about a presidential election, we can get really focused on what the news is saying about the election or the people running for president. Or we can start thinking all about what our friends are saying. We can start thinking what will happen after the election depending on the outcome and who wins. And we can easily find that we’re thinking about it more than we want to, possibly.

 

And as always, God’s word has something to say about the things that we spend our time thinking about. 

Colossians 3:2 tells those who believe in Jesus to “set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”

 

Earthly things are things around you – the things you can see, touch, feel, smell, taste. It’s also things you might worry about or be scared about. Earthly things are things happening well…on earth! And the Lord doesn’t want us to keep our minds there. He’s telling us to set our minds on things above, which just means to think about Him and His ways. Rather than just looking at the world around us, keep our minds focused on Him. When we do that, we have a much better way of understanding the world around us!

 

And with a presidential election coming up, you might hear a LOT of talk about it. You might even hear a lot of mean things being said from one person about another if they support different people who are running for president. A big part of the election process is trying to convince people to vote for one person or another. It’s like they are competing for votes and often times they are willing to do anything or say anything to get those votes…even if it’s mean or isn’t even true. The Bible calls this type of mean talking about someone else slander. 1 Peter 2:1 says to “put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.”

 

Sometimes our sinful world shows it’s worst self during an election. So many things said that aren’t true and that are hurtful about the people who want to be president. It’s like a big disagreement that we all have to live through and it gets exhausting.

 

But remember Colossians 3:2 tells those who believe in Jesus to “set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.” If we have His Holy Spirit living in us as believers, then He can help us not focus on all the disagreements around the presidential election and the Lord can help us set our minds on things above! We have to realize when our brains are getting to caught up in the worldly stuff and stop and tell our brain to set itself on things above. 

 

As the boss of our brain, we remind ourselves to think about Jesus. And His kingdom. And just who He is. And just what His kingdom is and will be like for eternity. And when we start thinking about the Lord instead of the worldly problems, you know what happens? We take a deep breath. We relax. We aren’t worried. We feel secure knowing this world isn’t our ultimate kingdom. In fact, this world isn’t our home. Hebrews 13:14 says, “for this world is not our permanent home, we are looking forward to a home yet to come.” Let’s keep our minds focused on the things above by looking forward to that home with Jesus.

 

Okay let’s get to talking about this.

1.     Why does the Lord care about what we think about?

2.     Why do you think it’s easy to get focused on worldly things like the presidential election rather than keeping our minds on things above?