This Week’s Passage: 17 So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. 18 They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. 19 Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.
Futility – lack of effectiveness or success; lack of purpose or meaning.
Doesn’t that definition characterize much of our thinking. Futile. Without purpose or meaning. We spend much of our time thinking about things that have no reason to take up space in our heads. Much of it is dangerous and leads us away from God rather than drawing us to God. We allow our minds to wander and then our bodies aren’t too far behind.
Listen to some of the things that this passage says about futile thinking – it ought to scare you away from doing us: darkened understanding, separated from God, hardened hearts, loss of sensitivity to the Spirit of God, indulging in impurity, lusting after sin.
This is why we have to be very careful what we choose to think about. This is also why I love the disciplines of pondering Scripture and memorizing Scripture – because they force us to think about stuff that is both meaningful and purposeful.
So a couple of questions to think about by way of application:
1) How is your pondering of Scripture going? Are you pondering or just reading? Pondering involves intentional thinking about the Word.
2) What passage of Scripture are you in the process of memorizing right now? Who is helping to hold you accountable to this? Who are you doing it with?
If I can help with any of this just let me know. Be very careful what you think!
I’m just sayin’!
Next Week’s Passage: Ephesians 4:20-24