Thursday-July 23-Leveticus 19-Paul David Tripp

You always approach life with a mindset of some kind.

Scripture says there are only two possibilities: “on earth” or “above.”

You think. You never stop thinking. You think much more than you are aware of. Your thinking influences you more than you know. The moment you stop thinking, you’re dead. But here’s what we all need to understand—our thinking is never neutral. All our thinking has deeply religious roots. All our thinking is shaped by the way we are answering the major questions of life. Everyone thinks about these questions and everyone answers them in some way.

I sat next to him on the Chinatown bus, the cheapest way to get home from New York City. I was tired and didn’t really want to talk; if I could have found a completely empty seat, I would have gone for it, but the seat next to this man in his late twenties was the only one open. It wasn’t long before he asked me where I was from and what I did. I told him I lived in Philly and that I was a pastor and an author. He asked me what I wrote, and I told him that I wrote about everyday life issues from the perspective of the Bible. He responded: “I don’t believe in the Bible and I’m surprised that people still do. In fact, I don’t think there is any such thing as truth that you can lay on someone else.” I said, “But you just did—you just very confidently laid a truth on me.” From there, we launched into a conversation that stretched to an hour and a half.

As I thought later about our conversation, I was struck by the utter lack of any hint of neutrality in anything he or I said. Everything we said was rooted in very deep moral commitments. Our conversation flowed out of who we thought we were, what we thought about God, what we thought about the nature of and purpose for life, and what we understood about the nature of truth and about the future.

So it is with you. Here are the practical questions: What set of values determines your schedule? What view of life determines how you make decisions? What perspective about the nature of and purpose for your existence forms your everyday street-level priorities? How does your thinking shape what you do and say every day? Paul writes: “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Col. 3:1–2). You have only two choices: an “on earth” way of thinking that is all about this right here, right now physical moment, or an “above” way of thinking that looks at life from the vantage point of the grand redemptive story and, more specifically, from the perspective of the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. What’s your choice? Is it material reality as the only reality or material reality viewed through the lens of the radical truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ? Which is it for you, where the rubber meets the road in your daily life?

For further study and encouragement: Acts 17