“But we have the mind of Christ.” (1 Corinthians 2:16, NIV)
For a brief period of time in the early part of my business career, I was in a location where hunting was big on the agenda of most men. I grew up in the city, and I knew very little about hunting. I bought all of the necessary clothing, boots, thermal underwear, gloves, warm hat, and a compass. This was long before the days of having a portable GPS device available. To top off the list of purchases, I bought a rifle by Remington that supposedly could kill anything on the North American continent.
On a cold day in November, I joined a few other men who had experience in navigating their way through the woods of northwestern Pennsylvania for a hunting day.
After a few hours of being outside, I told the guys that I was ready to call it quits. I pulled out my compass and unknowingly held it very close to the rifle barrel that was in my other hand. I told them I thought I should go in a particular direction back to where my car was located.
In the background I heard a few chuckles, and one of the men suggested that I move the compass away from the rifle barrel and see if the needle was still pointing in the same direction. When I did that, the needle snapped a full fifteen degrees in another direction! Wow! If I had followed the first reading, which was totally inaccurate due to my lack of knowledge, I would have lost my way in the woods and mountains.
There is a huge application here. As we delve into the pages of the Bible, we discover we are in the middle of two totally different value systems striving to win our commitment and loyalty. The one is the perishing world system, and the other is the imperishable eternal realm lasting forever. We need to be aware that the world system will always point us in the wrong direction.
Using the right point of reference is critical in making our decisions in this world. If we do not have the right point of reference, we will lose our way in the vast complexity of this perishable world system. I believe the key question is: Who is controlling my mind? This is the battle ground. Whoever or whatever controls our mind controls us. The Converterlator seeks to have Jesus Christ control his mind.
This truth brings us to the Compass of Life Concept. The needle of our life is our mind. In our mind we make the decisions, good or bad, that determine what we actually end up doing with our time, talent, and treasure. If we allow the needle of our lives to focus on the wrong reference point, we will end up making wrong decisions.
Look carefully at the diagram of the compass. If this was a typical compass, north would be at the top of the circle, east on the right side, south on the bottom of the circle, and west on the left side of the circle. However, this is not a typical compass! As you can see, we’ve substituted Jesus on the north point, Crowd on the east, Self on the south, and World on the west. These are the general reference points that strive to capture our attention and control the needle of our lives. But we possess a power that can exert influence over the needle.
We must choose to point our decision-making process in the right direction. If we fail to do so, we will be subject to consumerlating, frittering away our perishable commodities of time, talent, and treasure.
What or who most often controls your mind?
Converterlators seek to have Jesus Christcontrol their mind.