We are again thankful to be here today. We want to invite you to turn to the third chapter of the book of Colossians. Colossians chapter 3. The reading lesson today will be the first 11 verses. And really, we will be interrupting Paul in the middle of a thought as we begin, and we will be stopping Paul in the middle of a thought as we end in this particular passage, but it is where we feel we've been directed for this morning's message, is these first 11 verses of Colossians chapter 3. Paul says, 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. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these, the wrath of God is coming. In these, you too once walked when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk with your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here, therefore, is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all and in all. I would like to direct your attention this morning to the Christian life, the Christian life, and we want to answer, if we can, in the time that we have, three questions about it. The Christian life, what is it? Why choose it? And how do you live it? And I know that we could be here for hours and hours and hours trying to answer those three questions, but I want to answer them relatively briefly today to set our minds and hearts in the right place when it comes to thinking about the Christian life. It is my opinion that there is no more difficult life to live than the Christian life. This life of a child of God is not a life for someone who is not ready and prepared mentally, physically, emotionally for struggle. There are a great many things in life that make our lives difficult. A lot of things. Our work can make our lives difficult. our relationships can make our lives difficult, can make them hard. And we can think if I would just maybe get rid of this particular situation in my life, life would be easier. There are a lot of things that make our lives difficult, but none more so than attempting to live as a child of God in this world. It's my opinion. Some might disagree. There is nothing more difficult than trying to live for God in a world that hates Him. I know that might sound like aggressive language, hyperbole, something to be said to gain attention, that this world hates God. I know that that can seem aggressive, like I said, it can seem to be antagonistic. I know people don't want to think about that fact, perhaps. We don't want to think about the fact that the world hates God, but it does. Don't take my word for it, though. If you don't agree with me, I want you to know you're not disagreeing with me on this. You're disagreeing with the Lord Himself, God's own Son, who said it over and over and over in the Scripture. that this world hates God. So the Christian life must be prepared to live a life serving one that most perhaps that are around us hate the one whom we serve. Again, I know that we don't like to think about that, but we need to understand that it's not my word merely that says this. It is Jesus himself, and he told us as much. I'm not sure why we don't believe him, but we don't seem to believe him. It seems that our expectations, and we're all probably guilty of this, and I don't want you to misunderstand what I'm saying, but it seems as though our expectations of our life are set on this, that they be easy. That they be comfortable. We have this expectation for ourselves. But we also have this expectation for others, those that we love. Our friends, our parents, our siblings, our children. But the Christian life is a life that has lived serving one whom this world hates. And it's going to come as a result with struggle and trial. But this misplaced expectation of an easy life leads many to never become a Christian because they are unwilling to part with what they perceive as the most direct path to ease and comfort, and they reject Christianity because they are first concerned with their own temporary ease and comfort in this life. For those who do find God, those who do know Him, those who have been saved, but choose the easy path of life, they end up living a largely ineffective Christian life because they're not fully recognizing or accepting or acknowledging the fact that this world is at war with the one we claim to follow. It only takes 90 seconds of commercial watching to convince you that your life should be easy. I mean, every advertisement you hear on the radio, it seems, every advertisement that interrupts your Hulu show, everything that you're watching, every YouTube commercial, it says, it's saying something about what can make your life easy. And just, it takes just 90 seconds of time for you to see again and again that this world, this life, your life, it is supposed to be easy. And if something is hard or difficult, well, then there's a product out there that is ready to take that difficulty away. There's something that you just need to obtain that this marketer has provided and packaged up and is ready for you to buy to make your life easy and comfortable. mixed into the advertisement will be the insinuation that difficulty and struggle should be avoided at all costs. We believe that, I think, down to our very fallen DNA. Difficulty and trial should be avoided at all costs. That struggle and difficulty are equivalent to something being wrong, something that you can fix, that should be fixed. The false prophet of Christianity today will tell you that the Christian life is full of nothing but sunshine and roses, full bank accounts, perfect marriages, relationships, healthy and happy children. They will sell that to you, that false expectation. And when these false expectations are disappointed, We turn away from God because we blame Him for not delivering on a promise He never made. And the enemy convinces us that he did. And the Christian life begins here, an understanding of what it is is an understanding that we live this Christian life in the midst of a world that hates him, and we think that the false prophet will come and spin his tails, and not just the false prophet, but the commercials, the advertisements, everything seemingly in our lives, especially in the prosperous Western world that we live in, we are told again and again and again that life should be, can be, will be if we just find the right practice will be smooth sailing. But Jesus again spoke plainly about this. Don't take my word for it. I want to quote to you three verses of Jesus himself, setting up the reality of what I'm saying. John 1518 Jesus. If the world hates you know that it has hated me before it hated you. Matthew 10, 25, Jesus again, it is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household? Again, Jesus, John 16, 33, I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation, but take heart, I have overcome the world." Jesus did not hatch a bait and switch marketing campaign during his three and a half year ministry here on the earth. He did not promise us one thing and give us another. He did not bury the terms about how life as his follower would be difficult in tiny font in the salvation contract. He spoke about it plainly. He spoke about it frequently. He spoke about it likely more often and in unquestionable language than even his followers would have preferred. When the crowd came and he had opportunity to increase his following exponentially, he did not choose to withhold the truth that men might call ugly. This ugly truth that this world is not home. That this world is not where the kingdom is ultimately going to be. that Jesus did not come here to set up an earthly kingdom. He came here to set up His kingdom that will endure for all of eternity. But He did not withhold from them the truth of what it is to live the Christian life. As the crowds grew, so too did the Lord's focus on telling the people the truth about what it meant to follow Him. And He told us plainly, We cannot say that we were misled by the Lord, by Christ, by the Scriptures. But even beyond that, not in addition, but further beyond it, consider the obstacles that are in the way of a man or a woman who would live righteously before God today. Consider all of the obstacles. Unrighteousness is celebrated and righteousness is belittled. Today, wrong is called right, right is called wrong, just as the scripture said it would. The unrighteous life is, by comparison to the Christian life, easy. And I know, again, some may disagree. But by comparison, it's going the path of least resistance. If you're going to be water and just flow through this life and take the path of least resistance, I can tell you it will not be a Christian life that you live. Not according to what Jesus says and what Paul says here in these verses. The unrighteous life is easy and the Christian life is hard. That's what Jesus said. It's easy to go the way of the world. It is difficult to go the way of Christ. And again, I point you to the words of Christ himself and not me to make this point. Matthew 7, 13 and 14, this very familiar scripture. Jesus says, enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide, and the way is easy." The gate is wide. How you get in is wide. You don't have to strive to get in. It's wide. And then he says, the way. Once you're past the gate, the way of life that leads to destruction, Jesus calls easy. Jesus says it's simple. It's not hard. It's the easy way to go. But then he goes on, for those, but for the, enter by, and many go that broad way. Verse 14, but the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life and those who find it are few. Jesus' teaching on this subject is clear and evident for anyone who would rightly read the scripture. This Christian life is hard. It's difficult. And Jesus' teaching on it is enough. But again, consider your own experience. Those of you who know the Lord, who have met Him, who have a time and a place in your life when God took away the burden of sin once in your repentance, and when your faith was placed in Him, He took that burden away, and He gave you joy, and there was a lightness, there was forgiveness, there was a moment when God changed your heart about Him, and about your life, and about everything else, and you came to know Him. Those of you who are like that, those of you who know Him, consider your own experience about living this Christian life. How many times have you committed yourself to living more like you truly desire to live? More like Christ, more like a reflection of Him, just to find that the way was difficult. In the moment of difficulty, in that moment though, even before then, when you feel that desire to be more of a reflection of Christ, just to find that way difficult, in the moment of difficulty, you began to understand what Jesus said when he said, you're gonna find tribulation here. But in that moment of conviction, when you felt that drawing of God, not to salvation, but to follow Him more closely, to reject the treasures of the world because He's calling you to treasures in heaven. in those moments of conviction, when you have felt your God, your Savior, your Lord, drawing you to a closer walk with Him, and you stood at that moment on what you felt was solid footing, and you set out with a firm and sincere commitment to walk in the path where God was leading you, wherever that path might lead. And in sincere prayer, Sincere prayer. You promised God your obedience. You said, Lord, I'm going to follow you wherever that you will lead. And I will say whatever you would have me to say. I will do whatever you would have me to do. And in that moment, you are sincere, and you mean it, and you do. There's no guile in your heart. There is nothing but the greatest of intentions. And maybe for a while, things seem to go well. You're reading the scripture, and it's feeding you. It's not just a to-do. You're going to church, and it's not just an obligation. It's a joy. You're praying for those others in the church, not because it's an obligation and it's on your prayer list, though I encourage you to keep a prayer list, but not just because they're on the list, but because your heart is burdened and broken for your brothers and sisters who are going through difficult things. And you call them, and you help them, and your prayer life, it seems like in an instance you can call on God and He's there. And maybe things, they go well for some time, But then something happens. Something happens that makes the walk difficult and hard. And in order to remain on the path of obedience, you were required to walk a very difficult road. And it was right in front of you. It's a fork in the road. Stay on this path with the Lord, and feel His presence, and be able to call upon Him, and in a moment feel His, sense His presence, sense a real ability to say, to pray to God for those you love. But that path is strewn with trial and challenge. And the other path, it seems clear and free of debris. Something happens that made you make a choice. Maybe it was you were going to be required to make a stand when doing so presented a risk. Perhaps the risk was financial. Maybe it was a risk to a relationship. Maybe it was nothing more than a risk to some convenience and ease and free time. Whatever the risk were, in nearly every case, the righteous choice, the path that would be a path of the Christian life that is to be followed It's going to be harder and not just a little bit harder, it often will be harder by an order of magnitude. The risk seems so great and the path seems so difficult and the false prophet, this is when he comes in. This is his moment. This is his moment to sell his goods to you and to me. His moment to come in, He bombards us with the idea that life is supposed to be easy. That we believe no one would expect us to walk the path that we are convinced, in one degree, that God is leading us to. And they would say, no, God would never expect that of you. That is too hard. This false prophet makes us believe again that God has led us down or that we are now going down a path that God would never lead us to. And in fact, we begin to question whether or not God indeed has. Because surely in our minds, as it continues to be convinced by the world, surely God would not require this of me. Faced with this choice, far too many choose the easy way. I've done it. No doubt. Most, if not all, have. The less intrusive way. The don't-rock-the-boat way. The don't-upset-people way. The don't-make-life-difficult-for-yourself-and-others way. And rather than committing your way to the Lord, you instead committed your way to the world. Because it was hard. When the going got tough, you just stopped going. In the moment of conviction, and it was sincere, this is, by the way, why repentance is an ever-present reality in the life of the Christian. It's not a one-and-done kind of thing. It's one-and-done for salvation, and then you continually say, God, I did it again. I chose the easy path. When the going got tough, God, I stopped going. I encountered a difficulty. And Father, I forgot that you said that the way was going to be hard, that your son, who died on a cross and lived nothing that can be described as an easy life, told me that it was going to be difficult. I forgot that, God. And we forget, and you forget at times, maybe, that God has promised you in salvation that He did not promise you to give you this world and all its treasures. What He promised you at salvation was to deliver you from this world and its destruction. But the way from here to there is going to be hard. Now, I want to pause for just a moment and tell you don't hear me beating you up. In a way, what I want to say through all of this is I get it. I know it's hard. I know it's hard today. like I didn't know before. And I am convinced that there will be days ahead that will be hard. I'm not beating you up. I'm not casting stones. I'm simply pointing out to you and to me what Paul is pointing out here, what we already know, but perhaps need to be reminded of that the Christian life is a life of great challenge, a way that the Lord himself said was going to be hard. There will be no pleasant poison of the false prophet here today, which so often takes the form of a comfortable lie about the Christian life. There'll be no spoonfuls of sugar here from Paul to help the medicine go down. Just the hard truth in Scripture. The hard facts of the Christian life. The black and white truth about what it is The truth is given by God himself through his word. So with rose-colored glasses removed, and I won't take long looking at any of these today, but with rose-colored glasses removed, let's look briefly at what Paul says about these three things. What is the Christian life? Why choose it? And how do you live it? What is it first? And we're just gonna look at the first two verses. The rest of it is worthy, of course, of continued reading and consideration. But I believe it's all built here on these first two verses. He says in verse one, if then you have been raised with Christ, the Christian life, what is it? You could describe it in many ways, the answer to this, but today what I would like to propose to you simply, it's a life that has been raised with Christ. A life submitted to Christ. A life that begins with the surrender and the death of ourselves. Did we forget that? The surrender and the death of ourselves is what began this Christian life. You can't be born again until you've died. If you're living for yourself and to yourself, and you continue to do that, and you do not die to yourself, you cannot be born again. It just doesn't make any sense. The life of a Christian, what is it? It is a life that has been raised with Christ. A new life that began when He saved you in Galatians 2, verse 20. I have been crucified with Christ, Paul says. And listen to what he says, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. In the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I have been raised with Christ. I will one day be glorified with Him. That is what the Christian life is. And if you are raised with Christ, then you have died to yourself. This is the condition of the Gospel message. If we assembled all the scripture that shows us that the Christian life is a life of submission to God and an accompanying forsaking of ourselves, we would be here for hours just reading. The Bible is so abundantly clear about this truth. The Scriptures beat us over the head with this truth. That in order to find Christ, and to be a Christian, and to become one of His, and to have the promise of heaven, we must forsake ourselves, and cling to Him, and look to Him, and not our own selves. The Scriptures, again, they beat us over the head with this truth. They grab us by the shoulders, and they look us in the eye, and they say, give me your attention. You must die to yourself and follow Christ. And they remind us, the Scriptures do again and again and again of this truth. It's as though the author of the Scripture knew we would have a tendency to not want to believe this. that we would have a tendency to want to point our ears and direct our attention to the false prophet who says, oh, no, no, no, no. God is just concerned about how easy your life is here. And to combat that, the scriptures over and over and over tell us the truth. We must die to ourselves. We must submit to God. We cannot be raised with Christ until we are buried in repentance. Now, I find it very interesting that the first word of this third chapter is if. If you have been raised with Christ. All that follows about why choose and how to live the Christian life All that follows is built upon this assumption, that you have indeed been raised with Christ, that you are indeed a Christian. Many people today trying to do what Paul encourages the Christian to do. They try to do the how, bypassing right past that word if. never answering it, never confronting it, never really dealing with the truth of it. Am I a child of God? Do I know Him? Have I indeed been raised with Him? Paul keeps what is first, first. He does not go down this path of how to live a Christian life without making sure he points out, look, this is not an automatic. There is an if here. Rather than just going down this list of what Christians ought to do, Paul continually points out that in the first place, one must be saved. You must know the Lord. In fact, in much of Paul's writings, he is combating this idea of self-righteousness, specifically in the Jew, but also in the Greek. And I was thinking the other day, this was even before the Lord put this message on my heart about this. I think I was walking Charlotte when this thought occurred. And when we think about self-righteousness, I thought about that in connection with self-awareness. Awareness of oneself. And I will tell you this, that self-righteousness and self-awareness are never in the same place at the same time. Self-righteousness and self-awareness are never present in the same heart at the same time. If you are self-aware, then you cannot be self-righteous. If you are rightly self-aware of who you are and the sin that you have committed and that apart from Christ will end in judgment, If you truly have that awareness about yourself, then there cannot be self-righteousness. And if there is self-righteousness in your heart, then there cannot be any real self-awareness. You don't really know who you are. You think you do, but you don't. Paul is describing this and uses this word, if then you have been raised. He does not assume it for you or for me. That's what the Christian life is, and in connection with that, it is a life that is seeking things that are above. If, then, you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above. A life lived in view of the world to come, and eyes that are always looking up to Him, not down. A life lived ever seeking the things of God. This then means, what is it? It means that the Christian life is a life of activity, effort. The word seek in the Greek, literally it just simply means to desire, to have or experience something with the implication of making an attempt to realize it. Seeking. You know, one of the greatest damages that's been done to the Christian mentality today is that you seek once when you get saved and you're done seeking. You are just beginning to seek. You seek the Lord in salvation, and then when you find Him, you spend your life, if you are to live the Christian life, seeking actively God and things that are above. There's no coasting in the Christian life. There are certainly times of greater effort, of course. There are times that energy must be spent in greater proportion than others, but the Christian is a seeker of the things above. That's what the Christian life is. It is that that seeks things that are above. The Christian life is compared in Scripture to the life of a soldier and an athlete. These are lives of constant discipline and effort. and therefore they are worthy examples of the Christian life. Let me ask you this question. If you are a child of God, I will echo Paul, if you have been raised with Christ, I'm gonna ask you a little bit of a different question. Do you see yourself as an athlete or a soldier? Do you see yourself like them? Or do you see yourself instead of an athlete as a spectator? instead of a soldier, a civilian. Are you actively seeking the things that are above? If you are not, don't be surprised when you don't obtain them. If you are not, don't be surprised when you don't obtain them. We would call an athlete who never trained but expected to win the competition a fool. Would we not? We would expect the soldier who never learned how to use his weapon or to remain safe in the battlefield, we would expect them who says that I'm going to survive this, we would call them a fool. A soldier seeks the things of a soldier to keep himself and those around him safe. An athlete seeks the things of an athlete. Discipline, endurance, training, diet, commitment, so that they might win the race. They might win the competition that they're in. But far too many Christians, we don't think of ourselves as an athlete or a soldier. We think of ourselves as a spectator or a civilian. that the Christian life is just something that we drag along with us as we live, instead of being led by it and seeking it actively, that imperative verb in the Greek. Paul says, this is not something I'm simply suggesting that you do. I am commanding you through the Holy Spirit to do this. Seek the things that are above. It's going to be hard. Yes, we've already established that. We know that's going to be true. So we're not going to be surprised when it gets difficult. Seek the things that are above in all of these trials and struggles. Secondly, though, today, why choose it? Why choose the Christian life? Well, Paul answers it right there for us to see in the first verse. If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is. Why choose this Christian life? Why choose this struggle? Why choose the harder path? Why make the stand when you need to? Why share about Christ when you know it might cost you? Why sacrifice your life if you're somebody that God has called you to the mission field? Why sacrifice that and go live a life committed to God? Why would you be like David Livingston, who had the world at his hands with the riches that his family had, and he cast it all aside and said, no, God has called me to share his message with people far away in Africa. looked across the plain and he said the smoke of a thousand fires were places where God is not. And that's what drew him. Why did he do that? Why did he die on his knees praying once again to God? Why did he choose that life? Why do you choose it? Why must I choose it? Because that's where Christ is. Period. End of story. It ought to be. If your church, if your preacher, if your fellow Christian is telling you that you ought to choose the Christian life because of all the wonderful things it brings you here, you need to be cautious. You need to be thinking, because that's not how the Bible talks. You choose this life because that's where Christ is. This is why the prerequisite, if, was there. Because if you have not been raised with Christ, then this why is not going to be enough for you. If you have not understood what Christ did for you on the cross, if you do not understand what He did for you when He came to this world, left His home in heaven to live among us, to feel hunger, and separation, and weariness, and brokenness, and rejection, and ultimately death on a cross. If you don't understand that He did that for you, this why that I'm giving you, that that's where Christ is, it's not going to be enough for you. But if you have been raised with Christ, it is enough. This is where Christ is. We want to go to heaven not because of the streets that might be like gold, not because of the mansions that may or may not be there, not because of all the joyful things that we might do. We want to go there because Christ is there, and in the fact that He is there, all the other things are joyful too. But He's the root. He's the cause. Why do we choose it? Because that's where Christ is. If you have not been raised with Christ, this why is simply the cost of the Christian life. They're just simply going to be too much for you. Why would you want to be with Christ despite all the difficulties that doing so brings and presents? I'll give you just a couple of things to think about because no one has loved you like Christ has loved you. No one. No one has lit a candle to the sun compared to the love that Christ has loved you with. Why would I choose this difficult road, this difficult path, this life of a Christian? Because of what my Savior, my Lord, did for me. Because no one has loved me like He has loved me. And no one, secondly, has given you what He has given you. No one can. He has given you eternal life with Him. Never to be interrupted again by pain and sorrow. And even when we live through those difficult times here, there is an awareness in our hearts that all will be well. All will be well. God will make right all the things that we have made wrong. But also, why would you choose this? Why is Christ enough? Because being without Christ is to be without peace. Being without Him is to be without peace. Because being without Christ in this life is to be like a blind and deaf man in paradise. Wonderful things to see, marvelous things to hear, but you can't see it or hear it. Why do we choose the Christian life? Why is Christ enough? Because of all the things that He has promised and who He is, the Son of God. For those of you who know the Lord, is life with Christ not more vibrant, alive, marvelous, and inspiring than life without Him? Sure, it's hard. It's difficult, yes. Is life, though, not more full with Him? And without Him, is it not more gray, dull, and worrisome, lifeless? perhaps without the struggle, but just dull and unimpactful and empty. Sure, the Christian life has its struggles, and sure, they are real. Those struggles bring pain, pain that sometimes you're convinced is gonna crush you. Pain in your times of aloneness, when something that has happened doesn't make any sense to you. You know in your mind, and you trust even to a degree that God is good, you know it's true. But in those moments of pain, you feel like the pain is just going to stomp you into the ground and leave you in rags and dust, and you'll have no ability again to stand. Yes, that's the kind of pain that the Christian life can bring. Pain that in those moments you'd be tempted to take the dulling drugs of the world just so you don't feel anything anymore. But the problem with taking those kinds of drugs from the world is not only does it remove the pain, it removes the joy. And you're just left empty. And emptiness, listen, this is hard to swallow when you're in the midst of deep suffering. But pain is preferable to emptiness. It's better. Pain that is felt when you can bring it to one that you say, God, I know this is not empty. I know you're doing something, and I know you have done something, and that you will yet do more. And this pain is real, and it is bringing me to my knees daily, moment even by moment, but it's preferable to the emptiness, the dulling drugs of the world. Why do we choose this life? Because Christ is there. The one who loves us like no one has ever loved us. The one who's given us things no one else can give us. The one who will bring us home to heaven. Now, how do you live it? And we'll just say this very simply. Set your mind on things above. Set, in the Greek, keep on giving serious consideration to something is what it means. To keep on pondering. to let one's mind dwell on it, to keep thinking about it, to fix one's attention on something. Set your mind on things above. Note carefully this action, this activity again. The Christian life is a seeking, and the way that you seek the things above, you might say, how do I do that? Paul answers it. Set your mind on things above. I love this passage that's also from Paul in Philippians 4.8. It's something I try to keep in my own mind and heart throughout the day. Some days I'm successful, other days I am not. Nevertheless, I love this passage. I think it would be good for you to memorize it and think about it often through your life. Philippians 4.8. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, Whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think on these things. And how he says it to the Colossians here, set your mind on things above. Look, if it's not in that list in Philippians 4.8, you shouldn't be thinking about it. Now, I know that thoughts occur. There's something marvelous about the human mind and heart, is there not? Thoughts just occur. They come from out. They come out of nowhere at times. Have you ever had an evil thought just kind of pop up in your head, and you're like, where did that come from? There's a difference between having that happen, and then dwelling on it, and thinking about it, and pondering on it. The things that we ought to dwell on, and ponder, and meditate, and analyze, and think about, and all of these things, they're in that list, and these are all things that are above. They're not things you're gonna find down here. Don't think about the things down here. And I'm not telling you to dismiss yourself from this life. I'm telling you to think about this life in connection with the things that are above. That's the Christian life. That's how you live it. You set your mind on it. And when it says mind, it is talking about the intellect, but it's also talking about the heart, the volition of man, your desire, your will, as we would often call it. What do you want in your life? Set your mind on these things. How do you live the Christian life? You set your mind on things above. And when you wake up tomorrow, you set your mind on things above. And when at 1030 in the morning something happens that causes you to stumble and for you to stop and go, that's going to be a difficult thing for me to do, you set your mind on things above. When you are called upon to make a sacrifice to serve God, you set your mind on things above. When you are faced with a struggle and a difficulty that you don't know where it came from and why you're enduring it, you set your mind on things above. When somebody turns their face from you and rejects you and calls you out or persecutes you, you set your mind on things above. When you sit down at your kitchen table to read the Scripture, you set your mind on things above. When you speak to people around you in your life, your co-workers, your friends, your family, your neighbors, you set your mind on things above. You are the one, as the Christian, who is thinking about life rightly, and you're thinking about life on things that are above. Constantly setting your mind there. The Jews had many more practices of practical reality and practical holiness that I think we don't want to copy per se, but they would have things in their life, physical items that would remind them of God. Put things in your life. Have you ever, you know, football. I love to watch football here and there. Every team's got some sign they slap on the way out of the locker room, right? Go win the day or whatever the slogan is. There's something that reminds them of what they're getting ready to go do. We ought to have something in our lives that we slap on the way out of the door every day. Set your mind on things above. Keep your mind on things above. That's how you live it. And the reason that you choose it in the midst of all its difficulties is because that's where Christ is. And what is it? It's a life that's been raised with the very Son of God. You're different. Because you're now a joint heir with Him. Put on the new self. That's what the rest of this passage talks about. I encourage you to read it. All of those things are accomplished by first setting your mind on things above.