All growth begins on the inside—viruses, health, psychology, emotions, temptation, intellect—the external appearance is only a symptom of whatever condition began quietly in the heart.
Look inward and ponder in your heart. Don’t leave your inner world in disrepair.
Temptation starts with simple thoughts which snowball into regret. Don’t even entertain dark ideas. Displace darkness with the light.
Secular entertainment may seem enticing and motivating at times, but it is not enough to nourish true growth. It is mere amusement with diluted images of a forgotten Heaven. If you want growth, you must set your mind on the actual, Eternal things of Heaven.
If you don’t think rightly about Heaven, you won’t think about Heaven. If you understand Heaven accurately, you will ponder Heaven, its wealth, its grandeur, its supreme power, and its immeasurable love for you—carrying Heaven in your heart as you go about surviving and thriving day to day. With Heaven in your heart, people who encounter you will bump you and a little Heaven will spill out onto them—and they will wonder whatever could possibly make you such an experience to encounter.
Perhaps someone inconveniences you, yet you respond with grace. A thief or hit-and-run might make flight, but you quickly catch enough of a description because you had the right mind to think on your toes. You might respond to a fool with wise words he deeply resents—but then those words stick in his mind for decades and eventually drive him to become a better person—and you’ll never find out in this life.
Heaven is not where we are going because Jesus is the resurrection. Rather, Heaven is our Eternal Citizenship and our source of love and power, but we come back to life and live on Earth. Anyone who simply believes in Christ Jesus has access to Heaven’s insight even in this lifetime. Heavenly thinking comes from conversational prayer and daily Bible exposure. Know and understand God’s relationship to you in all its fullness and you will begin to know yourself in the deepest ways available from the current mortal body. Bring Heaven to the world around you; it all starts in the heart.
Proverbs 4:23, Ezekiel 11:21; 16:30, Luke 6:45, Colossians 3:1-2, James 1:14-15