Day 31 meditation puts the emphasis upon the heavenly vision as opposed to the adversary of the soul.
What is it about life that often makes it so easy to become weary and troubled? As we face the living of life, there seems to be a force at work that makes us susceptible to gloom, despair, and agony. The New Testament writers were able to pinpoint this great enemy of the peace and rest of our soul. They proclaimed that the temptation toward a sense of being forsaken and a sense of being destroyed always comes from within our own thinking and not from the circumstances we are encountering. Weariness and debilitating trouble come not from the circumstances we face but from how we are facing the circumstances. Sadly, our own imaginations, as emphasized by day 31 meditation, become the great adversary to the serenity of our soul.
Day 31 meditation pinpoints the origination of the soul being weary and troubled.
Peter would eventually come to understand the basic struggle in the soul of man. He would come to realize that the control of his mind would be the battleground for heaven or hell in his life. He would write, “Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober . . .” (1 Pet. 1:13). He now knew that the mind is actually the procreative power (the loins) of the quality of life. He implored the readers of his letter not to attempt to experience life in the thinking of their own mind. He admonished them to not become entangled by the intoxicating flight of their own imaginations. Day 31 meditation parrots the words of Peter, “Be sober.” Let your mind be sustained by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Paul also knew of the destructiveness of the mind. Standing among people that were steeped in religious activities, he said, “. . . I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious” (Acts 17:22). Their zeal to be religious had led them into meaningless beliefs and practices that carried no godly significance. The imaginations of their mind had created all kinds of religious activities that were actually carrying them away from God. They were more in line with occult practices than the ways of God.
Day 31 meditation reveals the real fires of hell.
James warned of the power and potential destructiveness of the thoughts of the mind with their subsequent manifestation by the tongue. He wrote, “But the tongue can no man tame; it is unruly evil, full of deadly poison” (James 3:8). He also stated, “And the tongue is a fire [producing the fires of hell], a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell” (James 3:6). The reason why the unruly tongue produces the fires of hell, which is always ultimately experienced in the mind, is simply that the words of the tongue are inseparably tied to the thoughts of the mind. Day 31 meditation emphasizes, again, just as the body without the spirit is dead and faith without works is dead, the tongue without the mind is dead. The ultimate adversary to the ways of God in every man’s life is always the carnal mind, the mind out from under the control of the Holy Spirit.
Day 31 meditation proclaims that the adversary of God in your life is only conquered by Jesus.
The fires of hell are real and Jesus is the only answer that can quench the fires of heated conflict and the gnawing maggots of bitter envy. “O soul, are you weary and troubled,” “turn your soul’s vision to Jesus, and look and look at Him, and a strange dimness will come over all that is apart from Him.” Turn your eyes on Jesus for he can “gird up the loins of your mind.” “Be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
