Have you ever been accused of having your head in the clouds? They might be suggesting that you are daydreaming or out of touch with reality. If you were told that your head was in the clouds in the 1600’s, that would have been a compliment because clouds were considered unreachable and mysterious. Having your head in the clouds often described someone who was a “lofty” thinker or a creative visionary.
The Apostle Paul had a similar statement, but with a different meaning. He said, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Colossians 3:2). Paul contrasts “earthly thinking” with “heavenly thinking.”
Your Mind is Working Overtime
The one verb we have in this verse is “set your mind.” Paul may have been remembering the words of Jesus when he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (Mark 8:33). The mind is the command center that processes information, forms a worldview, and dictates moral choices. Your mind was shaped and given to you by God. It is meant to be used to know Him more intimately and the riches of His majesty and grace.
Your mind is always taking in and processing information. In fact, you process more information in one day than a person in the 17th century would have processed in their entire lifetime. Imagine that! How important, then, is it to “be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God” (Romans 12:2).
Don’t Waste Your Mind on Worthless Matters
Paul commands us not to set our minds on the things of the earth. So what are the things of the earth? The things of this earth are those things that have no eternal significance or value. Paul was specifically referring to false teachers who were trying to influence the church to follow a bunch of rules that were eternally insignificant. We set our minds on earthly things when we get consumed with worthless matters. Recently, Pastor D.J. Horton had his wife, Laurel, on his podcast. In their discussion on parenting, the theme was to focus less on their kid’s behavior and more on shepherding their hearts. Your child’s behavior does matter, but it is most useful as a window into their soul. If you are focused on managing their behavior without shepherding their heart, you have set your mind on earthly things.
Similarly, if you are in the workforce and your focus is on career advancement, job title, entitlements, or deadlines, you are focused on earthly matters. These are not necessarily bad things. But they are secondary matters compared to the “things that are above.” So what are those things?
Your Mind is for Kingdom Thoughts
As a Christian, your life is now intertwined with Jesus. The Scripture says you are “rooted and built up in him and established in the faith” (Colossians 2:7). God made you “alive together with him” (Colossians 2:13) and transferred you from “the domain of darkness” to “the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13). So then Paul makes the conclusion, “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God” (Colossians 3:1). In other words, if Heaven is your eternal home, set your mind on the things that matter in light of Heaven and eternity.
Warren Weirsbe elaborates, “When we trusted Christ, we moved into a new spiritual position: we are now ‘in Christ’ and ‘out of the world.’ To be sure, we are in the world physically, but not of the world spiritually. Now that we are ‘partakers of the heavenly calling’ (Hebrews 3:1), we are no longer interested in the treasures or pleasures of sin in this world. … The world system functions on the basis of conformity. As long as a person follows the fads and fashions and accepts the values of the world, he or she will ‘get along.’ But the Christian refuses to be ‘conformed to this world’ (Romans 12:2). The believer is a ‘new creation’ (2 Corinthians 5:17) and no longer wants to live the ‘old life’ (1 Peter 4:1-4).”
I encourage you to take a brief inventory of your day. If you are reading this at the end of your day, look back at how you spent your time and what you focused on. If it is morning, think ahead to what you anticipate your day will bring. What is your mind “set” on? What is consuming your thought life? Take a minute and evaluate. Do one or two things rise to the top? Now ask yourself, are these things of eternal significance? Are they being filtered through the lens of Heaven? What would Jesus say about the things occupying your mind?
May God bless you as you fill your mind with the wonderful riches of the glory of God and His unfailing love for you!
1 Steve Lohr, “The Average American Consumes 34 Gigabytes of Content a Day,” New York Times, December 9, 2009, https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/technology/10data.html.
2 Warren W. Wiersbe, The Wiersbe Bible Commentary: The Complete Old Testament and New Testament (Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2007), 288.
