The mind and body are clearly connected, but they don’t always have the same goals. This was illustrated to me clearly in college when I needed to study for an exam but kept falling asleep. My mind wanted to stay up and read, but my body wanted to lay down and close my eyes. My body won that battle quite often.

In fact, the body often wins those kinds of conflicts. When there is pain in my big toe from arthritis, it doesn’t matter how much my mind wants to focus on playing tennis. I can’t. My body says we stop, so we stop.

If you’ve ever had a mosquito bite or a healing wound or an allergic rash, you understand how powerful your body can be. My mind knows that scratching that itch will only make matters worse, but it’s a nearly irresistible urge that steal’s my mind’s ability to concentrate on anything else.

“Now the mindset of the flesh is death, but the mindset of the Spirit is life and peace.”
‭‭Romans‬ ‭8‬:‭6‬ ‭CSB‬‬

The conflict between my mind and body is like the conflict between the “mindset of the flesh” and the “mindset of the Spirit” that Paul is talking about here.

The mindset of the flesh encompasses my desires, urges, whims, worldly goals, dreams, and longings. The main objective of that mindset is to feel good, physically and emotionally. And my experiences and observations of my life inform the decisions about how to achieve that goal.

The problem is, it’s a very self-serving goal with a strategy based on faulty and incomplete data. And I never reach my goal. There may be moments of good feeling, but they are never complete and never long lived. In the end, focusing only on myself causes pain, loneliness, and death.

The mindset of the flesh is death.

The good news is that there is an alternative. The mindset of the Spirit. Instead of listening to my urges and ideas, I listen to God. Instead of strategizing how to feel good, I strategize how to reach God’s goal of loving people. Instead of focusing on myself, I focus on Him.

God’s goal is the best. He wants all His children to be in His presence where goodness and love are complete and eternal. The mindset of the Spirit aims for that goal and follows God’s roadmap to get there.

The mindset of the Spirit is life and peace.

Dear God,

Thank you for providing a way out of my dead-end mindset. I’m sorry for getting distracted so often by wanting to feel good, at the sake of everyone else. Thank you for showing me a better way — the only real way to feel good forever. Teach me how to have the mindset of the Spirit today and to make choices that are in line with your goals, not mine.