Can a young man have a clean heart and mind? Is it even possible?
I still remember pursuing my own desires in relationships in my teens and twenties. All those decisions and actions, in addition to reacting to other young people, dominated my life outside of getting studies done. There must be answers, I thought, and perhaps a communal living situation might provide some. So, I did that for a year, and coupled it with studying Eastern religions. People paired off in a house of 16 or so, but disasters were as common as success. The religion thing yielded nothing except practices that wore out the body or the mind. Nothing worked, and I had no peace or answers.
I presently watch young people trying the similar things, along with a heavy level of media saturation and materialism. It’s all the same. No inner peace and no solutions are apparent. The drama, after a while, becomes repetitious and aimless. It brings one to consider Christ, especially when complexity of creation and life stare at us.
There is a remarkable answer, as I explain in the last post, but it does introduce a battle in the mind. Coming to Christ, who loves us in a personal way, is the answer. Establishing a relationship with Him is an incredible start. It’s like a sprint race that starts with a starting gun, but a pace develops for the race almost immediately. When He lives in us, the choices start. It was then, for me, that I found how much baggage I had carried into the race. But encouraged by an awareness of His love, Scripture, and friends, I stayed engaged in the race – walking with God. The battle in my thoughts was won slowly. Wrong affections got righted. I made hundreds of choices to feed my soul with a different kind of food than the past patterns I developed.
So, I know a young man, born again by the Spirit of God, can develop a clean heart and mind. The personal relationship with God is critical, because we cannot change ourselves. He does it along side and in us, if we stay in the fight. Thus, the verses below can be found true. In the next post, we will talk about some of the effects.
Proverbs 119:6 says, “How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word.” (ESV)
Ephesians 4:21b-25 states, “…as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” (ESV)
