Set Your Mind on Things Above
By M.T. Clark — P-2067 | 09/12/2026 – Today’s Audio Podcast
Today’s Message on YouTube:
Today’s photo of my canine pal Harley walking down a paved country road under a glowing purple, pink, and fiery orange morning glory sky comes to us from yours truly, as I captured this spectacular sunrise moment during a walk on Waite Road in Easton, NY, on September 28, 2024.
Well, it’s Saturday, and I share this photo of a stunning morning sky over a quiet country road to remind us that the Lord will sometimes show up in the ordinary hours of our lives in ways that remind us that God isn’t just good; He is awesome and powerful, and He is far above our highest imaginings.
Every once in a while, the Lord will show up in our lives in ways that make it impossible to deny that the things we are experiencing come from Him. Be it an experience of the beauty of nature, a realization of His love that takes our breath away, or some serendipitous happenstance that truly demonstrates that God really is working all things together for our good, the Lord has ways of waking us up to the fact that God is present, powerful, and worthy of our attention.
Speaking of the One who is worth lifting our eyes to, whatever kind of morning we wake up to,
Our series, “Rooted in Him,” continues today with where a believer’s mind belongs, and how that one decision shapes everything else.
Set Your Mind on Things Above
The Apostle Paul tells us where the disciple of Jesus Christ is to set his vision in Colossians 3:1-2 (NKJV): which tells us “If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.”
Paul brings his teaching to a practical point here. You have been raised with Christ, and because that is true, here is what to do with your mind.
Let’s start with the order, because it is the whole gospel in miniature. Paul doesn’t say to set your mind on things above so that you can be raised with Christ. He says you were raised with Christ, so set your mind on things above. God has to give us a spiritual life through faith in Christ before we can truly begin to ponder the higher realities of His kingdom. But after we are in the kingdom, we should continually turn our attention to the things of God to gain further understanding and to know our place and purpose in it.
This is never a program for earning a standing we don’t have. It is the natural way to live in the standing we have already been given.
Then let’s notice that Paul gives us two verbs, and they are not the same. He says to seek the things above, and then he says to set our minds on them. Seeking things is active. It is the search a person does when something matters enough to go looking for it.
Setting our minds on something is deeper than seeking. It carries the sense of a settled direction. Anybody can seek in a burst. Paul is after something steadier, where our default has changed, so that the mind returns to Christ the way a compass needle returns to north.
And let’s look at where he anchors it. The things above are “where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God.” Paul isn’t telling us to think vaguely spiritual thoughts or to detach from real life. He is telling us to fix our minds on a Person in a place, on Jesus, seated above, with His work finished, and holding all authority.
That position matters. Jesus isn’t pacing or worried. He is seated, because there is nothing left to add to what He has accomplished. When our minds set themselves there, our circumstances get put in their proper perspective.
Paul finishes with the contrast: “not on things on the earth.” Earthly things aren’t all sinful, and Paul isn’t asking us to stop caring about our families, our work, or the ordinary business of living. He is telling us not to let the things of the earth become our whole horizon.
What sits in front of us all day will shape how we think unless we deliberately look higher, and the things in front of us are usually the ones with the loudest voices. Our worries are here. Our bills are here. The opinions of the people who hurt us are here. But none of that comes with any perspective attached, so if we never lift our eyes, we will end up with a mind full of urgent things and no sense of what is actually true.
This is where the renewing of the mind stops being a nice phrase and becomes a daily practice. I’ve walked through seasons in my life where my thinking would always run to the worst possible outcome as a matter of habit, and I know how convincing that can feel from the inside.
What began to change it, by God’s grace, wasn’t trying harder to think positively. It was going to God’s word and letting the Lord tell me what was true and then choosing to think along with Him even when my feelings hadn’t caught up yet. Some mornings, that was the only spiritual work I could manage, and it turned out to be the work that mattered the most. What we set our minds on is what we eventually believe, and what we believe is what we live from.
I should point out that setting the mind higher isn’t the same as pretending. Paul isn’t asking us to deny what is hard or to talk ourselves into feeling fine when we don’t. He is asking us to refuse to let the hard things be the only things we see. You can tell the Lord exactly how heavy something is and still fix your eyes on the One who is seated above it. Those two things belong together, and honestly, the people I have watched walk through the worst seasons of their lives with real peace are the ones who did both. They were truthful about the weight they were under, but they kept looking up.
Let’s also see that this is the territory that the enemy fights for. He is a deceiver, and deception is a mind game. He rarely comes at a believer with a full-frontal attack. He comes with a suggestion that gets treated as a fact and then couples it with an accusation built on that fact, and before long a person is living inside a story about themselves that just isn’t true.
That is why Paul keeps directing us to use our minds in all his letters. A mind set on Christ has something solid to stand on when the lie shows up.
None of this needs to be complicated. Setting our minds on things above looks like reading a few verses before the day gets busy and turning them over in our minds while we go about our day. It looks like catching ourselves an hour into worrying and taking that worry to the Lord. It looks like telling ourselves the truth about who we are in Christ when our feelings insist otherwise. Every one of those shifts is small, but they add up to a settled direction over time.
You were raised with Christ. That is already true of you. So, lift your eyes to where He is, high, lifted up and in complete control. Set your mind on Him first thing this morning and let the view from His throne shape the way you think about everything down here today. That is what walking with the Lord looks like when the mind is finally set where it belongs.
Every step we take toward the Lord is a step in the right direction. So, keep on walking and talking with God.
— M.T.
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“The views, opinions, and commentary of this publication are those of the author, M.T. Clark, only, and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of any of the photographers, artists, ministries, or other authors of the other works that may be included in this publication, and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities the author may represent.”
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