For the glory of God

1. Guarding your mind is essential to obedience.

Hebrews 2:1 - We must pay more careful attention, therefore, so what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.

The sense of the warning is that we need to give attention to the things we have heard (in the Scripture), because if we don't, we'll lose the life, power, sense, and impression of them in our minds. There is no way to keep the impression of the Word in our minds except by constant care.

2. The mind includes the conscience

Hebrews 5:14 - Solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

The solid food in the verse I believe is talking about the meat of the Scriptures.

If the conscience isn't stirred up at the sight of sin, it can't help us, and if the mind is dull and led astray, the conscience will be sluggish, or even corrupted.

Lundgaard writes that to please God with obedience, it isn't enough to merely do what he says. The way we do it has to square with God's rule. The great duty of the mind is to attend to the rule of duties.

Words mean nothing unless they are arranged according to the rules of language. In the same sense duties piled up mean nothing to God unless they are done according to his rule. The work of your mind is to know his rule and apply it to all you do before God, to be very careful, then, how you live.

God wants us to think deeply about what pleases him. Lundgaard gives us a list of some of the duties of the mind for everything that pleases God:

1. Obey fully

Under the Old Testament ceremonial law no animal could be a sacrifice unless it was completely free of spot and defect. Similarly, duties must be complete in all of their parts, nothing lacking. The mind must study to know everything that pleases God.

2. Obey by faith

Every duty must be done in faith, in the strength from Christ. Apart from him we can do nothing. We must remind ourselves that it isn't enough for us to be a believer, thought that's the beginning of every good work, but we must also act in faith in every duty.

3. Obey from the heart

A duty offered to God as an act of mind and will without the affections is abominable to God. God loves a cheerful giver, not merely someone who grudgingly drops money in the plate.

4. Obey God's way

Your mind has to make sure you do everything the way and by the means God has commanded. An example of this would be how God has commanded us to worship him. However we are not free to make up ways to worship him. According to his directions for worship we must worship him in spirit and in truth.

5. Obey God for God's goals

Your mind must search out the purpose of every duty, the main goal always being the glory of God in Christ.

"Whatever you do , do it all to the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10:31)