Where do you set your mind?

Tonight, the pastor mentioned Romans 8 and during the sermon, I copied a good chunk of it in my journal.  I need to do that more often.  I see different things that way...

My reading of late has focused on keeping the presence of God and His will in my mind in a state of continual worship.  A couple of verses caught my attention:

^"5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. ⁶ For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace."

My son, PJ, often has an issue with perseverating.  Perseverating is when your mind, thoughts and talk all get stuck on one subject, over and over again.  For PJ, it could be a video game, could be legos, or how much he hates school, but everything always comes back to that one topic.  If this passage is to be believed, it's not what your mind naturally moves toward that matters--it's where you choose, over and over again, to set your mind.  And where you choose to set your mind makes a big difference in outcome. 

As we finished the service, we had communion.  When it came to the cup, PJ and I talked about what it is and why it's important.  See, God said that the Israelites were never to drink blood because the life of the animal is in the blood.  Yet, Jesus gave his disciples the 3rd cup of passover to represent His blood that we take within ourselves as a symbol of how His life comes into us and becomes a part of us.  Romans 8 goes on to say:

¹⁰ But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. ¹¹ If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

The Holy Spirit is there to give life to your mortal body by bringing your thoughts back to Him--to life.  The mind set of the flesh leads to a life of death and hostility, while the Spirit sets our minds on the pathway to life and peace.  

PJ pointed out that it's grape juice (not blood) that we have in our little cups.  As I flipped through the scripture, the passage where Jesus tells us that He is the vine and we are the branches flashed in front of me.  The life of the vine is in the sap, which becomes the juice within us, just like the blood is our life, within the vine, the juice is it's life and produce.  The point of that passage is that we can do nothing--we have no life within us--unless we are connected to the vine.  Setting our minds on the things of the Spirit is the way we stay connected continually to the vine.  

So what are you thinking?