Describing his time sitting on the bench as a second team basketball player, Pat Conroy “explained” why Colossians 3:16 has been important to me lately.  I now have blueprints for “be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2).

“I cheered as I retreated to the country place I keep behind my eyes, the place I return to in times of danger and despair, the hermitage and refuge I kept secret to all but myself. I employed it as summer house, lecture hall, resort and private lair. In the madness of my terrible boyhood, it was the den I fell back on when my father beat me with his fists, when the plebe system tore me apart in the soft places, when the screaming of the coaches grew too loud our hit too close to home. I was the only one with the key to this inn of interior peace that I had built on the other side of the retinas and corneas and the soft tissues of my face. It is a manse of solitude and shade and refuge. It is the place I go to every day to write the books which explain who I am to myself.”

My Losing Season, Pat Conroy,  (Doubleday, 2002) page 163.

A long-term White House employee says that Lady Bird Johnson had a place in her head where she went when President Johnson became loud and obnoxious. There she found privacy and peace.

Dr. Al Andrews asked Jon Acuff, “What do your voices tell you?”

Since most of us have such a room where voices taunt, abuse, encourage or teach us, does it not make sense to decide what the voices should be saying? Since that room occupies space rent free, should we not call the staging person who will decorate the room to benefit us?

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom…” (Colossians 3:16a).

Where will that “word” dwell? An inner room where you and the Holy Spirit determine content and what tone the voices take when they speak to you.

Furnishing the inner room.

©2016 D. Dean Benton     Benton Books & Blogs     Bentonministries.com