Post by calfisher on Apr 28, 2015 23:13:38 GMT -5
Discipline of Mind
There is an organ in the body that is about the size of a small head of cauliflower.
This organ has power over many different tasks in our bodies.
It controls body temperature, blood pressure, heart rate and breathing.
It accepts a flood of information about the world around us.
It handles our physical motion when walking, talking, standing or sitting.
It lets us think, dream, reason and experience emotions.
Which organ is it? Our brains. Each and every day your brain is activating thought modules which enable you to interact with the world.
It tells you when it is time to eat.
It helps you compute the speed of vehicles as you are trying to cross the street to determine if there is enough time to get across safely.
It helps you to appreciate a beautiful flower or beautiful scenery.
Our minds have been compared to 1,000 switchboards, each big enough to serve New York City, all running at full speed as they receive and send information.
There is not a computer made that can even come close to accomplishing all that the human brain can.
A human being has about 100 billion brain cells. (Neurons) The approximate times a neuron can fire is about 200 times a second.
Approximately 1000 neurons connected to each neuron.
A human brain's probable processing power is around 100 teraflops or approximately 100 trillion calculations per second.
Some people have estimated that the storage capacity of the human brain is functionally infinite- that is, we can essentially always find room to store more information if we want to, so no practical limit exists. A more principled lower estimate might be made using the numbers above. Let’s assume that a change in any connection strength between two connected neurons is equal to one bit of information and further assume (a huge over-simplification) that neural connections have just two possible strengths (like a bit in a computer, which is either 1 or 0). Then each neuron has ‘write’ access to 1000 bits of information, or about 1 kilobyte. So we have 100 billion (number of neurons) X 1 K of storage capacity, or 100 billion K. That’s about 100 million megabytes. Since in fact neural connections are not two-state but multi-state and since neuron bodies can also change their properties and thereby store information, this is a very low estimate, so you can see why some people have estimated it to be functionally infinite.
The Difference between Brain and Mind
A computer requires hardware to perform its function. And the hardware needs software to make it run. Without software, hardware would be useless and without hardware, software can not be used. Brain is like the hardware and mind is like the software. But in reality, the difference between brain and mind are more complicated than software and hardware. In our culture we sometimes use the words brain and mind interchangeably even though they really do refer to separate, although often overlapping, concepts. The brain is an organ but the mind isn't. The brain is the physical place where the mind resides. It is a vessel in which the electronic impulses that create thought are contained. With the brain you coordinate your moves, your organism, and your activities and transmit impulses. But you use the mind to think. You can muse at what happened, what is scheduled and what maybe will happen.
The mind is the manifestations of thought, perception, emotion, determination, memory and imagination that take place within the brain. Mind is often used to refer especially to the thought processes of reason. The mind is the awareness of consciousness we know, the ability to control what we do, and know what we are doing and why. It is the ability to understand.
Modern Greek theories see the mind as a phenomenon of psychology, and the term is often used synonymously with consciousness. The Greek concept of “mind” comes from the word phroneo, and it means “to set one’s mind on a thing.” The Lord says, “You have to set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth” (see Col. 3:2). We must set our minds on things above because the mind is seeking to operate in the realm of its natural environment and not be controlled by the limitations of sinful flesh. Thus, the intent of the Spirit in its war against the flesh is to free your mind from being suffocated by the flesh.
This is the battle within all of us!
In a.d. 386, a 32-year-old North African intellectual, now living in Milan, Italy, was sitting in the garden of one of his friends, overwhelmed with grief and sorrow. This man was one of the great scholars of his day, but he was in a battle with his mind, seeking the meaning of life as he also struggled with lust and immorality. His mother, Monica, whom he loved deeply, was distressed with the fact that her young son was living with a mistress. Great sorrow had a grip on his heart as he realized that he had no power to
break the hold of immorality on his life. Sitting there in the garden, his attention was aroused by the voice of a young man whose words rang in his ears, “Pick up and read! Pick up and read!” At the same time, he noticed next to him a scroll that his friend had been reading. As he picked it up and began to read, it appeared as though the words of the apostle Paul to the Romans (13:13-14) leaped off the page:
“…not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and
envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh,
to fulfill its lusts.”
It was at that moment that a spiritual power descended upon him, and a faith was born within him. In his autobiography, Confessions, he wrote these poignant words to
describe what happened that day:
I neither wished nor needed to read further. At once, with the last words of this sentence, it was as if a light of relief from all anxiety flooded into my heart. All the shadows of doubt were dispelled.
The name of this young academic scholar was Aurelius Augustine. Augustine would go on to become the Bishop of Hippo in North Africa, a great pastor, and a Christian theologian. His writings would shape the course of Christian theology to this day.
A Monk Encounters the Apostle Paul In August 1513, an Augustinian monk who was a Professor of Bible in the University of Wittenberg, Germany, was troubled with his spiritual life. For years he had been trying to find peace with God, yet all his religious
efforts could not bring the peace and joy that he was seeking. He had no confidence that God accepted him, no matter how hard he tried to please Him. Troubled by his lack of spiritual clarity, he opened the Book of Romans and was reading chapter 1, verse 17, “…The righteousness of God is revealed…by faith…” (NIV). This young monk could not comprehend what Paul was talking about because his mind had been telling him that God’s righteousness judged him rather than saved him. In an effort to penetrate the meaning of Paul’s words, he wrote: I greatly longed to understand Paul’s letter to the Romans, and nothing stood in the way but that one expression, “the righteousness of God,” because I took it to mean that righteousness whereby God is righteous and acts righteously in punishing the unrighteous…. Night and day I pondered until…I grasped the truth that the righteousness of God is that righteousness whereby, through grace and sheer mercy, he justifies us by faith. Thereupon
I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before “the righteousness of God” had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This message of Paul became to me a gateway into heaven. I am quite sure you know this monk. His name is Martin Luther. The discovery that he made that day not only changed his life, but would lead to the greatest reformation in the history of the Church. When Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the Wittenberg door, he launched revival
fires that spread across 16th-century Europe.
An Anglican’s Encounter With the Book of Romans
In the evening of May 24, 1738, a young Anglican minister ventured out
to attend a meeting with some Moravians who were gathering at Barclays
Bank on Aldersgate Street in London. This young man had started his religious
career with such high expectations. He had graduated from Oxford, where he had been a member of a radical group of Christians called the “Holy Club,” a club started by his younger brother. From there he crossed the ocean to work with the Indians in the state of Georgia. He then returned to England in despair and disillusionment because of his lack of spiritual power. As the troubled young man walked into the meeting that night, the most notable event in 18th-century English history was only seconds away. As he was sitting there in the meeting, someone began to read from Luther’s Preface to the Book of Romans, where he describes what happens when
people open their hearts in simple faith toward the living God. That young man was John Wesley. In his own style, the young minister wrote these classic words:
I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death. The warmth that was generated in his heart that night was about to set all England ablaze with glorious revival. At the age of 35, his life was changed, and there would be no going back to the old ways of religion. The direction for his life was now set on a new path—one that would focus on this message of faith in Christ. He would know for the rest of his life that the God who is reflected in the face of Jesus Christ had come down to earth to visit him and had done for
Wesley precisely what he could never have done for himself. His earlier zeal
for holy living would remain with him, but it would be enhanced with an intense thankfulness for the grace and mercy given to him—a grace and mercy that was not based upon any work that he had ever done, but on Christ’s work alone.
It is in the mind that we wrestle with the spiritual and carnal nature.
Because we have the power to choose, we find ourselves engaged in the daily battle of deciding between life and death.
“For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace” (Rom. 8:6).
Many give their lives to Christ believing that all they have to do is attend church on Sunday, turn over all their problems to God, and subsequently, God will keep the conflict and they then get to go home to live free from their problems. Au contraire, it doesn’t work like that. You can’t just take your sin and your circumstances to the Lord and leave them in some mythical place, thinking that this will resolve the conflict. It is natural that when you give your life to Christ you want to be free of all your issues. You come to Him seeking peace and a refuge from the troubling storms of life
that daily permeate your existence. You want to leave them somewhere far,
far away. So, you take them to the altar to leave them with God. But, where
is the altar if it is not in you? The only altar on which you can lay your troubles is the altar within you. If God is in you, then He is the one who introduces the conflict in order that when you meet God at that place of surrender (the altar), He can begin to replace those things that have always caused conflict between your carnal or sinful desires and the will of the spirit. It is important to understand that your struggle is not with the devil; it is with God, for God has set you up, through the introduction of conflict into your life, in order to bring you to a place of maturity. It is God who often initiates conflict in our lives (except for that self-induced conflict that comes from our own immaturity). Since God is in humanity, when we meet Him at the internal altar, it is in our own minds and hearts where God begins to replace the sinful desires that are inherent in us. How does He do that? He must replace the old mind with a new mind that will now desire spiritual things. In seeking Christ, we eventually discover the freedom we have always longed for.
We are then Set Free indeed!
For the believer ‘the mind of Christ’
Corinthians 2:16
For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?
“But we have the mind of Christ.”
For the believer a mind that is constantly being renewed.
You can't grow in your Christian life if you keep the Bible closed all week long. No one lives on one meal a week, yet many Christians try to get by with just a Sunday dinner of the Word served up by their pastor. How can we expect God's truth to do its transforming work if we never let it into our minds and hearts?
The potential of possessing the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16) introduces the scandal of today’s church—Christians who do not think Christianly, leaving our minds undisciplined. The Apostle Paul understood this well:
“…whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Philippians 4:8).
Each ingredient is a matter of personal choice. You can never have a Christian mind without reading the Scriptures regularly because you cannot be influenced by that which you do not know.
There is a battle going on inside you between your old, sinful nature and your new nature that comes from Christ. If you want to win this battle, you’re going to have to change the way you think.
THE 5-SECOND RULE
Note carefully in the 2 Corinthians 10:5 passage the phrase
“bringing every thought into captivity.”
An outstanding Bible teacher once gave this wonderful word of caution:
When one of those defeating thoughts enters your mind, you’ve got about 5 seconds to “take that thought captive.” If you don’t… that thought is going to take YOU captive!
Romans 12:2
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of
your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Consider the loss of appetite most believers have for God.
When our minds are not being renewed by God’s truth then they are unguarded and susceptible to things which are detrimental and counter to sanctification.
The Scriptures point to the truth that our minds are the anchor of our heart.
God wants us to keep our minds:
Philippians 4:8, 9
“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me practice these things and the God of peace will be with you.”
There are six things in this text that Paul sets forth for us to practice
1) “Whatever is true?” God’s Word is truth!
John 17:17
“Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.”
John 14:6
“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”
If we are to live as those who have the truth of God and not the falsehood of the world then we will change our thinking so that it no longer engages in those things which are irrational but will rationally foster thoughts that proceed from God and not sinful man.
2) “Whatever is honorable?”
Honorable comes from the Greek word ‘semna’ meaning to worship or revere.
When our thoughts are reverent they are dignified, serious and holy in origin.
Titus 2:2
“Older men are to be sober minded, dignified, self controlled, sound in faith, in
love, and in steadfastness.”
Titus 2:7
“Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us.”
As believers we should think thoughts that are characterized by a moral reality that surpasses anything that this world would call dignified.
2 Peter 1:5
“For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge,”
3) “Whatever is just?”
What we deem as ‘just’ or ‘right’ is often seen through eyes of selfishness and self preservation.
When we become believers our definition of what is ‘right’ or ‘fair’ changes because it is no longer defined by our character but by the character of God.
4) “Whatever is pure?”
The word ‘pure’ comes from the Greek word ‘hagna’.
Pure things are those things that do not contaminate oneself or others.
We are to have thoughts that are morally pure.
Do your mental deeds lead you to do things that are morally good or bad?
We should not harbor thoughts that are sinful or dishonorable to God.
Psalms 12:6
“The words of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times.”
5) “Whatever is lovely?”
When our thoughts are ethically beautiful they produce peace.
Means to be agreeable with one another and not irritable in how we think about things.
When people talk with you what do they take away from your conversations?
Do they see you as someone that they enjoy being with?
A mind that is ‘lovely’ is neither unkind, nor does it have the disposition of finding fault with everything.
A ‘lovely’ mind thinks thoughts of reconciliation and not divisiveness.
A ‘lovely’ mind knows the truth but does not use that as an occasion to cause a brother to stumble or as leverage for one’s own personal agenda
6) “Whatever is commendable?”
Do people see you as someone who is well spoken of?
When people talk to you, do the things which proceed from your mouth speak from a mind that is of good report?
Proverbs 10:31
“The mouth of the righteous brings forth wisdom, but the perverse tongue will be cut off. 32 The lips of the righteous know what is acceptable, but the mouth of the wicked, what is perverse.”
What proceeds out of our mouths should be those things which are commendable and a testimony to the Lord and not the precepts of the world.
“Think about these things”
‘Think about these things’ comes from the Greek word ‘logizomai’ from which we get our mathematical word ‘logarithm’.
Paul is calling us, with the same fortitude that it takes to figure out a mathematical problem, to focus our minds on these six elements of right thinking.
Men, we need to be guarding our minds against the attacks of the evil one.
We must fill our minds with the things that are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely and commendable because we are those who now have the mind of Christ and have the capacity to live out our lives in obedience to God.
If we’re thinking what’s right, we can’t be thinking what’s wrong.
Notice that the result of focusing our minds on God (Isa 26:3) is peace, the opposite of war. We can be victorious in the battle with Satan for our minds. When we are, we will find our minds at peace with God. That prepares us to worship and serve Him with all of our hearts and minds.
Philippians 4:
“What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me practice these
things, and the God of peace will be with you.”
Practice makes perfect. ‘We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.’ “Aristotle”
If we’re thinking what’s right, we can’t be thinking what’s wrong.
Holiness of mind:
The spiritual disciplines of holiness begin with the mind.
Proverbs 4:23
“Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”
As men we must be careful what we allow into our minds via the eyes and ears.
‘Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your promotion.’ “Ralph Waldo Emerson”
‘So we must lay down as fundamental to our Christianity this truth: a Christian mind demands conscious negation; a Christian mind is impossible without the discipline of refusal.”
Jeremiah 17:9
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can
understand it? I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”
Make boundaries and stick to them.
Daniel 1:8
“But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food, or
with the wine that he drank. Therefore he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself.”
Modern day media programming is one of the greatest enemies of the Christian mind.
What do you allow in your home?
You are the gatekeeper of the home.
Whatever you allow into your mind will infect your life and those in your home.
Intentional programming:
It is good to keep things out of your mind which do not belong.
It is even better to put things into your mind that make positive changes.
Renewing of our minds happens by filling our lives with God’s truth.
Ephesians 6:10-20
“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the
whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation,
and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.”
The sword of the Spirit shapes and forms our minds.
You can never have a Christian mind without reading the Scriptures regularly. Sunday sermon is good but not enough.
You must feed yourself, allowing God to teach you directly through His Word.
Good Christian literature to renew your mind.
The more we study God’s Word and the more we read Christian literature the more God develops a hunger to know Him more.
Pray now committing your mind to God and asking Him to help you be aware of the ways Satan is attacking you in this area.
Pray continuously throughout the day to rid your mind of the empty or destructive thoughts and to replace them with positive, constructive ones.
Pray God will use your victories to encourage others that are in the battle of their mind.
There is an organ in the body that is about the size of a small head of cauliflower.
This organ has power over many different tasks in our bodies.
It controls body temperature, blood pressure, heart rate and breathing.
It accepts a flood of information about the world around us.
It handles our physical motion when walking, talking, standing or sitting.
It lets us think, dream, reason and experience emotions.
Which organ is it? Our brains. Each and every day your brain is activating thought modules which enable you to interact with the world.
It tells you when it is time to eat.
It helps you compute the speed of vehicles as you are trying to cross the street to determine if there is enough time to get across safely.
It helps you to appreciate a beautiful flower or beautiful scenery.
Our minds have been compared to 1,000 switchboards, each big enough to serve New York City, all running at full speed as they receive and send information.
There is not a computer made that can even come close to accomplishing all that the human brain can.
A human being has about 100 billion brain cells. (Neurons) The approximate times a neuron can fire is about 200 times a second.
Approximately 1000 neurons connected to each neuron.
A human brain's probable processing power is around 100 teraflops or approximately 100 trillion calculations per second.
Some people have estimated that the storage capacity of the human brain is functionally infinite- that is, we can essentially always find room to store more information if we want to, so no practical limit exists. A more principled lower estimate might be made using the numbers above. Let’s assume that a change in any connection strength between two connected neurons is equal to one bit of information and further assume (a huge over-simplification) that neural connections have just two possible strengths (like a bit in a computer, which is either 1 or 0). Then each neuron has ‘write’ access to 1000 bits of information, or about 1 kilobyte. So we have 100 billion (number of neurons) X 1 K of storage capacity, or 100 billion K. That’s about 100 million megabytes. Since in fact neural connections are not two-state but multi-state and since neuron bodies can also change their properties and thereby store information, this is a very low estimate, so you can see why some people have estimated it to be functionally infinite.
The Difference between Brain and Mind
A computer requires hardware to perform its function. And the hardware needs software to make it run. Without software, hardware would be useless and without hardware, software can not be used. Brain is like the hardware and mind is like the software. But in reality, the difference between brain and mind are more complicated than software and hardware. In our culture we sometimes use the words brain and mind interchangeably even though they really do refer to separate, although often overlapping, concepts. The brain is an organ but the mind isn't. The brain is the physical place where the mind resides. It is a vessel in which the electronic impulses that create thought are contained. With the brain you coordinate your moves, your organism, and your activities and transmit impulses. But you use the mind to think. You can muse at what happened, what is scheduled and what maybe will happen.
The mind is the manifestations of thought, perception, emotion, determination, memory and imagination that take place within the brain. Mind is often used to refer especially to the thought processes of reason. The mind is the awareness of consciousness we know, the ability to control what we do, and know what we are doing and why. It is the ability to understand.
Modern Greek theories see the mind as a phenomenon of psychology, and the term is often used synonymously with consciousness. The Greek concept of “mind” comes from the word phroneo, and it means “to set one’s mind on a thing.” The Lord says, “You have to set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth” (see Col. 3:2). We must set our minds on things above because the mind is seeking to operate in the realm of its natural environment and not be controlled by the limitations of sinful flesh. Thus, the intent of the Spirit in its war against the flesh is to free your mind from being suffocated by the flesh.
This is the battle within all of us!
In a.d. 386, a 32-year-old North African intellectual, now living in Milan, Italy, was sitting in the garden of one of his friends, overwhelmed with grief and sorrow. This man was one of the great scholars of his day, but he was in a battle with his mind, seeking the meaning of life as he also struggled with lust and immorality. His mother, Monica, whom he loved deeply, was distressed with the fact that her young son was living with a mistress. Great sorrow had a grip on his heart as he realized that he had no power to
break the hold of immorality on his life. Sitting there in the garden, his attention was aroused by the voice of a young man whose words rang in his ears, “Pick up and read! Pick up and read!” At the same time, he noticed next to him a scroll that his friend had been reading. As he picked it up and began to read, it appeared as though the words of the apostle Paul to the Romans (13:13-14) leaped off the page:
“…not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and
envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh,
to fulfill its lusts.”
It was at that moment that a spiritual power descended upon him, and a faith was born within him. In his autobiography, Confessions, he wrote these poignant words to
describe what happened that day:
I neither wished nor needed to read further. At once, with the last words of this sentence, it was as if a light of relief from all anxiety flooded into my heart. All the shadows of doubt were dispelled.
The name of this young academic scholar was Aurelius Augustine. Augustine would go on to become the Bishop of Hippo in North Africa, a great pastor, and a Christian theologian. His writings would shape the course of Christian theology to this day.
A Monk Encounters the Apostle Paul In August 1513, an Augustinian monk who was a Professor of Bible in the University of Wittenberg, Germany, was troubled with his spiritual life. For years he had been trying to find peace with God, yet all his religious
efforts could not bring the peace and joy that he was seeking. He had no confidence that God accepted him, no matter how hard he tried to please Him. Troubled by his lack of spiritual clarity, he opened the Book of Romans and was reading chapter 1, verse 17, “…The righteousness of God is revealed…by faith…” (NIV). This young monk could not comprehend what Paul was talking about because his mind had been telling him that God’s righteousness judged him rather than saved him. In an effort to penetrate the meaning of Paul’s words, he wrote: I greatly longed to understand Paul’s letter to the Romans, and nothing stood in the way but that one expression, “the righteousness of God,” because I took it to mean that righteousness whereby God is righteous and acts righteously in punishing the unrighteous…. Night and day I pondered until…I grasped the truth that the righteousness of God is that righteousness whereby, through grace and sheer mercy, he justifies us by faith. Thereupon
I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before “the righteousness of God” had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This message of Paul became to me a gateway into heaven. I am quite sure you know this monk. His name is Martin Luther. The discovery that he made that day not only changed his life, but would lead to the greatest reformation in the history of the Church. When Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the Wittenberg door, he launched revival
fires that spread across 16th-century Europe.
An Anglican’s Encounter With the Book of Romans
In the evening of May 24, 1738, a young Anglican minister ventured out
to attend a meeting with some Moravians who were gathering at Barclays
Bank on Aldersgate Street in London. This young man had started his religious
career with such high expectations. He had graduated from Oxford, where he had been a member of a radical group of Christians called the “Holy Club,” a club started by his younger brother. From there he crossed the ocean to work with the Indians in the state of Georgia. He then returned to England in despair and disillusionment because of his lack of spiritual power. As the troubled young man walked into the meeting that night, the most notable event in 18th-century English history was only seconds away. As he was sitting there in the meeting, someone began to read from Luther’s Preface to the Book of Romans, where he describes what happens when
people open their hearts in simple faith toward the living God. That young man was John Wesley. In his own style, the young minister wrote these classic words:
I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death. The warmth that was generated in his heart that night was about to set all England ablaze with glorious revival. At the age of 35, his life was changed, and there would be no going back to the old ways of religion. The direction for his life was now set on a new path—one that would focus on this message of faith in Christ. He would know for the rest of his life that the God who is reflected in the face of Jesus Christ had come down to earth to visit him and had done for
Wesley precisely what he could never have done for himself. His earlier zeal
for holy living would remain with him, but it would be enhanced with an intense thankfulness for the grace and mercy given to him—a grace and mercy that was not based upon any work that he had ever done, but on Christ’s work alone.
It is in the mind that we wrestle with the spiritual and carnal nature.
Because we have the power to choose, we find ourselves engaged in the daily battle of deciding between life and death.
“For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace” (Rom. 8:6).
Many give their lives to Christ believing that all they have to do is attend church on Sunday, turn over all their problems to God, and subsequently, God will keep the conflict and they then get to go home to live free from their problems. Au contraire, it doesn’t work like that. You can’t just take your sin and your circumstances to the Lord and leave them in some mythical place, thinking that this will resolve the conflict. It is natural that when you give your life to Christ you want to be free of all your issues. You come to Him seeking peace and a refuge from the troubling storms of life
that daily permeate your existence. You want to leave them somewhere far,
far away. So, you take them to the altar to leave them with God. But, where
is the altar if it is not in you? The only altar on which you can lay your troubles is the altar within you. If God is in you, then He is the one who introduces the conflict in order that when you meet God at that place of surrender (the altar), He can begin to replace those things that have always caused conflict between your carnal or sinful desires and the will of the spirit. It is important to understand that your struggle is not with the devil; it is with God, for God has set you up, through the introduction of conflict into your life, in order to bring you to a place of maturity. It is God who often initiates conflict in our lives (except for that self-induced conflict that comes from our own immaturity). Since God is in humanity, when we meet Him at the internal altar, it is in our own minds and hearts where God begins to replace the sinful desires that are inherent in us. How does He do that? He must replace the old mind with a new mind that will now desire spiritual things. In seeking Christ, we eventually discover the freedom we have always longed for.
We are then Set Free indeed!
For the believer ‘the mind of Christ’
Corinthians 2:16
For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?
“But we have the mind of Christ.”
For the believer a mind that is constantly being renewed.
You can't grow in your Christian life if you keep the Bible closed all week long. No one lives on one meal a week, yet many Christians try to get by with just a Sunday dinner of the Word served up by their pastor. How can we expect God's truth to do its transforming work if we never let it into our minds and hearts?
The potential of possessing the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16) introduces the scandal of today’s church—Christians who do not think Christianly, leaving our minds undisciplined. The Apostle Paul understood this well:
“…whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Philippians 4:8).
Each ingredient is a matter of personal choice. You can never have a Christian mind without reading the Scriptures regularly because you cannot be influenced by that which you do not know.
There is a battle going on inside you between your old, sinful nature and your new nature that comes from Christ. If you want to win this battle, you’re going to have to change the way you think.
THE 5-SECOND RULE
Note carefully in the 2 Corinthians 10:5 passage the phrase
“bringing every thought into captivity.”
An outstanding Bible teacher once gave this wonderful word of caution:
When one of those defeating thoughts enters your mind, you’ve got about 5 seconds to “take that thought captive.” If you don’t… that thought is going to take YOU captive!
Romans 12:2
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of
your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Consider the loss of appetite most believers have for God.
When our minds are not being renewed by God’s truth then they are unguarded and susceptible to things which are detrimental and counter to sanctification.
The Scriptures point to the truth that our minds are the anchor of our heart.
God wants us to keep our minds:
Philippians 4:8, 9
“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me practice these things and the God of peace will be with you.”
There are six things in this text that Paul sets forth for us to practice
1) “Whatever is true?” God’s Word is truth!
John 17:17
“Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.”
John 14:6
“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”
If we are to live as those who have the truth of God and not the falsehood of the world then we will change our thinking so that it no longer engages in those things which are irrational but will rationally foster thoughts that proceed from God and not sinful man.
2) “Whatever is honorable?”
Honorable comes from the Greek word ‘semna’ meaning to worship or revere.
When our thoughts are reverent they are dignified, serious and holy in origin.
Titus 2:2
“Older men are to be sober minded, dignified, self controlled, sound in faith, in
love, and in steadfastness.”
Titus 2:7
“Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us.”
As believers we should think thoughts that are characterized by a moral reality that surpasses anything that this world would call dignified.
2 Peter 1:5
“For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge,”
3) “Whatever is just?”
What we deem as ‘just’ or ‘right’ is often seen through eyes of selfishness and self preservation.
When we become believers our definition of what is ‘right’ or ‘fair’ changes because it is no longer defined by our character but by the character of God.
4) “Whatever is pure?”
The word ‘pure’ comes from the Greek word ‘hagna’.
Pure things are those things that do not contaminate oneself or others.
We are to have thoughts that are morally pure.
Do your mental deeds lead you to do things that are morally good or bad?
We should not harbor thoughts that are sinful or dishonorable to God.
Psalms 12:6
“The words of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times.”
5) “Whatever is lovely?”
When our thoughts are ethically beautiful they produce peace.
Means to be agreeable with one another and not irritable in how we think about things.
When people talk with you what do they take away from your conversations?
Do they see you as someone that they enjoy being with?
A mind that is ‘lovely’ is neither unkind, nor does it have the disposition of finding fault with everything.
A ‘lovely’ mind thinks thoughts of reconciliation and not divisiveness.
A ‘lovely’ mind knows the truth but does not use that as an occasion to cause a brother to stumble or as leverage for one’s own personal agenda
6) “Whatever is commendable?”
Do people see you as someone who is well spoken of?
When people talk to you, do the things which proceed from your mouth speak from a mind that is of good report?
Proverbs 10:31
“The mouth of the righteous brings forth wisdom, but the perverse tongue will be cut off. 32 The lips of the righteous know what is acceptable, but the mouth of the wicked, what is perverse.”
What proceeds out of our mouths should be those things which are commendable and a testimony to the Lord and not the precepts of the world.
“Think about these things”
‘Think about these things’ comes from the Greek word ‘logizomai’ from which we get our mathematical word ‘logarithm’.
Paul is calling us, with the same fortitude that it takes to figure out a mathematical problem, to focus our minds on these six elements of right thinking.
Men, we need to be guarding our minds against the attacks of the evil one.
We must fill our minds with the things that are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely and commendable because we are those who now have the mind of Christ and have the capacity to live out our lives in obedience to God.
If we’re thinking what’s right, we can’t be thinking what’s wrong.
Notice that the result of focusing our minds on God (Isa 26:3) is peace, the opposite of war. We can be victorious in the battle with Satan for our minds. When we are, we will find our minds at peace with God. That prepares us to worship and serve Him with all of our hearts and minds.
Philippians 4:
“What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me practice these
things, and the God of peace will be with you.”
Practice makes perfect. ‘We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.’ “Aristotle”
If we’re thinking what’s right, we can’t be thinking what’s wrong.
Holiness of mind:
The spiritual disciplines of holiness begin with the mind.
Proverbs 4:23
“Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”
As men we must be careful what we allow into our minds via the eyes and ears.
‘Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your promotion.’ “Ralph Waldo Emerson”
‘So we must lay down as fundamental to our Christianity this truth: a Christian mind demands conscious negation; a Christian mind is impossible without the discipline of refusal.”
Jeremiah 17:9
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can
understand it? I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”
Make boundaries and stick to them.
Daniel 1:8
“But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food, or
with the wine that he drank. Therefore he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself.”
Modern day media programming is one of the greatest enemies of the Christian mind.
What do you allow in your home?
You are the gatekeeper of the home.
Whatever you allow into your mind will infect your life and those in your home.
Intentional programming:
It is good to keep things out of your mind which do not belong.
It is even better to put things into your mind that make positive changes.
Renewing of our minds happens by filling our lives with God’s truth.
Ephesians 6:10-20
“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the
whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation,
and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.”
The sword of the Spirit shapes and forms our minds.
You can never have a Christian mind without reading the Scriptures regularly. Sunday sermon is good but not enough.
You must feed yourself, allowing God to teach you directly through His Word.
Good Christian literature to renew your mind.
The more we study God’s Word and the more we read Christian literature the more God develops a hunger to know Him more.
Pray now committing your mind to God and asking Him to help you be aware of the ways Satan is attacking you in this area.
Pray continuously throughout the day to rid your mind of the empty or destructive thoughts and to replace them with positive, constructive ones.
Pray God will use your victories to encourage others that are in the battle of their mind.
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