Romans 12:2 – Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—His good, pleasing and perfect will.
Romans 8:5 – Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.
6 – The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace;
7 – the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.
8 – Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.
9 – You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you.
As most of you know, I am a “trekkie” — that is to say I have enjoyed all of the various installments of STAR TREK from the “Kirk series” to the “retro-first-Enterprise” series. I mean, I am definitely a true fan! But there’s one episode that was too silly—even for me. I’m referring to season 3 of the first series—and the episode was entitled, “Spok’s Brain.” How many remember that one? For those of you who don’t and for the non-trekkies present, here’s the story line. Captain Kirk and his crew were cruising along at warp speed—basically minding their own business—when an alien vessel, the likes of which they had never seen, came along. Suddenly this woman beamed onto the bridge and tapped some buttons on a control pad that was fastened to her wrist and this caused the entire crew to fall asleep. Sometime later, when the crew woke up, the woman was gone. Nothing seemed amiss until the chief medical officer, Leonard McCoy, discovered Spock in Sickbay, or more accurately, Spok’s functioning body MINUS his brain. McCoy summoned Kirk and when he got there McCoy told him that with medical equipment he could keep Spock’s body alive for about 24 hours, but after that the Vulcan would die. McCoy also told Kirk that even if they were somehow able to find Spok’s brain, he didn’t have the knowledge or skills to surgically replace it in Spock’s body. Well, to make a long story short, eventually they caught up with the woman who made Spok “mindless.” They discovered that her civilization was very advanced technologically. They had amazing machines including a “brain-stimulating” device that could instantly give the wearer knowledge on almost any subject. McCoy put it on and it filled his mind with the knowledge necessary to surgically re-unite Spok’s brain with his body. Without going into any more detail I’ll say that by the end of the episode Spok’s brain was back in his head and he was able to go right back to encouraging everyone to, “…live long and prosper” — a phrase that, by the way, is taken from the Bible…Deuteronomy 5:33. Look it up!
Now—as silly as this episode sounds—there is some scientific fact to this fiction. Thanks to advances in medicine our doctors can transplant kidneys and hearts—even faces—but brain transplants or anything like that…is still beyond us. The truth is we haven’t begun to fathom the mind’s mysteries. This amazing computer that God sculpted from flesh and wired with billions of synapses is far to complex for us to fully understand. In a very real sense treating malfunctioning brains is still in the “stone-age.”
I bring all this up because becoming the me God wants us to be starts up here—in our minds. As Paul infers in our text we can’t truly become transformed unless we “…RENEW of our minds.”
Well, how do we do this “brain surgery?” How do we renew our minds such that they help us to move on toward flourishing as Christ-followers? If you’re our guest, I’ll tell you that as part of our year-long emphasis on discipleship, here at Redland, during the month of October we are studying John Ortberg’s book The Me I Want To Be. This morning’s message is based on chapters seven and eight of that book and if you haven’t joined a small group study of the book, I encourage you to do so! Check out our website for details…but back to our question: How do we RENEW our minds?
(1) Well, according to Ortberg, first, we must learn to HARNESS our DESIRES.
You see, one prerequisite when it comes to moving from our languishing self to our flourishing self is learning how to make ourselves WANT to grow spiritually. Let me put it this way. We have to move from thinking “I SHOULD” become more like Jesus to thinking “I WANT TO” become more like Jesus… “I DESIRE this.”
Jesus was hinting at this aspect of “mind renewal” when He told the parable in Matthew 13 that compared the kingdom of God to a man who found treasure buried in a field and then joyfully sold everything he owned because he had to have that field or the one about the merchant who found a pearl of great value and desired it so much that He went away and sold everything he had so he could buy it. With these stories, our Lord was saying that one thing that can help propel us toward flourishing spiritually is our mental desire to WANT to. Part of renewing our minds is becoming like David when he wrote the words to my favorite Psalm—the 63rd. In the opening verses David said, “O God, you are my God—EARNESTLY I seek You! My soul THIRSTS for You, my body LONGS for You. [It’s like being] in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” Simply put: to grow closer to the me God wants us to become—we have to WANT to.
Now—don’t misunderstand—we can’t rely SOLELY on our DESIRES. That’s not the only thing that prompts us to obey God. “SHOULD” is another important part of our spiritual growth. SHOULD is kind of like an the auxiliary engine on a sail-boat. There are times when we are “dead in the water” spiritually—times when we don’t FEEL like doing the right thing—but we still SHOULD. But the best motivation—is our DESIRES—our “WANT TO.” Last week I told you that spiritual growth—flourishing—is more like a marathon than a sprint and I’m sure that Pat Cash and Kim Griffin and Doug Ringler would tell you that in a marathon SHOULD won’t cut it—especially in those last few miles. At that point, if we are to finish we have to WANT-TO. Well, the same is true of spiritual growth. We need to learn to harness our desires such that we begin to WANT to obey God—LONG to fellowship closely with Him. And that’s not much of a stretch because experience teaches us that it is always DESIRABLE to follow God.
In his book Ortberg invites us to think of it like this: “When we tell people they OUGHT to do something, we can take that ‘OUGHT’ two ways—the ‘OUGHT’ of OBLIGATION…or the ‘OUGHT’ of OPPORTUNITY. The first is our DUTY. You OUGHT to pay your taxes, etc.
The second kind gives us LIFE: You OUGHT to take a break…You OUGHT to see the world. You OUGHT to taste this cake. The “OUGHT’S” of the Christ life are mainly oughts of opportunity.”
And, I think Ortberg is right. Living according to Jesus’ commands is the OPPORTUNITY to experience ABUNDANT life—JOY-filled life—MEANINGFUL life. Unfortunately most people don’t know this. They think of the Christian walk as basically a set of RULES or OBLIGATIONS but it’s so much more than that. This is why in God’s Word we are invited to, “taste and see…that the Lord’s way of living is indeed GOOD!” (Psalm 34:8) This principle is what we see at all those tasting stations at Coscto or Sam’s. They invite us to sample everything from crab dip to apple cobbler because they know if we get a little taste…we will see it is good…and then we will WANT—or DESIRE—to buy a full-sized jar of the stuff to take home.
The same is true of God. He IS good—all the time—and the more we discover this—the more we TASTE His goodness—the more we will WANT to obey Him. The fact is God gave us our desires and He wants us to enjoy satisfying them in ways that help us to experience the joys He designed us to enjoy. Psalm 145:16 says, “Open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing. The Lord is righteous in all His ways and loving toward all He has made. He fulfills the desires of those who fear Him.” So—the MIND-RENEWING fact is that satisfying our desires CAN be a way to understand how GOOD God really is.
Of course—like everything else in this fallen world our desires can be distorted by sin. If we DON’T harness them, they can lead us to actions and attitudes that bring pain to both us and our loved ones. If we’re not careful, satisfying our desires can bring our spiritual growth to a grinding halt—actions and attitudes that distort the ME God calls us to BE. There are times when we have to say “no” to our desires—those self-centered yearnings that keep us from following Christ. As Jesus said, part of following Him is,“…denying ourselves and taking up our cross.” But in our denial of self we have to be careful not to go to the OTHER extreme because nothing makes a human being more vulnerable to temptation than a joyless life. No—God’s plan is that we harness the unique desires He has given to each of us and learn to satisfy them in ways that help us to both do the good work He designed us to do—and actually ENJOY the life He’s given us. You see, when we harness our desires—when we satisfy them in the RIGHT way—we find ourselves loving God more and more. We come to the point where we WANT TO follow Him more and more closely. You see, our God-given desires aren’t bad in and of themselves. In fact, they are a wonderful blessing. As James says, “Every good and perfect gift comes down from above, from the Father of all lights” and this would include using our desires to lead us to Godliness.
In his book Ortberg explains all this by suggesting four categories of desires and how satisfying them in the right way can move us toward becoming the me we want to be.
a. For example, there are MATERIAL desires.
We all have desires for material things and that kind of desire is not necessarily a bad thing. Used in the right way a desire for MATERIAL things can be wonderful! I’m going to shock you—but the truth is, even a desire to accumulate MONEY is not necessarily evil. If you doubt that then I would point you to the Biblical record of people who used that particular desire to further the Kingdom of God. One such person is Joseph of Arimathea, a man who obviously had a lot of cash—and that enabled him to provide a tomb for our Lord to use—albeit temporarily! Another example is Lydia, the seller of purple cloth in Philippi. She must have had a desire for making money because she was very good at it. Think of how hard it would be for a woman in that culture to succeed in business but she did. Lydia did so well that she owned her own home—a home that was large enough to host the church that Paul started there….the first church in Europe! Think of it! Of all the beautiful cathedrals built on that continent over the ages, the very first one was the home of this business woman who was also the first convert in that part of the world. God used her desire to accumulate money in a powerful, flourishing way. The name “Lydia” means “worshiper of God” and she used her desire for wealth to provide a place where people could worship our Lord.
I have known people like her—people God blessed financially because He knew they could be trusted to use their desire to accumulate material wealth to bless others…and because they did this…because they harnessed that desire—they flourished. They became more like God, “Who loved so much that He gave…” The fact is, using your DESIRE for material things can be a wonderful way to TASTE AND SEE that God is good—it can be a way to move from serving God because you SHOULD…to serving Him because you WANT to.
b. Second, there is the desire for ACHIEVEMENT.
We often think that ambition is always a sinful thing but that’s not true. Wanting to DO great things—can in itself be a GREAT thing! The Apostle Paul is a perfect example. He had a burning desire to take the Gospel Message where it had never been taken before. He wanted to do something big—something world-changing with his life—and God used that desire in a powerful way. He didn’t take away Paul’s ambition. He just helped him harness that desire for Kingdom purposes.
The truth is all humans have an inborn desire to achieve. This is because God wired us to have DOMINION over the world—programmed us to get pleasure from doing our best at something.
In fact, God tells us that, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.” (Ecclesiastes 9:10) In fact, I think that striving for excellence in a would plagued by mediocrity can give you opportunities to share your faith. When done in the right attitude, our GOOD works can indeed point people to God.
Now—of course we have to be careful because sin can lead us to warp this desire such that achievement leads us to become prideful…or it can turn us into workaholics who neglect their families…and who use people. But when done correctly, God can use our desire to achieve great things—in a way that pleases both Him and us.
Several years ago I toured the Missionary Training Center down in Richmond, Virginia. It’s a beautiful complex…acres of gorgeous Virginia rolling hills….an amazing campus with comfortable housing, a gymnasium, a cafeteria where missionaries can learn to eat the food they will eat in the countries they serve..classrooms where they can get training to prepare them for working with unreached people groups. It’s amazing. And that training center was paid for by someone who harnessed his desire to achieve in a God-pleasing way. I’m referring to the DAY family—more specifically, the DAYS’ INN family. They used the money they earned achieving to build that center and then run it on interest in perpetuity. Think of Christian ACHIEVERS like Ben Carson, who made great advances in medicine or believers like Jan Karron who wrote great books….or believers like we studied this summer who achieved great things in other fields. God gave those people the desire to achieve…and they used it for His purposes. They learned to serve God not just because the SHOULD but because they WANTED to—DESIRED to!
c. Next there are RELATIONAL desires.
Some people are blessed with the desire to RELATE to others. They are just naturally GREAT at making friends and developing deep relationships. This is another wonderful desire to have—and satisfy—if we learn do so in a God-pleasing way.
Tony Camplo tells of a friend who attended grad school with him and went on to teach at Trenton State University. But this man, who held a PH.D in English, gave up his teaching job only three weeks after he began it. Campolo talked to him and asked him why he had quit. He said, “Tony, I just can’t teach. Every time I walked into that class and gave a lecture, I died a little.” Tony said, “Well, what are you doing now?” And his friend said, “I’m a mailman—a Ph. D. mailman. There aren’t too many of us! But I have to confess I’m a lousy mailman.
Everybody else gets the mail delivered by one o’clock. I never get back until about 5:30PM.”
Campolo asked him to explain his tardiness and he said, “I visit. You wouldn’t believe how many people on my route never got visited until I became the mailman. But I’ve got this problem. I can’t sleep at nights.” Camplo asked, “Why?” And He said, “Who can sleep after drinking 20 cups of coffee?!”
This man had big RELATIONAL desires. He loved being with people and he let God use that desire. I mean, this PH.D. mailman gave the people on his route much more than just the mail.
He visited solitary widows, counseled troubled teens, joked with lonely old men. Camplo reports that he is the only mailman that he knows of that on his birthday, the people on his route get together, hire out a gym, and throw a party for him. They love him because he’s a mailman who expresses the love of Jesus everywhere he goes. In his own way—according to God’s custom design—he is using his desire to change this world, changing the lives of people, touching them where they are, making a difference. So, as Ortberg writes, “If you have a gift for hospitality, throw parties on a regular basis. The joy you feel when people are gathering and talk is flowing and laughter is resounding and new friendships are being forged comes from God. Your living room can become an outpost of the fellowship of the Spirit.”
By the way, we need people with this particular DESIRE in the ROC. We can use rec to give people what they need to give them what they want…but only if we use rec to build relationships.
d. Finally, our PHYSICAL desires can be harnessed for good.
Listen. God made our bodies with appetites….desires for things to eat, drink, touch, smell, see—PHYSICAL desires. And in and of themselves they are not wrong. Even satisfying our sexual desires is wonderful—when done within the boundaries of marriage. Eating is pleasing to God as long as we don’t slip into gluttony. In fact, the Old Testament is filled with commands for the Hebrew people to feast, eat, drink celebrate, sing, dance, make music—all things we do with our bodies. If we harness our physical desires in the correct way, they can become a way for us to experience God’s great goodness. Ortberg writes, “God loves it when you enjoy stretching or training your body in new skills, or when you enjoy what your eyes see, your ears hear, your mouth tastes, and you skin feels. As you open yourselves to the flow of the Spirit in your physical desires you begin to love God more and more…not because you should or because it’s commanded but because when you get to know Him, you just can’t help it.”
It’s only when we forget the Source of this blessing and begin to worship the physical instead of letting it remind us of our Creator…it’s only then that physical desire becomes wrong. So to become the ME we WANT to BE—the ME God created us to be—we need to HARNESS OUR DESIRES such that we taste and see that God is indeed good. Then we begin to serve Him not just because we SHOULD but because we WANT to.
(2) In his next chapter Ortberg points out that a second thing we must do to renew our minds is learn to MANAGE our THOUGHTS.
You see actions come from feelings—and feelings come from our thoughts. Positive feelings like joy and gratitude and pleasure can make us feel like there’s nothing we can’t do—but negative feelings like anxiety or sadness or anger make us want to give up. And—as I said—FEELINGS come from our THOUGHTS. Discouraged people think discouraging thoughts. Worried people think worried thoughts. Negative thoughts like these can bring even spiritual giants down. The prophet Elijah is an example. Remember? After his experience on Mt. Carmel where he called down fire from Heaven and slew the prophets of Baal…Elijah learned that Queen Jezebel was out to kill him. He became depressed and hopeless such that he ran out in the middle of the desert and told God he just wanted to die. Well, God helped Elijah do a little “mind surgery” by replacing those life-killing thoughts with life-GIVING ones. He told him to eat and rest. When he woke up God told him he wasn’t alone. God told him He wasn’t finished because He still had a mission for Elijah to accomplish. I mean, Elijah thought his problem was Jezebel—but it was actually his mind….his thinking was flawed.
The same is true of us because we all face “Jezebel’s” in life. The challenge is to learn to control how we think about them when they come. We need to do as Paul says in this paraphrase of Romans 12:2, “Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you THINK.”
Listen, we can’t change the way we feel and act until we let God change the way we think and perceive…especially when it comes to the way we think of and perceive of God. Quickly let’s look at two ways we can control our thinking.
A. First, we must learn to MONITOR our minds.
You see, our thought patterns become habits in that we don’t even realize we are thinking them.
We get used to anxious thoughts or bitter thoughts or unforgiving thoughts or covetous thoughts—such that we don’t even notice anymore. And we have to notice because this kind of mindlessness is one of the great barriers to flourishing. We begin to grow spiritually only when we learn to pay attention to our thinking. The psalmist was referring to this when he wrote, “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.” (Psalm 139:23). In other words, he was saying, “God help me monitor my thoughts.”
This is a great prayer to pray because God knows our thoughts better than we do and He has the power to help us step back and observe our thought processes such that we know what is going on between our ears. As Paul says in our text, “The mind controlled by the sinful nature is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace.” So—we need to learn, with God’s help to back up and look closely at our thought patterns.
There was a period in my life—I was in college at the time—and I was going through a very difficult time. I won’t go into the nitty gritty details…but it was one of those “night-mare problems” where all you think about is the problem and like many people who go through tough times I was catastrophizing the situation. That is to say my thinking was that “this was the end…the problem would never go away…my life was over.” It was a catastrophe! It got so bad I couldn’t sleep at night and in an attempt to get some help I went and spent a weekend with my Aunt Kathryn. She lived only a few hours away. Aunt Kathryn is my dad’s baby sister and she is a loving—fun-to-be-with person. It was great staying with her but that night alone in my room the anxious thoughts returned and I could not sleep. I could not get the “night mare” to go away.
All I could think of was the problem and in my thinking my life was over. Well, in desperation I got my Bible and it fell open to Isaiah chapter 26…and it was as if God shown a light on verses 3-4 where it says, “[God] will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is stayed on Thee. Trust in the Lord forever for the Lord is the ROCK eternal.” In that moment, God helped me monitor my thinking such that I could see that my problem was not the “Jezebel-issue” I was dealing with at the moment. It was the way I was THINKING about that “Jezebel issue.” I was focusing on my problem instead of focusing on my all-loving—all-powerful Heavenly Father. My thoughts were leading me away from flourishing…away from God’s best version of me. God helped me to step back and “see” or “monitor” this….which leads to the second thing we can do—MUST DO—to control our thoughts.
B. We have to learn to SET our minds.
You see, monitoring flawed thinking isn’t enough. When we see the flaws we have to do something to change that line of thinking. Now, we can’t stop thinking wrong thoughts by trying harder not to think them, but we can do something else. We can SET our minds such that we choose what to pay attention to. Ortberg writes, “At any moment we can turn our thoughts in one direction or another. It is within our capacity to set our minds. This explains why two people can be in the same set of circumstances and yet have completely different experiences.”
Have you ever heard about the comparison that was done between a DOG’S DIARY and a CAT’s DIARY? In addition to giving us a grin it this old joke shows the difference a mind SET can make. Here’ goes:
EXCERPTS FROM A DOG’S DIARY
8:00AM – Dog food! My favorite thing!
9:30AM – A car ride! My favorite thing!
9:40AM – A walk in the park! My favorite thing!
10;30AM – God rubbed and petted! My favorite thing!
12:00PM – Lunch! My favorite thing!
1:00PM – Played in the yard! My favorite thing!
3:00PM – Wagged my tail! My favorite thing!
5:00PM – Milk bones! My favorite thing!
7:00PM – Got to play ball! My favorite thing!
8:00PM – Wow! Watched TV with the people! My favorite thing!
11:00PM – Sleeping on the bed! My favorite thing!
EXCERPTS FROM A CAT’S DIARY
Day 983 of my captivity. My captors continue to taunt me with bizarre, little dangling objects. The only thing that keeps me going is my dream of escape.
Two pets—with identical circumstances—but totally different experiences and the difference was the way they thought. The dog THOUGHT gratitude—the cat was focused on ENTITLEMENT. The difference was their mind set. So, to paraphrase the poet: “One ship sails east, one ship sails west. Regardless of how the winds blow. It is the set of the sail and not the gale that determines the way we go.” We decide which way to “sail” in our thought life…towards gratitude or entitlement…toward joy or towards pessimism….toward fear or toward trust. It is as John Milton wrote in his epic poem, Paradise Lost, “The mind is its own place and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell and a Hell of Heaven.” The way we SET our minds to think—can make a world of difference.
That night at my Aunt Kathryn’s God was telling me I need to SET my mind to think on His greatness and power and love…my mind needed to be STAYED or SET on HIM. I wasn’t able to sleep because it was STAYED or SET on my problem. I needed to do as Paul says in Colossians 3:2, where he writes, “Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things.” In short, we need to SET our mind to think RIGHT things—TRUE things. When we do this we are empowered to boldly move on toward Christlikeness. When we SET our minds to think of God’s greatness and sovereignty, fear goes away and we are then freed to grow. Ortberg says, “The ultimate freedom that you have, the freedom no one can take away from you is the freedom to decide what your mind will dwell on. I set my mind’ to look for the presence and goodness of God in my life.”
He is right. No matter what thought is plaguing us, we can ask God to help RE-SET our thoughts so that we move away from languishing and toward flourishing.
Let’s say we find ourselves thinking fearful thoughts like I did that night at my Aunt Kathryn’s. We can say, “God, reset my heart. Help me think rightly about this.” — and He will. He’ll remind us that He is BIGGER than any problem we face and that He loves us with an everlasting love and will never leave our side. That thought will change things—if we learn to SET our minds to think about it. Let’s say we find ourselves thinking angry thoughts. Someone has taken advantage of us. They have gossiped about us behind our back. We are mad—want to get even. We want to tell others all about how BAD this person has treated us. In angry times we can pray and ask God to RESET our thinking and He will. He’ll remind us that NOTHING escapes His all-seeing eyes and that we can trust Him to see that justice is done. He’ll remind us that He loves this person who has hurt us—and that Jesus died for him just as much as He died for us. He’ll help us to see why this person behaves that way….such that we feel compassion instead of anger.
God can reset any negative thought—selfishness, unforgiveness, fear, lust, pride—if we let Him.
Would you pray with me?