The Christian Mind: The Groan of the Godly

Life of the Church

Good morning everyone, and thank you for joining us for our worship service. It’s good to see you all here today.

I have a few announcements to mention this morning, first of which, you’ll notice that Sue isn’t with us today. She’s feeling a little under the weather, so we’ve had to do a little adjusting for today and tonight. Jennifer will be taking care of some of the musical duties this morning (thank you, Jennifer), and Lisa Brooks will be leading the women’s Bible study this evening (thank you, Lisa). There will be no bells or ensemble rehearsal tonight, but the women’s Bible study for tomorrow morning is still happening. Sue’s hoping to be feeling better by then.

The men’s group will meet tonight. All men are invited to that. There will also be a men’s prayer breakfast next Sunday morning.

The security team will be meeting again tomorrow evening. If you’re on the security team, please try to attend that.

I’ll remind you of the love offering we’re taking up for the month of February for a longtime church family. Please consider giving to that, and be sure to mark your envelope “love offering” before placing it in the offering plate.

Don’t forget our church luncheon next Sunday. Please try to attend that, and we’ll have a donation basket available to help offset the cost.

If you haven’t dropped off your baby bottle yet, please bring it to the church office sometime early this week.

You’ll also find a form in your bulletin to order Easter lilies. Please return those by March 12.

Thank you to those who came out for our business meeting this past week. We voted on beginning a new ministry through the church that will offer Christian counseling to members of our church and to our community. Jesyka will be heading that up, so please be in prayer for her and for all those who will benefit from that.

And lastly, Dave Chappell from White Hill Church of the Brethren reached out to me this week. Dave is one of the pastors here in town involved in trying to pull together all the local churches to help our community. Tonight at six, there will be a prayer gathering at White Hill for all the churches and believers in town who would like to gather to pray for renewal and for all the things that we’re trying to do. If you’re able to go, I encourage you to do so.

Jesyka, do you have anything morning?

Let’s begin our worship with the prelude.

Opening Prayer

Let’s pray:

Father thank you for this time to come together as one and worship you. We pray your goodness will be upon all you have made. Remember all those who are suffering this day. Lift up those who are cast down. Cheer with hope all who are discouraged and downcast. Father on this day we ask that you come into this place and dwell with us, giving us your mercy and your grace and your abounding love. Grant this, O Lord, for the love of him who for our sakes became poor, your Son our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Sermon

I don’t think I ever told you about the night of my ordination meeting. We were all gathering here at the church in one of the Sunday school rooms. Vonda was there, and Jim and George, so I knew I’d at least have some friends in the room.

I didn’t really know what to expect, other than a whole lot of questions. We’re all sitting there, and in walk these six Baptist preachers. They’re all older gentlemen, very distinguished looking. They’re all dressed in that kind of old-fashioned preacher way — dress shirt and tie with a sweater over top and then a suit jacket. All of them looking very serious and speaking in low voices to each other.

They all sit at the table and look at me, and I think: Oh boy, I’m in trouble here. These guys are going to eat me alive. What am I doing? This is a mistake. How did I get myself into this mess? I shouldn’t be here. These guys are smart. I’m an idiot. They’re wise, I’m ignorant. This is going to be embarrassing.

It was about two hours, that meeting. Thankfully, everything went great. And wouldn’t you know it, none of those things I thought would happen actually did. It wasn’t a mistake. It wasn’t embarrassing. Those pastors didn’t eat me alive. They were smart and wise, but they were also supportive and kind.

I learned a lot from that meeting. It actually became one of the most valuable evenings of my life. And the best piece of advice those men gave me was this one — as a pastor called to stand up in the pulpit every Sunday and speak God’s truth, you have to get used to being a hypocrite. You have to learn to accept that you’ll get up there every Sunday and tell people that they need to do things they don’t always do, and you know that you don’t always do them either. Because for all the things that a pastor is, a human being is at the top of the list. A pastor’s no different from any other person in the congregation — he’s working out his salvation with fear and trembling too. He’s like everyone else trying to practice what he preaches — literally — but like everyone else, he still falls short all the time.

That ordination meeting was a perfect example. What does Paul say in Philippians 4 about what we should fill our minds with? Whatever is true. Whatever is honorable. Whatever is just and pure and lovely and commendable.

As Christians, those are the things we should always be thinking about. That night, my mind was filled with the complete opposite, and in a little bit I’m going to tell you why. But right now, and for the next few weeks, I want to talk about all those thoughts you think, because you have a lot of them — about 70,000 a day, as a matter of fact. No wonder you’re so tired with all those thoughts swimming around in your head. And I want to talk about your brain, because it’s the most amazing creation of God that we know.

More than 100,000 chemical reactions take place in your brain every second. The electrical signals that produce your thoughts move from one neuron in your brain to another at about 260 miles an hour, and you have about 100 billion of those neurons, and you have about a trillion cells that help support those neurons, and you have about 400 miles of blood vessels. All right here, right between your ears. It’s amazing.

What’s even more amazing, and here’s where we start getting to the heart of this new series, is that almost all of your living, almost all of your faith, almost all of your problems and struggles, are all right here too, right between your ears. Paul said to fill your mind with godly thoughts, but the truth is that most of those 70,000 thoughts you think every day are negative. Jesus said to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength. But he also said to love God with all your mind, and that can be a hard thing to do when your mind’s always drifting to things like worry, and fear, and guilt, and shame.

We always talk about how important it is to have a Christian love, and a Christian heart, and a Christian perspective. But all of those things depend on having a Christian mind. And when I say a Christian mind, I’m not talking about your knowledge. I’m not talking about what you know.

I’m talking about how you think — how you think about the world, about other people, and especially how you think about yourself. Because how you think about those things are going to define how you think about God, and the whole point of living the Christian life is thinking about God clearly. It’s about seeing Him for who He truly is, and that’s going to be impossible if your mind is cluttered up with attitudes and mindsets and old ways of thinking that just aren’t true.

We talked about this a while back during our series about spiritual warfare, didn’t we? What’s that helmet of salvation for? It protects your mind, doesn’t it? And Paul said we all need that helmet because we all struggle with how we think about things — ourselves especially. As Christians, we’re torn between this higher and better life that God calls us to have in Him, and the life that we actually live. That’s our problem, and it’s a problem stated nowhere better than in Romans chapter 7. Turn there with me now. We’re going to be looking at verses 15-25:

For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.

Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.

For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

And this is God’s word.

Aside from Jesus himself, it’s hard to find a better mind anywhere in the Bible than the one Paul has. Sometimes that makes him a little hard to read — even in this passage it’s easy to get turned around unless you go through it carefully. But of all the great things Paul wrote while inspired by the Holy Spirit, these verses in Romans 7 might be my favorite, because it shows that for all of Paul’s gifts, he was just as screwed up as I am.

Because right there in verse 15, he describes the problem we all have: I want to do the thing that’s right, but instead I end up doing the thing that’s wrong, and I don’t understand why I do it. That perfectly states things, doesn’t it?

You love God. You love Jesus. You depend on the Holy Spirit to make you a little better and a little more holy every day. You pray and you read your Bible, you do all of those things you’re supposed to do, but every day you still end up making the same mistakes over and over. You have a mind that wants to do good, but sometimes it’s almost like your mind automatically does bad without you even knowing it. It’s almost like we’re surprised — that’s what Pauls hinting at when he begins verse 15 with, “For I do not understand my own actions.”

Just like verse 15 says, the reason you feel like that isn’t because you just don’t know any better. You know the way you’re supposed to be living, don’t you? More than that, you want to live that way because you love God. You’re thankful for all the blessings He’s given to you. You’re thankful for Christ’s forgiveness. You’re thankful for heaven. And you know the best way to be thankful is to live life the way God says you should.

That’s what Paul’s getting at in verse 16: “Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good.” He’s saying the fact that he doesn’t like his own behavior is proof that he wants to follow God’s commandments, because he knows following those commandments will lead to a happy life.

So the reason you do all those bad things isn’t because you like it — at least I hope not, or at least not all the time. So what is the reason? Paul tells us in verse 17: “So now it is no longer I who it, but sin that dwells in me.”

There it is. That’s your problem. Paul says the reason you struggle is that because you’re a Christian, you’re basically two people. There’s the real you, the soul that’s under grace and forgiven. But there’s also that sinful part of you that comes from just being a human in a fallen world.

That real you has been redeemed by Christ. And Paul says one chapter later in Romans 8:1 that there’s no condemnation for anyone who is in Christ Jesus. All those bad things you do and think, that all goes to the sin that’s still inside you. The real you, the forgiven you, doesn’t take any of the blame.

That’s the good news. But here’s the bad — you’re forgiven of your sins, but you’re not freed from your sins. That doesn’t happen until you get to heaven. Which means you’re going to struggle with wanting to do good but still doing bad for the rest of your life.

Paul talks about this in Galatians 5:17 when he says, “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” The new person that you are is clinging to Christ, but the old person you are is clinging to sin, and they’re both trying to claim all your attention.

But you might say, “Wait a minute. Doesn’t the Bible say the old me was put to do with Christ?” As a matter of fact, it does. Turn back one chapter to Romans 6. Look at verses 1-6:

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

That old you is dead, Paul says, but that’s just a legal term. When Paul says the old you is dead, he means that sin no longer has power over your soul. Christ has forgiven your sins. You’re now wearing the breastplate of his righteousness. But when it comes to just getting through every day and living your life, you’re still going to struggle.

That’s what verse 18 means. Paul says he knows that nothing good dwells in him — everything good in his life is because of Christ. The Holy Spirit has made him new. All the bad comes from that old self who’s still hanging around, and all the fighting between your new life your old life is what being a Christian is all about.

And let me tell you, that’s one tough struggle. And the reason it’s so hard is because it’s all fought right here, right in your mind. And for all the wonders that make up your brain, for all its power and capability, your mind is just as damaged by sin as your heart and your body. What makes it even harder is that your brain never rests. Even when you sleep, your mind doesn’t.

How often have you dreamed about the things that are bothering you?

How often do you remember your failures?

How often does your mind point out all those things you’re doing wrong? How you’re not measuring up? How you’re not rich enough, or pretty enough, or young enough, or skinny enough, or good enough? How you’ll always be a failure, you’ll always be a loser?

I had a man in my office this week, a good man, in tears saying that he’s cursed. And he meant it. And don’t you dare say, “How can anybody think that?” because you know very well. You think like that too. I think like that. One tiny thought born from one tiny memory leads to another, and another, and another, and before you know it you are absolutely convinced of something even though you know it’s not true. And you hate that. You hate that your mind is like that. You even hate yourself. That’s exactly why Paul gives us verse 24. Verse 24 is the logical end to all of this, isn’t it? There’s nowhere else all of this struggle between wanting to do right but still doing wrong can lead but for us to say, “Wretched person that I am! I hate myself! Who’s going to save me from me?”

That is the godly groan of the Christian. That is the strain of wanting to change and be like Christ but always falling back into those old ways of thinking. Your mind is the battleground for all of that. That’s where the fight for your life is either won or lost. And it’s so hard to win that fight because of one thing — because of your record player.

We all know what a record player is. Even the young kids know, because record players are popular again. That’s what your mind basically is. Your brain can hold the equivalent of 2.5 billion gigabytes of memory. I don’t know anything about that stuff, but I know that 2.5 billion is a big number. It’s even bigger when you realize the most powerful supercomputer in the world only has about 10,000 gigabytes of memory.

You have a lifetime of memories stored right there in your mind, and every one of those memories is like a groove in a record. Some of those grooves aren’t very deep. Those are the memories you don’t really think about anymore. But then you have grooves are are really deep. Those are the memories you keep coming back to over and over again. Sometimes you think about them on purpose, but a lot of times those memories are kind of like a default setting. You just automatically come back to them all the time. And every time you remember them, that groove just gets deeper.

Your mind is built to make sense of whatever is happening to you. Right? In any given situation, your mind is trying to answer one question — “What does this mean?” That question is like the needle on your record player. And if you leave that needle alone and just let it go wherever it wants, it’s always going to settle into the first deep groove it can find. You’re always going to connect your circumstances to one of those memories that stand out in your mind.

Does that make sense? Do you follow me? Because that’s really important, and I’ll tell you why: All of the really deep grooves that your needle always finds and all of those memories you keep coming back to? They’re all bad ones.

You remember the bad things you’ve done and said, and you remember the bad things that have been done and said to you, way longer and way more accurately than any of the good things. Scientists think that’s because those bad things carried a lot of stress and negative emotions with them, and that just kind of stamped those memories into your brain.

Someone might have made you feel stupid years ago, and so because that groove on your record is a deep one, it doesn’t take much to make you feel stupid now.

An offhand comment from somebody in your third-grade class about your looks still makes you feel ugly.

An old romance from years ago that left you rejected still makes you feel unworthy of love.

A mistake you made, something you either did or didn’t do, can convince you that you’ll always make that mistake. Or worse, you think that mistake has cost you a good future. That mistake cost you all the good things that God had for you. All because that needle in your mind always finds that deepest groove, and then makes it even deeper. That explains why we get into such a rut sometimes. Why we’re stuck in worry and fear and why we can’t seem to get out of our own way. It even explains our prejudices and biases. Because we’re not thinking clearly the way God wants, we’re just making our grooves deeper.

Look back at verse 15. When Paul sat down to write this letter to the Romans, he didn’t write it in English. Sometimes we have to remember that. This letter wasn’t written in the King James, it was written in Greek. In the second part of verse 15 where Paul writes, “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate,” the word “do” is used three times. But Paul actually uses a different Greek word for every one of those times.

When Paul says, “I do not do what I want,” that first instance of “do” is actually a word that means perform. It a word that describes a deliberate action. “I don’t perform,” is what he’s saying. The second Greek word that Paul uses for “do” is a word that describes a single action. He’s saying, “I don’t perform that one thing I really want to do.”

But that third time you see the word “do” in verse 15, where Paul writes, “but I do the very thing I hate”? That’s a word in Greek that means something you do over and over again. It’s a habit. In other words, when Paul says, “I do the very thing I hate,” he’s talking about his record player.

The needle on my record player found a deep groove that night of my ordination meeting. My deepest groove is the one that says I’m not good enough. Not smart enough. That I’ll let people down and end up being a disappointment. And you can look at me and say, “That’s not true at all.” (At least I hope you can say that. If you can’t, please keep that to yourself. I have enough doubts as it is.) But that’s not true for you either. That’s what I want you to know.

Over and over, science is proving that what the Bible says is true. You see it in history, in archaeology, in cosmology, and you see that in psychology and neuroscience too. What psychology is telling us today is the same thing that Solomon wrote in Proverbs a few thousand years ago: You are what you think. And if God told Solomon that you are what you think, that has to mean you can control what you think. Might not seem like it. Might not feel like it. But God gives you two things to get started, and the first one is truth.

Truth. That needle in your mind keeps settling into the deepest grooves, and those deepest grooves are your worst memories. Those are your worst regrets and shame over your worst moments. Of all the billions of memories you have, those few are the ones that define your life instead of all the other good memories that speak to God’s love and protection for you.

That doesn’t make sense at all, does it? God doesn’t want you doing that. God has given you the power through Christ and the Holy Spirit to start keeping your needle out of those deep grooves. And the more the needle stays out of those grooves, the more shallow those grooves become. But to do that, you need to know the truth. And the truth is that all those deep grooves, all those shames and regrets and bad thoughts that you let define your life, are all lies.

Remember, you have an enemy. The devil is out to stop you, to destroy you, and to devour you. His main goal is to keep you from the life God wants you to live, and the best way he can do that is to fill your thoughts with lies.

Lies have a lot of power. A lie that you believe is every bit as strong as truth. At every moment, the devil’s looking for a way to get you to believe what isn’t true. He’s trying to lock you in a prison of lies where he can control you and keep you defeated, and where you won’t be a threat to him. But the only way you can be a prisoner in that cell is if you let him.

Harry Houdini was the greatest escape artist who ever lived. He liked to travel all over the country visiting towns to do his act, and his favorite thing to do was to visit the local jails. He’d gather a crowd of people and then tell the jailer to lock him in one of the cells, and then Houdini would escape. He would always escape. Usually it only took him a few minutes.

But one time in one of those towns Houdini went to, the jailer decided to do his own magic trick. He put Houdini in one of the cells and shut the door, but then the jailer turned the key in the wrong direction. He didn’t lock the door, he unlocked it. Then he took the key out, stepped back, and everyone watched the world’s greatest magician try to escape. But he couldn’t. Houdini had done this a thousand times, but this time he was stuck because every time he picked that lock and turned it, the only thing he managed was to lock himself inside.

So he had to try again. The jailer put the key in, turned it back the other way, took the key out, and stepped back. All Houdini had to do was push the cell door open, but instead he picked the lock and ended up locking himself in the cell again. He believed the lie that the door was locked, and that lie kept him captive. The truth would have set him free. Getting your mind out of those grooves and onto the truth will set you free, too.

Now for the second and the most important thing you need. That’s found at the end of Romans 7. Paul cries out with that groan of the godly in verse 24 and says, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” And then he answers himself right away in verse 25: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

There it is. That’s where Paul’s deliverance comes from, and that’s where yours will come from too — from Christ. But it’s not a deliverance that comes all at once. It’s a process, and even though the result of that process is guaranteed, it’s still going to take you a lifetime.

What does that process look like? What does the Bible say you need to do in order to finally free yourself from all those destructive thoughts? That’s what we’re going to find out these next few weeks. Today’s all about defining the problem. That’s this passage in Romans 7. That’s understanding what the record player in your mind is all about. That’s understanding why you need to cling to the truth and to Christ.

Ask any psychiatrist or psychologist or counselor what the two biggest issues people are suffering from the most today, they’ll tell you it’s guilt and shame. Guilt over something they’ve done, and shame over who they think they are as a person. The secular world says the key to overcoming that shame and guilt is to study yourself. You have to look deep inside yourself.

But that never works, because the more you study yourself and the deeper you look into your own heart, the more bad you’re going to find and the worse you’re going to feel. Look at what Paul says in verse 18: “For I know that nothing good dwells in me.”

The answer isn’t to look at yourself. The answer is to look at Christ. That needle will always find your deepest grooves until you realize and accept once and for all that you are not what other people say you are. You are not even who you say you are. You are who Jesus says you are, and Jesus says you are so precious and valuable that he came into the world and died just for you.

We were talking in men’s group the other week, and Jim made a great point. He said that churches are filled with prayer requests, but pretty much all of them are for physical ailments, aren’t they? Someone is hurt, someone is sick, someone’s having surgery.

Who’s brave enough to say, “I need you to pray because I’m always worried?” Or, “I’d like prayer for my fear.” Or, “Please pray that I’m finally released from all this guilt?” But our prayer requests should be filled with those things, because we all struggle with them.

When you look into the mirror today, the person you see is the one that was shaped by your thoughts from five years ago. The person you’ll see in five years will be shaped by the thoughts you have today. Don’t let the devil hold you captive by a lie.

Your life will always move in the direction of your strongest thoughts. Remember that. Write it down. I’ll say it again — your life will always move in the direction of your strongest thoughts. So never mind who other people say you are. Don’t pay attention to who you say you are. Think about who Jesus says you are. That’s how you start keeping that needle out of those deep grooves. That’s how you start developing a Christian mind.

Let’s pray:

Father we’re so thankful for all that you give us, but today we’re especially thankful for your patience. Your patience in helping us through our stumbles. Patience in loving us when we don’t love ourselves. Patience, Father, in giving us your holy help in overcoming the strongholds in our lives. We pray your power and strength to see us through this day and this coming week. Continue to bless us, Father, and help us to be a blessing to all we meet. For it’s in Christ’s name we ask it, Amen.

Our hymn of response is number 489 in your hymnals, Lord, I Want To Be a Christian. Would you please stand.