Untitled Sermon (45)

CONNECTING MY MIND WITH MY LIFE

 THINK LIKE GOD THINKS

I have to ask the obvious question. “Why would GOD not want you to think like He thinks?” Maybe

the better question should be “Why would YOU not want to think like God thinks?” What good

reason could you give me as to why you would not want to think like God thinks?

The truth is that what and how you think will always control how you live. Your life is always a byproduct

of what and how you think. The principle is simple - what you put into your mind is what

will come out of your life. If you think like the world, you will become worldly. If you think like God,

you will become godly.

KEY PRINCIPLE 1: WHAT YOU PUT INTO YOUR MIND IS WHAT WILL COME OUT

OF YOUR LIFE.

You have to remember that your mind is the greatest asset that God has given to you, so it is very critical

that you be careful what you put into it.

 DON’T YOU JUST LOVE THE SMELL OF ROTTEN GARBAGE? PROBABLY NOT!!

Every Saturday I take all of our trash down to the County dump site. I am generally having a good

day until I drive up to the dumpster, get out of my truck, and smell the roses. I wish! Some days it

smells so bad, almost nauseating.

Now think about this for a moment with me. You would never think about putting rotten, smelly, putrid

garbage into your mouth to eat it, so why would you want to put garbage into your mind to think about

it. Being careless with what you put into your mind is as dangerous as driving on the wrong side of the

road, jumping off of a tall building, or drinking poison. So, do NOT drive on the wrong side of the road

or jump off of a tall building or drink poison. Why? It is because if you do any one of those things, you

will be killed. Now, let me clarify that this is not what someone might call “positive thinking” – not at

all. This is right thinking. I want to call thinking like this as “life thinking”, or thinking in a way that

greatly benefits your life.

You must figure out that when you finally decide to put into your mind what God wants you to put

into your mind, then good things will begin to happen in your life. Once again, understanding your

mind is really very simple – what you put into it is what you get out of it. It is up to you as to what you

allow yourself to think about. Somewhere along the way you have to ask yourself the very simple

question, “Is this the way that God wants me to think?” If you are not willing to constantly be asking

yourself that question, then I doubt very seriously that you will make any progress in changing how you

currently think. Your default way to think will be the way you have always thought – which may not be

the way that God thinks. Let me say it in a different way – if you will let God win you over in your

mind, then you will win in your life. You cannot have a negative mind and enjoy a positive life at the

same time. They simply do not go together. An ungodly mind never creates a godly life. Your thoughts

today become your future tomorrow, so be very careful what you think today. If you want to get your

life moving in the right direction, then you have to get your mind moving in the right direction.

 DOES ANYONE KNOW IF WE ARE HEADED IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION?

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Have you ever been going somewhere and it just does not feel like you are headed in the right

direction? One night several years ago, we had visited a church with my daughter to watch a VBS

program where her kids were going at the time. This was the first time that I had ever been to this

church and it was way out in the country, and apparently I had not paid much attention to all of the

turns that we were having to make to get there.. When we started to go home, I missed the second

turn and we were now headed in the wrong direction. Nothing looked familiar to any of us who were

in the car, so we literally had to turn around and head back from where we had just come. It took a

while to get headed back in the right direction on the right road.

Normally, when things in your life are not going very well, the problem is that you are headed in the

wrong direction with your thinking. What you have to do is to correct your thinking to get your life back

on track. I want you to think of the Scriptures as your roadmap, as a compass, and as your GPS. The

Scriptures are what get you headed back in the right direction. Why? It is because they help you to

think the way that God thinks. Your thinking always needs to be headed in God’s direction.

Let us just assume that your life does not seem to be headed in the right direction at the moment. Well,

your best decision to get things headed in the right direction is to go directly to the Word of God to find

the right direction. The principle is simple - if you leave God and His Word out of your thinking

process, then you will always be headed in the wrong direction.

KEY PRINCIPLE 2: IF YOU LEAVE GOD AND HIS WORD OUT OF YOUR THINKING

PROCESS, THEN YOU WILL ALWAYS BE HEADED IN THE WRONG DIRECTION.

Honestly, it is a good thing to know that you are not headed in the wrong direction, and especially

spiritually. So, what would be a major clue as to why your life is NOT headed in the right direction.

From God’s perspective, it is simple. If what you are doing is not bringing glory to God, then clearly

you are not headed in the right direction.

If you get angry all of the time, then you are not bringing glory to God.

If you are always frustrated and irritated with people, then you are not bringing glory to God.

If you complain about everything, then you are not bringing glory to God.

If you are a bitter person, then you are not bringing glory to God.

If you are a lazy person, then you are not bringing glory to God.

Your life must always be headed toward God, headed toward God’s glory, headed toward God’s will.

Staying headed in God’s direction is a convictional issue. If you are going to think like God thinks, then

you must have and you must develop a deep conviction that everything that you do in your life is to

glorify God. It includes how and what you think, your attitudes, your speech, your beliefs, and your

actions. This must become a foundational conviction that grips you and holds you in its grasp. How

you perceive God and how your perceive God’s power to get you headed in the right direction will

impact everything that you do.

Jesus made this remarkable statement in John 10:10. This is what He said,

Jn 10:10 (NKJV) The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come

that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.

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This is how God thinks, so by default this is how He wants you to think. He says that His Son came so

that you could live an abundant life. I am convinced that most Christians simply do not believe that truth

at all. Everything in life seems to be a problem for them. They generally get bent out of shape and lose

sight of God’s direction for their life when they experience some kind of trial in their life. However, if

you really want to have God’s blessing and joy in your life, then your mind must become focused on

God. He gave you physical life, spiritual life, and He wants to give you abundant life. You must

understand the source of life. The source of life is God, and the source of abundant life is God. Romans

8:6 says,

Ro 8:6 (NKJV) For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

How do you read this verse? Well, here is how you should read it. When you are “spiritually minded”,

when you think like God thinks, it produces God’s life and peace in you. This is a very simple principle

– become “spiritually minded” about everything in your life. Work on seeing life from God’s

perspective and not your own. Become “spiritually minded” about good things and bad things alike.

When you do, you will experience God’s “life and peace”. That is God’s guarantee and God’s promise

for your life.

Let us assume again that life is not going well for you. What you lack is God’s wisdom. Listen to what

James 1:5-8 says,

Jas 1:5 (NKJV) If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without

reproach, and it will be given to him. 6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who

doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For let not that man suppose

that he will receive anything from the Lord; 8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his

ways.

Wisdom is knowing how God would handle a difficult and trying situation. The enemy will give you

ideas on how to solve your problems, but God will give you His wisdom. If you have God’s wisdom,

then you will understand life the way that God designed it to work. Wisdom is knowing how God thinks,

and the only place to find that out is in the Word of God. Now, having said all of that, I want to give

you one very, very simple, but a critical insight, so listen carefully. Here it is. THE WISDOM OF

GOD IS NEVER COMPLICATED. We think it will be, but it never is. Why would God want to

make like complicated for you? Well, He does not want life to be complicated. The problem is that

when He provides you His wisdom that it rarely seems like the thing to do. It is too simple. So, what

invariably happens is that you reject God’s wisdom and try to figure out how to fix everything, and your

life starts to become very, very complicated. Here is the principle - the more that you think like God

thinks, the less complicated life becomes because the wisdom of God is never complicated.

KEY PRINCIPLE 3: THE MORE THAT YOU THINK LIKE GOD THINKS, THE LESS

COMPLICATED LIFE BECOMES BECAUSE THE WISDOM OF GOD IS NEVER

COMPLICATED.

I know people whose lives are so complicated that they may never recover. They have been thinking

the wrong way for so long that thinking wrong is simply their way of life. Getting them to think the way

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that God thinks is so difficult for them. They leave God out of everything, and then complain when life

is not going as they hoped it would. Well, what would you expect under those circumstances?

This is what needs to happen. You have to educate your mind, you have to train your mind, and you

have to discipline your mind to think a certain way. It actually is a lot of work if you are trying to

reverse how you think. I hope this series will convince you that you need to in some areas. Everyone

has mental paradigms and patterns of thinking that need to be changed, that need to be broken. This is

true for anyone who wants to be genuine follower of Christ and to glorify Him in their life. I can assure

you that Jesus did not think like we think. Being compelled to think like God thinks will benefit your

life in the greatest way possible. Here is what will happen. When you learn to think like God thinks, it

will soon become instinctive and intuitive to think that way. So, when struggles and trials come into

your life, you will intuitively know how to face them and how to overcome them because you know how

to think like God thinks. One thing that I learned when playing soccer at Clemson for three years was

that the way we practiced was the way we actually played. Bad practice meant bad games and good

practice meant good games. The same is true in your mind. Wrong thoughts always lead to wrong

results. Godly thoughts always lead to godly results.

It is important to understand that thinking involves two critical areas: (1) what you think, and (2) how

you think. It is inevitable that if you think the wrong way, you will get the wrong results. So, what

you think about is critical to how you are going to live. If you think godly, you will live godly. If you

think ungodly, you will live ungodly. If you think money, you will chase money. If you think lazy, you

will be lazy. If you think faithfulness, you will be faithful. If you think you cannot, you will not. If you

think you can, you will. Your mind controls your life and what you will do with it, so this is a very

critical issue for every Christian – what you are putting into your mind. What you put into your mind

is what you will think about.

Secondly, how you think is also critical. You can think from a worldly mindset or you can think from

a biblical mindset. You can think from a selfish perspective, or you can think from a selfless perspective.

You can be superficial in your thinking or you can be profound in your thinking. You can have a mindset

that does not trust God, or you can have a mindset that does trust God. You can love to be challenged

or you can hate to be challenged. You can think that it is okay to get angry when someone says something

negative to you, or you can think that getting angry is not necessary. Everyone thinks a certain way.

Everyone has built in mindsets and prejudices that will always govern how they think, and no one is

exempt.

 ROCKING CHAIRS

Do you like rocking chairs? We have a really nice rocking chair in one of our bedrooms and we have

two nice rocking chairs on our front porch. I just love to go to any of them and just rock. In fact,

rocking has a way of just helping me to be calm and relaxed.

In a similar way, this idea of thinking like God thinks will help you to just relax and stay calm when life

becomes a little stressful for you. Just as an example, Jesus was talking to His disciples in John 14:1

and He said these very simple words to them,

Jn 14:1 (NKJV) "Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me.

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Now, I wonder how you perceive what He actually said to His disciples in the first part of this verse.

What do you think He was really trying to say to them? In reality, what He said was really very contrary

to what and how His disciples were thinking. This is what He told them, so listen very carefully. He

said “Do not let your troubles trouble you.” How radical is that? How mentally extreme is that? Just

think about that for a moment. He was saying that “When you have troubles, I do not want them to

bother you or to disturb you or to unsettle you”, yet that is exactly what happens to most people when

something stressful and vexing comes into their life. They immediately begin to worry and fret about it.

It is like they have actually conditioned their mind to think that way. It is like in their mind they

unconsciously say to themselves “Hey, this is trouble and that cannot be good. I need to worry about

this.” They have come to believe that it should be normal to become stressed out when trouble arises. I

wonder if you think that Jesus was actually saying the very opposite. I wonder if you think that He

wanted them to look at trouble in the exact opposite way than they were. I think that was exactly what

He was saying – “I want you to think the exact opposite of how you are currently thinking!” He wanted

them to think like God thinks.

The real simple question is why could Jesus say that to His disciples? Well, it is because they said that

they believed in God – “you believe in God”! That is an enormous statement with extraordinary

implications to it – “I believe in God!” Well, do you? You could actually be what I call an “unbelieving

believer”. You have all of the correct Christian words down pat and know what some doctrines are.

You can even quote Scripture, but for some reason when stressful moments come into your life, those

Scriptures you quoted and maybe even memorized do not seem to help you at all. They are nice when

you quote them, but they do not seem to be too helpful when you need them. This is the great Christian

divide - the spiritual disparity between how people live and what they actually claim to believe.

I know people who say they believe in God, but they become incredibly stressed out in their life about

almost anything negative that happens to them. Anything upsets them. It is like simple daily life upsets

them and stresses them out. They can find anything to worry about. When I was growing up, people

called them “worry warts”. You might hear them say things like this:

“I’m really concerned about this”, or

“You will not believe how hard life is for me”, or

“Life could not be any more difficult than it already is”, or

“I don’t think I can take anymore”, or

“Where is God when you really need Him?”

All of that may sound very personal, but they are all just substitute words for “worry”. Worry is like

that rocking chair I mentioned to you. It gives you something to do, but it never gets you anywhere.

Worry actually paralyzes you mentally. When Jesus said “Let not your heart be troubled”, He was

saying that when you do worry that it reveals your lack of trust in God. Faith means not worrying

because worry never changes one thing. I have heard it said that “Worry is like riding on the hood of

your car – what’s the point?”

In a similar verse, listen to what Paul said in Philippians 4:6,

Php 4:6 (NKJV) Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with

thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God;

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How would you explain “Be anxious for nothing” to someone? Do you think that you could work them

through that verse and convince them that that was exactly what God wanted them to do? I imagine that

they would think that you were crazy, a little delusional, and possibly mentally challenged. Then on top

of that, I wonder if other people see you being anxious all of the time. Listen carefully. This verse is

exactly how God thinks! This is how God wants you to think when something arises in your life that

makes you anxious. If you will just pray as God has asked you to do in v6, then in Philippians 4:7 He

gives you this amazing promise which says.

Php 4:7 (NKJV) and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts

and minds through Christ Jesus.

Do you want a supernatural peace in your life? I hope you do, and if you do, then you are going to have

to learn how to pray. So, what if you never really learn to pray and how to pray? Well, you will never

have the supernatural “peace of God which surpasses all understanding”. It really is very simple. So,

why would you not have that peace? Well, it is simply because you are not willing to think like God

thinks. What will happen if you ignore these two verses is that problems will come along and they will

stress you out. You will feel frazzled, drained, and fatigued. You will have no wisdom as to how to

handle them. You will continue to be anxious and concerned and frightened. None of that is close to

supernatural peace – and it all started because you were not willing to think like God thinks.

So what have we addressed today? What were the key points of this study today?

1. KEY PRINCIPLE 1: What you put into your mind is what will come out of your life.

2. When you finally decide to put into your mind what God wants you to put into your mind,

then good things will begin to happen in your life.

3. If you will let God win you over in your mind, then you will win in your life.

4. If you want to get your life moving in the right direction, then you have to get your mind

moving in the right direction.

5. KEY PRINCIPLE 2: If you leave God and His Word out of your thinking process, then

you will always be headed in the wrong direction.

6. If what you are doing is not bringing glory to God, then clearly you are not headed in the

right direction.

7. KEY PRINCIPLE 3: The more that you think like God thinks, the less complicated life

becomes because the wisdom of God is never complicated.

8. Jesus did not think like we think.

9. When you learn to think like God thinks, it will soon become instinctive and intuitive to

think that way.

10. Do not let your troubles trouble you.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Groeschel, Craig. The Christian Atheist. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2010.

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