StayingOffTheMatSrm
6-28/29-08
Staying Off The Mat
Everyday, 24/7, you and I experience the downward pull of temptation. Why is it I do things I don’t want to do or I know shouldn’t do, particularly when no one is making me do it? Have you ever thought about the fact that most of your temptations don’t make sense? For example, you’re against lying. Your parents taught you not to lie. You’ll teach your kids not to lie. You don’t like it when people lie to you. You don’t want to work for someone who lies. You certainly don’t want to be married to someone who lies, nor do you want your daughter or son married to someone who lies. You don’t want a government that lies, or a roommate that lies. You’re against lying, but, in certain situations, what do you do? You lie. It doesn’t make sense. “I’m against liars and yet, for the sake of a few more bucks or to protect my reputation or to get something I want, I just lied. I just did something that I’m against. What is that about?” If you are here and you have an addictive behavior you could write a book about this phenomenon. You hate your addiction. You hate what it does to you, your family, your finances, your reputation. You hate everything about it, and yet, given the chance, you might go right back to it. What is that? I don’t think that exists in the animal kingdom. You can break your dog of all his bad habits. Good luck with your cat. Why can’t you do that for yourself? What if you discovered a set of principles that would keep you standing on your feet instead of getting knocked to the mat by temptation?
When you see people win the wrestling match with temptation, you’re seeing people who understand and apply the principles revealed in the Bible. Today we’re going to do some thinking about thinking or, as Zig Ziglar would say, “We all need a check-up from the neck-up to eliminate stinkin’ thinkin.’”
"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. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God." [Romans 8:5-8, NIV]
Paul is saying that if you want life, if you want to win the wrestling match with temptation, live according to the Spirit. How? The word ‘mind’ or ‘minds’ is used five times. Our thoughts determine our lives. Our thought-life is where it all starts. Sow a thought, reap an action. Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. So a character, reap a destiny. You tell me what you think about and how you think about it and I’ll tell you what your life is going to be like in five years. Emerson wrote, “Thoughts rule the world.” Solomon said, “As a man thinks in his heart so is he.”
A couple of weeks ago I referred to how a plane flies. A wing produces lift because it is a certain shape. If you cut through a wing and look at it sideways, you’ll see a shape called an aerofoil. As air flows over a wing, the air on the top of the wing travels faster than the air flowing under the bottom of the wing. When the air goes past the wing, the shape of the airfoil turns the air downwards. The difference in speed of the air and the turning of the air means that there is a pressure difference between the top and bottom surface of the wing. Essentially, there’s low pressure on the top of the wing and high pressure underneath it. This causes the wing to be ‘sucked up’ causing lift, which causes the plane to fly. The opposite of this is true with racing cars. They are upside-down airplanes. If the wing is upside down, it doesn’t matter how hard you try to make that plane fly….it’s not going to fly. If your thinking is upside down, if your thinking isn’t right, it doesn’t matter how hard you try to live right. You won’t. If you push people to change their behavior without changing deep patterns of thought, you’ll fail. It’s like trying to fly a plane with upside-down wings. The Scriptures tell us how valuable right, godly thinking is.
"Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." [Romans 12:2, NIV]
"Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus," [Philippians 2:5, NRSV]
“We have the mind of Christ." [1 Corinthians 2:16, NIV]
"We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." [2 Corinthians 10:5, NIV]
" (withoutGod) their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened." [Romans 1:21, NIV]
"The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life." [John 6:63, NIV]
This is so important: If you want life you have to live like Jesus. If you want to live like Jesus you have to think like Jesus. In a book called Flow on how the human brain functions Psychologist Michael Csikszentmihalyi wrote,
“Contrary to what we tend to assume, the normal state of the mind is chaos…When we are left alone, with no demands on attention, the basic disorder of the mind reveals itself. With nothing to do, it begins to follow random patterns, usually stopping to discover something painful or disturbing…To avoid this condition, people are naturally eager to fill their minds with whatever information is readily available, as long as it distracts attention from turning inward and dwelling on negative feelings. This explains why such a huge proportion of time is invested in watching television, despite the fact that it is very rarely enjoyed.”
This is why we resist solitude so much because we need something to distract our minds. When a prisoner misbehaves in a prison where does the warden send the prisoner to give the ultimate punishment? Solitary confinement. It is such a punishment it will drive people crazy because they are shut in with their own mind, their own thoughts. What’s a parent’s basic form of punishment for their child? Solitary confinement, otherwise known as the Time Out Chair.
So we want to take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ. We want to be in charge of our minds. Dallas Willard has written that,
“Ideas and images are, accordingly, the primary focus of Satan’s efforts to defeat God’s purposes with and for humankind. When we are subject to his chosen ideas and images, he can take a nap or a vacation.” If you want life you have to live like Jesus. If you want to live like Jesus you have to think like Jesus. The process of thinking like Jesus is one of progressively replacing deceptive and destructive images and ideas with the images and ideas that filled the mind of Jesus himself. You can change your thoughts. You can create new ideas and new images by pouring in new information. Basic information about God is essential. We must grow in God-information!
Now, it is difficult to change ideas and images. It is painful. It is wrenching. People who “hit bottom” realize that the ideas and images they have been living with don’t work and they empty themselves and are open to new information that can change their ideas and images. So here’s the question: Are you ready? Are you ready to change your thinking? The person that experiences the new, transformed life in Jesus spends quiet time with God, fills his/her mind with Scripture, involves him/her self in serving others and supporting relationships with other Christ followers.
Of these practices there is one that is the most important in renewing the mind. This one is critical if new information is to come into our minds: Scripture.
"The way a sinful person thinks leads to death. But the mind controlled by the Spirit brings life and peace." [Romans 8:6, NIrV]
I have never met a Christ-follower who experienced a mind of life and peace whose mind was not immersed in the Scriptures. The Scriptures have never been easier to obtain than in our day, but never been harder to absorb. Why? We live in a day of unprecedented external stimulation of our minds.
I heard this week that the ancient Greeks had no word for boredom. There was not a word for boredom until the last few centuries. We look at the ancient world and we think, no TV, no Internet, no movies, no iTunes, how boring that must have been! But they weren’t bored. We’re the ones who get bored easily.
Why? Our capacity to focus our attention, our capacity to delight our mind in sustained thought has been tremendously weakened because we have grown so dependent on external stimulation. TV, the Internet, they distract us to the point that our attention “muscles” have grown weak.
Michael Csikszentmihalyi asks, “Guess what country produces more poets per capita than any other country in the world?” Turn to the person next to you and take a guess. The correct answer: Iceland. Why? They have nothing better to do. It’s really true. If you live in that climate and the sun doesn’t shine for months, there’s not much to do so they tell stories. In Iceland they are called sagas. They tell tales. They memorize them and recite and embellish them and that has became a part of their culture. They have minds with amazing stories inside them.
We think rote memorizing and reciting is for boring people. The opposite is true: People who have all of this stored-up information inside them burst with creativity. That mind has a much greater capacity for creativity. That mind has a gift it takes with it wherever it goes.
But we have something better to do than that. We watch TV, not because it produces inner richness, but because it’s the easiest, lowest cost way to distract our attention, to keep our minds from closing in on us.
Think of it this way: David was a shepherd. Watching sheep is not exactly an intellectual stimulating pastime. So what did he do? He wrote psalms (songs), memorized them and then set them to music.
Psalm 23
The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me like down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.
The deal with the Scriptures is we want to live in that kind of reality. If you say those words once, twice, ten times, a thousand times, after a while you start to want them to be true. After a while you start believing they are true and after a while you experience them. This is what the mind can be and can do. This actually happens.
Think of it like the “ABC” song.” When you were little you heard the “ABC” song, you absorbed it, then you owned it, then you used it, and then it opened up doors of literacy to a whole new world. That’s what the Scriptures do to your mind and to your life.
People inevitably ask how long they should read the Scriptures? It’s not homework. Don’t treat reading Scripture that way. Get it out of the homework category. We’ll always find an excuse not to do homework, right students?
Remember the classic excuse for why I didn’t bring my homework to school? The dog ate it. I saw one that was classic. This is from a family in Ohio: “Please excuse Billy. He could not do his homework because there was not a pencil at home.” The note was written in pencil. We will find a way not to do homework. Don’t treat it that way.
I don’t have a rule for how many minutes, days a week or amount to try to get through Scripture. My goal is to have the mind of Christ. My goal for taking the Scriptures is to have the mind controlled by the Spirit that gives life and peace. For me to have that I have to have enough time to meditate on Scripture, to ponder it. I need to have unhurried time, when I have nothing better to do, so that I can intensely absorb the Scriptures.
Dallas Willard wrote, “If you want to take shower it will never happen if you just get one drop of water every five minutes- even if you do that all day long. If you want to shower it requires sufficient water for a sufficient period of time.”
There has to be some intensity. Don’t just dribble it out to get the homework done. Do this: Read Romans 8 for a year. Meditate on it. If you can’t read, then listen on your iPod over and over. If you want to experience the Scriptures more broadly, pick up “The Bible Experience” with Denzel Washington and other actors dramatically reading the Scriptures. I use The Lord’s Prayer every morning to wash over my mind.
Please hear me on this one: Your life is at stake. If you want life you have to live like Jesus. If you want to live like Jesus you have to think like Jesus.