Mind Games - Week 2: “Renewing Your Mind”

Though life is full of countless decisions, I mean, so many, the major shape of your life, my friends, really only comes down to a few major decisions. A few big ones shape your life absolutely the most. Decisions like spouse, which spouse should I have, you know, kids, education, vocational path, friends that I choose. These are these are big ones. Yet there is one decision that truly makes your whole life. One. You make this one, it will make all the rest for you. Here it is. It's to choose to dedicate your whole self to Jesus' heart, mind, and body. This one decision will clear the path and simplify so much of your life. [00:49:02] (51 seconds)  #ChooseJesusWholeLife

Friends, your true self is in Jesus, not in you. And when you give yourself to him, you start to enter into the process of becoming the person that God intended for you to be. Now, let me just say this. If you're not willing to submit to God's will as you know it, then why would God ever reveal it to you? Would you share something to someone and you know they're just gonna be like, no, whatever. I'm just doing my own thing. I wouldn't. So if God gives you some insight into what he wants you to do, step into that and you will find something really amazing happens. So friends, the greatest barrier to a new life, it really is the old mindset. [01:07:51] (38 seconds)  #TrueSelfInJesus

In other words, offering your body to God is a deliberate choice on my part and your part as a living sacrifice. That's what worship is. Singing is part of it. Those are all parts of it, but that's what it is. So unlike the sacrifices offered in the Old Testament, which you lit them on fire, so don't do that, and they die, what God wants is a living sacrifice. What does that mean? A living sacrifice is just simply you coming to God saying, here I am. You got me. All of me. Take all of me. I'm yours. I'm yours, Lord. Heart, mind, and body. [00:46:22] (40 seconds)  #LivingSacrifice

First, we say no to copying the ways of the world. Notice in the passage, do not be conformed to this world. So we gotta use our chooser to pull out our really powerful tool called no. So we gotta know that we're supposed to offer. Now if you look in verse two, there really are two incompatible value systems at work. So I could be conformed to this world. That's one value system. Then we read later about discerning the will of God. That's a different value system. They're not just different, they're incompatible. And if you think they're not incompatible, that's a problem. [00:59:42] (37 seconds)  #ResistWorldlyConformity

So let me ask you, what script is your mindset tied to? There's some you here today, the script that your mindset is tied to is you're never good enough. You can never do enough. No matter how hard you try, you will always fail. Some of you, your script may be, no one loves you. You're unlovable. You'll always be alone. Some of you, your script may be something like, you know, you're just an accident. You have no purpose. Each and every one of us has some kind of a script playing out into our minds. And the reality is God is a God of love and purpose. If you were alive, God wanted you alive. [00:34:05] (43 seconds)  #RewriteYourLifeScript

The reality is, friends, the life that God intended, you've got to choose to step into it. You've got to choose it, which means you're gonna have to make up your mind. I can't live tethered to a three pound chair anymore. E Stanley Jones was the Billy Graham of India, and E Stanley Jones wrote these words. He said, if you don't make up your mind, then your unmade mind will unmake you. God has a purpose for you. It's a good purpose, and you have to make up your mind saying, I want that, not this blue chair I'm tied to. [00:35:57] (37 seconds)  #DecideForGodsPurpose

So when you hear the words, this world in the bible, it seems negative. It's usually referring in the negative sense to society apart from Christ. Society living for themselves and not living for God and his glory. And so according to this text, this world is trying to have an influence on you. How? Well, we would call them mind games. They come to you through media. They come to you through social media. They come to you through marketing. And these are not just efforts to inform you. These are efforts to get you to think a certain way. [01:00:19] (37 seconds)  #GuardAgainstMindGames

So here's the bad news. You already know this, but we're gonna share it together. Life is becoming increasingly more complicated because of too many choices. And I'm gonna say this, you have an enemy who knows this and uses it very effectively. So let's step back for just a moment and think about this. Increasing complexity, a little overwhelming us right now. Fifty years ago, the average supermarket in our country had 9,000 distinct products fifty years ago. Today, and I did the homework, the average supermarket has 32,000 distinct products. Here's the kicker. The average American, which is us, only requires 260 distinct products to get your needs met. So when you walk into a grocery store, you've gotta ignore 31,740 other things just to get to what you need. [00:51:13] (56 seconds)  #ChoiceOverloadReality

We live in a world that says what you do with your body and what you do with your heart are different things, and scripture doesn't talk that way. So here's the good news, friends. If we were to ask the question, what does God want from you? The answer is that God doesn't want anything from you. What God wants most from you, what God wants most from me, what he wants most from you is you. He wants you. So that's the first question. Have I dedicated my whole body to God? Second question, right out of the passage, am I offering a holy body to God? [00:43:16] (39 seconds)  #GiveGodYourWholeSelf

Am I offering a holy body to God? Again, our text urges us, offer a body to God that the text describes as holy and acceptable. In fact, the way the Greek reads, it it reads, present your bodies holy to God. That that's how it reads. It's the word holy. We sang about it earlier. It means set apart for special use. Set apart to God. In fact, one scholar defines it this way, quote, holy implies something set apart as special for the Lord. So I wanna ask you, does that describe your use of your body? [00:43:55] (37 seconds)  #PresentHolyBody

What does it mean to be submitted to God? To be submitted to God means I hand over my body to God. This is your body, not mine anymore. I hand over my desires to God. I want your desires. I wanna love what you love. Here's my agenda, not my will, but your will be done. Here are my unmet needs. You meet them as you will, when you will. Here are my habits. Use them. Change them. Here's my will. I mean, it's basically the path that I went through. [01:06:24] (29 seconds)  #SurrenderYourWill

The barrier, the greatest barrier between your new life, the barrier, to your new life is your old mindset. In Christ, there's a whole new life that you can live in Christ. But the great barrier between the new life and where you are now, it is your old mindset. We all have an old mindset, ways of thinking that we spent our whole life developing. Now help me out everybody. True or false? People can lie to themselves and not even be aware of it. True or false? It's true. I'll prove it to you. You ever watched American Idol? [00:29:20] (33 seconds)  #OldMindsetBarrier

Don't do that. Just stay off of that. Stay on that. That's it. Truly that simple. In fact, Dallas Willard spells it out quite simply too in his excellent book, Renovation of the Heart. He said, if we're gonna be formed in Christ and transformed into Christ likeness and out of conformity with the world, it will be because we have done certain things. Spiritual transformation is not a passive process. It does not just happen to people. You gotta use your chooser to become the person that God called you to be. And so in our text, we not only see what the negative choice we have to deal with would be, and then with the positive, not only that, each one comes, listen, with the requirement that you submit. [00:58:50] (45 seconds)  #ChoicesRequireSubmission

The most spiritual listen, the most spiritual activity you can do is choose. Because all those things I just described are results of first making a choice to pray or read a bible or forgive someone or to serve. All those activities are the result of the most spiritual activity we do is to use our chooser to do what God calls us to do. So here's a little news flash, friends. Your life really is the sum of your choices. And so in this passage, we're gonna go a little bit deeper, a little bit, and we're gonna probe. We're gonna let this passage probe us. So three questions that arise that guide our choices in this life. [00:41:23] (42 seconds)  #ActionsRevealBelief

He's like, I urge you. It says I appeal, but in the Greek, it's much stronger. He's like, I am challenging you. Present your bodies to God as a living sacrifice. For some of us, like, that sounds kinda odd. Present your body to God. Okay. Does it? Because you present your body to things all day every day. Every day, all you do is present your body to things, to a job, to career, school, leisure activities, hobbies, relationships, whatever. The reality is what you do with your body proves what you value most in life. And so I'm going to ask you the honest question. [00:42:17] (38 seconds)  #NeuroplasticityExplained

The boy said, fine. And he plopped down into his chair. Then he blurted out, I'm sitting on the outside, but I'm still standing on the inside. There are a lot of us in Christianity who's kinda operate that way. The inside and the outside, whatever. But friends, according to scripture, whatever we do with our bodies demonstrates what we truly and actually believe in our hearts. Romans chapter 12 and verse one. Let's jump in. [00:39:28] (28 seconds)  #ThoughtRepetitionBuildsHabits

a chemical fires in your head and runs through and it crosses that synaptic cleft to to connect to the other side. It's an electrical charge and it's chemical. And when that happens, when you have a thought, that activity in your brain, it bonds those two together. It's called neuroplasticity. Neurons that fire together, wire together. So here's basically the the point. When you have a thought, if you repeat that thought, that connection that was just made grows closer to to decrease the distance between the two. And so basically, when you repeat a thought, it makes it easier to have that thought. [00:31:29] (38 seconds)  #RewireYourBrain

And if you repeat that thought again, it makes it even easier. You're creating an actual, it's called a neuro pathway. Now here's the good news. God is a God of grace. And he so built our brains that whatever your current thought process is, it doesn't have to stay that way forever. Our brains are renewable. If we think about certain things, can repattern our brains. But if we also think on other things, our brains can get stuck. Now God in his grace has given us a brain that's renewable. With that in mind, think about this. How many pounds can the average adult horse pull? [00:32:07] (45 seconds)  #BreakTheMentalScript

What's the point? Here's the point. Sometimes we can lie to ourselves that what we're thinking and what's real are kind of a little bit out of whack. So here's the point. Whatever you repeatedly think, whatever it's true or false, doesn't matter. Whatever you repeatedly think, guess what? It becomes your default thinking. Your current thinking is programmatic of your ongoing thinking. In fact, let's look at it this way. Neuroscientists have a thing called neuroplasticity. [00:30:24] (29 seconds)  #BrainsAreRenewable

What's happening in this image? What's happening in this image? This here you have a beautiful horse tied to a three pound plastic chair. One like you might, you know, buy in Walmart. So here's my question. What is keeping this horse from freedom? Everyone point to where it's something is in this horse's head. Listen, there's a script playing in this horse's head that is keeping this horse from freedom. There's a script playing. Probably sounds something like, you know, you're stuck here. You can't leave. It's always gonna be just like this. [00:33:12] (51 seconds)  #WorshipIsLifestyle