What Are You Thinking?

Biblical Principles for Living Series

What AreYOU

Thinking?

A Guide to Right Thinking and Christian Meditation

Dr. J. L. Williams

Copyright © 2021 by Feed the Hunger. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in mechanical or electronic form without the express permission of the copyright holder.

Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version® Printed in the USA

Table of Contents Introduction........................................................ 5 Part I: The Problem of Right Thinking 1 The Secret Battlefield.............................. 11 2 The Origin of Your Thinking................... 19 3 Brain Power Gone Bad............................ 27 4 The Age of Unreason and Emotion ........ 33 Part II: Preparation for Right Thinking 5 It All Starts with God............................... 43 6 Knowing God Is the Key......................... 51 7 Know Jesus, Know God.......................... 59 8 Double-Minded........................................ 67 Part III: The Process of Right Thinking 9 Deprogram and Catharsis........................ 73 10 Vivid Illustrations.................................... 81 11 Heal Bad Memories................................. 87 12 Reprogram Your Mind............................. 97 13 Guard Your Mind................................... 103 Part IV: The Practice of Right Thinking—Christian Meditation 14 Defining Christian Meditation............... 111 15 Principles of Meditation........................ 119

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Meditation Prepping.............................. 125 Time to Practice..................................... 131 The Wrong Kind of Meditation............. 139

Part V: The Product of Right Thinking 19 Sound Mind and Self-Acceptance......... 147 20 Self-Control through Spirit Control....... 155 21 Resisting Temptation............................. 161 22 Transformation...................................... 169 23 Other Benefits of Right Thinking.......... 175 Conclusion................................................................ 181

Introduction What kind of thinking would cause a man who is a professing Christian, a leader in his church and community, to walk out on his wife and small children? How could he rationalize such blatant unbiblical behavior? How could he become so self-absorbed that he grows numb to the emotional devastation his actions will leave his children to struggle with for the rest of their lives?

How could he then justify his selfish and immature abandonment of his family with a verbal veneer of spirituality? He might say things like, “I have prayed about this . . . I have peace about my decision . . . God told me . . . The children will get along just fine . . . I think God wants me to be happy!”

It is the relational ashes of such immature and irrational behavior that my wife and I have had to deal with all too often in marriage counseling. It is always heartbreaking to watch relationships severed, marriage vows violated, children’s trust destroyed, church integrity blemished, and Christian witness blown—all in the name of personal happiness and fulfillment. And all the while, they play the blame game and make everything somebody else’s fault!

Where does such unspiritual behavior come from?

What causes people professing to be Christians to act so directly contrary to the revealed Word of God? 7

Two words: wrong thinking. If the truth were known, somewhere in that person’s past a fleeting, disobedient thought was not brought into obedience to Jesus Christ.

When entertained over a period of time, that fleeting thought became a focused thought that ultimately became a mindset. As a result, a biblical mindset was slowly but surely replaced by a worldly one.

Once the mind is convinced, all that is left is for the will to give its consent, which it soon does, especially if it is wooed along by inflamed emotions. Since thinking provokes feelings and feelings provoke action, the will soon gives in. So, once the will and emotions concede to wrong thinking, wrong action will soon follow. And in the process, lives and relationships are devastated.

In this book, we are going to be dealing with the matter of thinking. This content has arisen from scores of hours of counseling with people. I have observed that the Holy Spirit has always made the breakthrough in people’s understanding when they change their thinking about a particular area. When their thinking changes, then everything else will begin to change.

This book can be divided into five parts. First, we’re going to look at the problem of wrong thinking. Then, we’re going to look at preparations for right thinking.

In other words, how do we change our wrong thinking into right thinking? Third, we will deal specifically with the process and get down to the nitty-gritty of right thinking. Fourth, we will turn to the practice of right 8

thinking by examining the often-neglected subject of Christian meditation. Lastly, we will look at the fruit, or the product, of right thinking. Once we get our thinking right, then it will begin to have certain external manifestations.

Before we get started, let me give you a scriptural springboard for our study: “For the inward thought and the heart of a person are deep” (Psalm 64:6 nasb). We’re going to be talking about the mind and trying to look at it biblically, so that we might understand our minds from God’s vantage point.

Read the words of Matthew 22:37–38: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.”

In Philippians chapter 4, Paul gives the great antidote, the great spiritual tranquilizer for an anxiety-ridden age when he says, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (verses 4–6). And here’s the key verse, verse seven: “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Lastly, let’s read Colossians 3:1–2: “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 9

Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”

Now, let’s start down the path to a life of right thinking.

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Part I The Problem of Right Thinking

1 The Secret Battlefield If we really learn what God wants us to learn about right thinking, it will cause many of us who are secretly worrying and anxiety-ridden to be freed from things like depression, fear, anxiety, and guilt. If we learn and grasp what God’s Word has to say about these areas, it will absolutely revolutionize our whole way of life.

Hardly a year goes by when I don’t end up counseling one or more people who have attempted suicide.

Many of them are Christians, and yet they get to the point after a long series of events where their mind becomes so depressed and anxiety-ridden that they see no way out.

The Bible says that Satan has been a liar and a murderer from the beginning. It is his goal to push humanity to the precipice of self-destruction. When you look at how many people today, even Christians, are taking medications and are going to see psychiatrists and psychologists, it means a lot of us have never mastered the victory God has for us.

And just to clarify, I don’t mean in any way to put 13

down these types of help. God uses Christian psychologists, psychiatrists, and counselors. Yet, many of them would be put out of business if God’s people would learn and truly embrace His spiritual antidote for the mind.

We have been wrongly taught all our lives that the flesh (our desires) is the battlefield. The flesh is not really the battlefield. The mind is the battlefield. Every battle is either won or lost in the mind. Therefore, if you want to change what happens externally you must first change it in your mind. That’s where the secret battlefields are. And I don’t want you to wait until your crisis point to win the battle!

Important Principles We’re going to start with some basic principles and then build with one brick at a time on top of what the Bible teaches about the mind. The first principle is this: Thinking is the dress rehearsal for action. In other words, all actions are the product of our thinking. Before you ever act out anything, it first has been thought out in your mind.

Here’s a second principle: What we sow in our minds, we reap in our actions. The mind is the first place that Satan always starts his attack. Where did Satan attack in the Garden of Eden? He cleverly injected a subtle 14

thought of disobedience into Eve’s mind. That thought of disobedience gave expression to an action of disobedience. And that’s where Satan always starts. So, thinking is the dress rehearsal for action. Then, whatever we sow in our minds, we reap in our actions.

Look at the following cause-and-effect statements.

If you sow a thought, then you’re going to reap an act.

If you sow an act, what will you reap? Eventually you’ll reap a habit. If you sow a habit, eventually you will reap a character. And if you sow a character, ultimately you will reap a destiny. Where did it all start? Back at the thought. One thought led to an act that led to a habit that led to a character that led to a destiny.

Here it is in another form to help you better understand the principle: Sow a thought............... Reap an act Sow an act..................... Reap a habit Sow a habit.................... Reap a character Sow a character............. Reap a destiny One is the root and the other is the fruit. Spiritual character and eternal destiny are changed for good or ill—all beginning with a thought! At first, an unspiritual thought is often rejected. Then the next time it enters our mind, we entertain it a bit longer. We give mental arguments for and against the validity of the idea. We remind ourselves that God’s Word says one thing. But 15

then we rationalize that it must mean something different, or that it does not apply in our case. Soon, we have built up a mental case in defense of the thought pattern.

After we have convinced ourselves, we are ready to translate the thought into action. When the externalization of the thought takes place, relationships are on the line and the future hangs in the balance.

Christianity versus Other Religions The folly of religion is that it tries to change a person by starting externally. This is one of the great distinguishing marks between Christianity and other world religions. Other religions basically try to start changing someone by dealing with evil fruit in their life. They will come alongside a person and, through religious practice or discipline or whatever the case happens to be, try to alter that person’s character by changing their fruit. This simply doesn’t work.

Do you change an apple tree by picking the apples?

The more you pick the apples, the more the other apples will continue to grow. Jesus Christ isn’t really concerned with the fruit. He primarily deals with the root.

Jesus Christ is the greatest radical the world has ever known. The word radical comes from the Latin word for root (radix) and refers to getting to the root of a problem. Jesus came and He dealt with the root of the 16

problem! He said, “For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of” (Matthew 12:34). We’re going to define what heart means in a minute.

Jesus said if you want to change the fruit, radically alter the root. In other words, radically alter the nature of that which is producing the fruit. He said we can change the fruit from what Paul calls “the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16) to the “fruit of the Spirit” (5:22). How does this take place? Jesus said in John 15:5, “If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit.”

Then, it’s no problem at all for God to produce His fruit.

Let’s revisit the apple tree. Have you ever seen one in an orchard strain to produce an apple? How absurd!

The most natural thing in the world for an apple tree to do is produce apples. Likewise, the most natural thing in the world for the Holy Spirit to do is produce His fruit.

So if His fruit is not being produced in our lives, guess where the problem is? It’s not with Him. He’s not impotent. It’s because we are not really abiding in Him so that He can work in our lives. If we are abiding in Him, then the fruit will change from the works of the flesh, those old fruits of fallen mankind, to the fruits of the new nature: “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22–23).

We can radically alter the fruit of our life by radically altering the root of our life. All of us have beliefs that 17

behave and attitudes that act. If you want to change your behavior, then alter your beliefs. If you want to change your actions, then alter your attitudes.

More Principles Here is another important principle: If you want to make your living right, make sure that your thinking is right.

Do you want to make your living right? Make your thinking right.

And here’s yet another: The quality of a person’s living cannot rise above the quality of their thinking.

It’s absolutely impossible. We constantly think that we can alter the quality of someone’s livelihood or living by altering their environment and culture and so on. It ultimately does not bring lasting change. If you want to change the quality of a person’s living, you must change the quality of their thinking.

There is a story of a communist who was preaching in London. He was on a stump and was really ranting.

About that time, a Christian came up and they began to dialogue back and forth. Finally, the communist said to the Christian, “Let me tell you what our gospel of Marxism will do for that man over there in the gutter, that alcoholic, that person who is downtrodden in society.”

He said, “We’ll take that man and we’ll put a new suit of clothes on that man. What are you going to do about that, Christian?”

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The Christian thought for a minute. He responded, “Well, let me tell you what my gospel will do for that man. We will put a new man in that suit of clothes.” You see, this is precisely the difference. You do not alter the quality of someone’s living until you alter the quality of their thinking.

It’s like taking a pig and washing it and putting perfume and a pink ribbon on it and setting it on a nice satin pillow. The very first time it sees a mud puddle, it’s going to go “oink” and head right back to the mud! The only way you’re going to change that pig’s activity is to somehow alter its pig mentality.

The Bible says that humans have a pig mentality. We have a propensity toward the baser things of life. Therefore, I don’t care how much you try to alter society (and I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be involved in some of those things). You can take the unregenerate person and put them in a regenerate environment and it’s just a matter of time for their unregenerate nature to absolutely destroy that new environment. We see it happen in housing complexes. We see it happening in various parts of society. Why? Mankind has got to be altered on the inside first. So, it doesn’t matter what you try to do to alter the quality of your living. First, you’ve got to alter the quality of your thinking.

Philosophers and writers have known this truth and have said this in different ways. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “A man is what he thinks about all day long.” I 19

was a teenager when I first heard this. I knew he was wrong because if a man was what he thought about all day long, I would have been a girl—because back then that’s what I thought about all the time! The point is, whatever preoccupies your thoughts really determines the kind of person you are. What someone thinks about all day long is what that person ultimately becomes.

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2 The Origin of Your Thinking Let me ask you an honest question: What is it that you think about constantly? What are the thoughts preoccupying your mind when you don’t have any external pressures like a job or school or something dictating what your mind must be thinking about? When those external restraints are off, what is the natural pattern where your thoughts go? You will find that your thoughts will begin to gravitate naturally to certain kinds of preoccupations.

Whatever you think about when there are no pressures is what ultimately determines who you really are.

So, you are not what you think you are, but what you think, you are. Notice where the commas are. You are not what you think you are, but what you think, you are.

The first part of this phrase is what Paul called the futility of Gentile thinking (Ephesians 4:17). You are not what you think you are. This is what psychologists call fantasy. Fantasy is what we like to think we are. It’s the false image that we have of ourselves, either positive or negative. And you’re not really that. You’re not what you think you are, but what you think, ultimately you 21

become. So, what you think is really what you are. Solomon said this in Proverbs 23:7: “For as he thinks within himself, so he is” (nasb), or as the King James translation puts it: “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

Paul further gives us a clear line of spiritual defense against such carnal thinking. He instructs us how to win in the secret battlefield of the mind long before the disobedient thought becomes a hostile mental stronghold against the truth of God’s Word. “We demolish arguments,” writes Paul, “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).

So, the way to mental and spiritual victory is to immediately “demolish arguments” through the “knowledge of God.” If we do not use the Word of God through the Spirit of God to demolish these hostile, immature, irrational, unbiblical thoughts at their conception, they will surely grow and develop to the degree that they ultimately express themselves in unrighteous behavior.

Because we do not demolish the unbiblical thought, it soon grows and expresses itself such that it demolishes our spirituality, marriage, parental relationships, and Christian integrity. We can either “take captive every thought” and “make it obedient to Christ,” or the thought takes us captive and brings us into direct disobedience to Christ!

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You Gotta Have Heart We cannot separate our thinking from our acting, our attitudes from our actions, or our beliefs from our behavior. All thinking is but the dress rehearsal for acting.

Through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, King Solomon wrote: “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” (Proverbs 4:23). In other words, all our living flows out of our heart.

Let’s clear up this matter of the word heart, because as you read through the Old and New Testament, you will find the words heart and mind used sometimes interchangeably and sometimes distinctively. The context determines the interpretation. In the Bible, the heart is the seat of reflection. Or, in other words, it is the seat of the mind.

Today, we talk about the heart as our emotions. We would say, “I love you with all of my heart,” and we’re speaking emotionally. But in the ancient world, you would never have said, “I love you with all of my heart.”

What you would have said is, “I love you with all of my bowels.” You read that right, but I wouldn’t suggest you say that to your loved ones today! Language changes, and so we must know what they were talking about at the time the Bible was written.

In the Bible the heart is primarily the seat of reflection because, as we’ve said, “For as he thinks within

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himself, so he is.” You don’t think in your emotions; you think with your heart. Biblically speaking, the heart is a combination of what we would call the seat of reflection and the seat of affection. But first, it’s the seat of conscious, rational thought, or the seat of reflection.

This is paramount in understanding what the Bible teaches about the mind. So, when you read heart in the Bible, most of the time you can be sure that it’s talking about the seat of reflection rather than the seat of affection, although sometimes the latter is the case. Context is crucial.

If we do not zealously guard what flows into our heart—or mind—we will have little control over what flows out of it onto others. If the stream is polluted flowing in through the ears and eyes, then soon both thinking and acting will become polluted.

If we are honest with ourselves (self-assessment), we have to admit that we are drawn toward what the Bible calls the “lust of the flesh” (1 John 2:16). It’s because of the spiritual fall of mankind. A friend of mine expressed the fall this way: “When man fell, he fell on his head, and he’s not been thinking right since.” Exactly!

Soul, Spirit, Body Now then, I want us to look at the mind as a part of the human soul. The soul is what we would call our person24

ality, because it’s our mind, emotion, and will. Nothing can be said to have personality that does not have mind, emotion, and will. In order for us to understand what the Bible teaches about the mind, we must understand what the Bible teaches about the soul.

In Genesis, it says that God created man, breathed into him, and made him a living soul. In other words, a human is a living soul that has a body and a spirit.

You are a living soul that has a body and a spirit. Think of a bullseye. The innermost circle is spirit. When God said, “let us make mankind in our image,” that’s what He was talking about: I’m going to put within mankind that which is characteristic of My nature. So, if God is Spirit, and if we’re going to have fellowship with God, we must have within us that which would make it possible to fellowship with Him. When God said (to paraphrase), “I’m going to put my Holy Spirit within your human spirit” (Ezekiel 36:27; 37:14), He is saying the Holy Spirit will be the agency whereby He basically controls our entire being.

The Holy Spirit works through our human spirit, and instructs our mind, controls our emotions, directs our will, and ultimately governs our behavior.

Mankind in this capacity had unlimited potential because of God’s Holy Spirit dwelling in the human spirit and working outward. As a reminder, religion always tries to work from outside in, but God always works from inside out.

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Satan and Sin When God created man, he was to have a spirit that moved out into the soul dimension and into the body dimension, instructing his mind with truth, controlling his emotions (that tend to be so fickle), and directing his will. Remember, whatever gets the attention of your mind and the allegiance of your emotions and the commitment of your will, ultimately governs your behavior.

When man sinned, however, everything was thrown out of balance, as we will see in a moment.

So, God was supposed to govern our behavior. He said (to paraphrase), “I’m going to have creatures down here that will be under My control and who will do My will.” God originally created mankind so that there would be but one will in the universe. However, Lucifer added a second will that said, “My will,” and then he spread this to the human family. We know that there’s going to come a time when every will will be subjected to Jesus Christ. We should look forward to this day!

Whatever gets in your mind and instructs your mind, and then gets your emotions (because your emotions always come right along), will also get your will because your will always goes along with these first two, and together they govern your behavior.

All advertising media starts right here. They begin to appeal to our mind and to our emotions, knowing that

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if they can appeal to our mind and emotions, then soon our will gives its consenting vote. We then go out and buy whatever they want us to buy.

This is just like how it all started back in the Garden of Eden. Satan came along and he appealed to Eve’s mind, and he said, “You will be like God” (Genesis 3:5).

Then he appealed to her emotions and showed her that the fruit was good and desirable. And very quickly, the will capitulated, the couple made a disobedient move, and human sin entered the universe.

Paul calls Satan “the god of this age” in 2 Corinthians 4:4. Jesus called him the “prince of this world” (John 12:31). Satan took Jesus to a high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of this world in Matthew 4:8–9. Satan said, “All this I will give you if you will bow down and worship me.” The only reason that was a temptation was because Satan could have delivered the goods.

We are absolutely living in futility and folly when we think that the world is in God’s corner. We know that it is not. It lies in the hands of the enemy. So, the “god of this age,” Paul said, “has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4). There’s the problem. Satan has blinded the eyes of the natural man.

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3 Brain Power Gone Bad Let’s pause now and just get a glimpse at the capabilities of the human mind. This is a tremendously fascinating subject. When we really begin to look at the mind, we see something of the wonder of God’s creation. You remember what David said in Psalm 139:14: “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

The brain, or what we would call the seat of the mind, weighs about three pounds and is composed of pinkish-gray matter with the consistency of oatmeal. It contains around 86 billion neurons, which are the functional units of the brain. 86 billion! You can lose many thousands of them every day and not be affected at all.

Our brains never turn off. We might think it’s the case when we hear older people say that their mind just doesn’t function like it used to. It just seems to have been unplugged. But nothing could be further from the truth. The only time the brain is “turned off” is when a person has experienced clinical death.

Whether you’re waking or sleeping, the brain is always going, either consciously or subconsciously. There 29

are a lot of things that come out of the subconscious dimension that are put there by the conscious dimension. In other words, when you turn off one, the other just picks up. So, when you turn off consciously, your subconscious mind is still going. Your mind is never off duty.

Scientists tell us that the capacity of the human brain is far more than we will ever use. It is capable of storing an estimated two million gigabytes of information (that’s more than 20,000 full-length high-definition movies!). Just think of what capacity you have there! And if we filled that great capacity at a rate of one thought every second during our waking hours, in a normal human lifetime you would have stored over 1.5 billion thoughts!

A Fallen Mindset The last chapter outlined how God originally created man. Man’s mind would be controlled by God’s Spirit—the Holy Spirit—working through the human spirit and moving out into the soul dimension. It would instruct his mind with everything he needed to know. But then the fall took place. The fall resulted in the death of the spirit, the perversion of the emotions, and the disobedience of the will. Man in this capacity is not capable of thinking right, loving right, or acting right.

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When death entered the universe, it entered in the spiritual dimension first. The human spirit died, and that’s precisely why Jesus said to Nicodemus that he must be born again of the Spirit (John 3:5–8). So, the first death was spiritual death that led to physical death that, if left unaltered, will ultimately lead to what the Bible calls eternal death or the second death (Revelation 20:14).

In this fallen state that the Bible calls death, we are incapable by nature of thinking right, loving right, or acting right. We are incapable of doing anything that would please God. Our thoughts are not capable of pleasing Him. Our emotions are not capable of pleasing Him. Our will is in disobedience. Our will, by doing what is natural to it, lives by the ethic of “my will be done.”

We see this mindset in children. My four children were never taught to be selfish. They came into the world with a natural inclination toward a me-first attitude. This is the problem in the world today. People are totally incapable of pleasing God and are in a position of helplessness and hopelessness.

In Romans 5, Paul gives us something of the definition of mankind in this capacity: “At just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly (verse 6) . . . But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (verse 8) . . . For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son” (verse 10).

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This is God’s definition of us in our fallen state. Just go through and see the words that Paul uses. Number one, we are helpless. Number two, we are ungodly.

Number three, we are called sinners. Number four, we are called the enemies of God. This is the fallen state, a situation of absolute hopelessness and helplessness.

Genesis 6:5 and 8:21, Romans 1:28, and 2 Timothy 3:8 are other places where the Bible says that mankind now has a corrupt, depraved, and perverted mind. Paul also says in Ephesians 4:17 that mankind has a mind that is futile and vain. This is what he says to Christians: “So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking.” Gentiles are those who have never adhered to the gospel due to the futility of their minds. Paul continues, “They are darkened in their understanding and alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart” (4:18).

Fantasy and Flesh To translate this into modern psychological terminology, futile thinking is fantasy. Fantasy is what I would like to believe that I am. Fantasy is where I escape and try to be what I cannot be, or what I wish to be in real life.

It’s a normal thing for a child to have fantasies. As 32

we grow up, however, we’re supposed to escape fantasy and live in reality. But the natural mind causes us to live in fantasy as opposed to reality.

Therefore, we are naturally opposed to the gospel because the gospel comes along and does not speak fantasy to us. It comes and speaks reality. God tells us things as they really are. He causes us to see things as they really are rather than the way we would like to believe or hope they are.

In Colossians 2:18 and Romans 8:7, Paul talks about the fleshly, sensuous, hostile, or unspiritual mind (depending on your Bible translation). This is a mind that is prone toward lust and all the things that we call the flesh. In Titus 1:15, Paul talks about the corrupted or defiled mind. We are born with this kind of inclination.

We are born with a mind that is perverted. With a corrupt, depraved, fleshly, futile, sensuous, defiled mind, am I capable of doing a whole lot of correct thinking?

Of course not.

In 1 Corinthians 1:18, Paul says, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” The word of the cross is folly to those who are still living in the natural state. They don’t comprehend what God is doing. Why? Because they don’t have the spiritual nature within them. Spiritual truth can only be perceived by people who have a spirit, by people whose spirit has made them alive.

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Someone in this fallen state is not capable of right thinking. Therefore, it’s absolute folly to go to a person who is living in a darkened, perverted, and corrupt mind—with all the characteristics of our natural state— and say “Stay positive.” They’re not capable of that.

Until God opens the minds of people, there’s nothing we can do to make them comprehend. The natural person can no more think correctly in the biblical sense of the word than a blind person can see color or a deaf person can hear sound.

Here is one beautiful example of God opening someone’s mind in the New Testament. In Acts 16, Paul went down by the riverside in Philippi to find a place of prayer. “One of those listening was a woman from the city of Thyatira named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth. She was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message” (verse 14). In other words, the Lord opened her mind to comprehend.

We know that God wants to do this, but He is never going to open a mind until a person begins to have a will that is ready to be submissive. When God opens the mind, then a person can begin to comprehend truth. It’s the preaching of the Word that begins the process the Bible calls conviction.

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4 The Age of Unreason and Emotion We are living in what I call the Age of Unreason. At the end of the 1700s, Thomas Paine wrote The Age of Reason, but the Age of Reason has never really been here.

There may have been times when people have seemingly operated by their minds more than their emotions, but right now, we are living in an age of unreason. We’re living in a time of emotion. We have gone back to what we might call the age of romanticism and even the age of mysticism.

What’s the reason for that? You see, we are not really living in our minds—we are living in our feelings.

The maxim of the day is “If it feels good, do it.” Vance Packard wrote The Hidden Persuaders all the way back in 1957. He said that 90% of all purchases in the United States are based upon emotions and impulse. The percentage is probably higher today.

The real problem is that the church has copied the world. In the Old Testament, we read a great deal about the Babylonian captivity of the Jewish people. Overall, Babylon represents the world in the Bible. I am con35

vinced that there’s been another Babylonian captivity.

The church tends to be captivated by the age it is living in, which today is the Age of Unreason.

We were not put in society to copy the world. We were put here to be the salt in society. We are to be a model for the world to copy. Yet the world has invaded the church far more than the church has invaded the world. And the world is living in an age of unreason, experientialism, and emotionalism.

Some time ago, a man named Mel Tari was traveling all over America because of his (now-controversial) book Like a Mighty Wind. It was his account of the Indonesian revival in the twentieth century, and he was asked a question. Can what happened in Indonesia take place in America? He said, “Yes, if you will take out that small computer which is your brain, put it in a little box, and shoot it to the moon and then let God use your heart.”

This is an absurd quotation. There is no place in the Bible where God asks you to kiss your brains goodbye and freewheel it on your heart and emotions. Anytime you do this, you’re opening the emotional Pandora’s box for every fickle, erratic thing to take place. The problem in the church is that we have allowed subjective experience to become our authority rather than the objective, propositional Word of God.

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Emotions First, Thinking Second?

One common example of this extreme subjectivity is when Christians often get together, put their mind out of gear, and freewheel it on their emotions and experiences. God never meant for our emotions to control our mind. It’s the other way around. Anytime we do that, we’re really headed for trouble.

This is one of the reasons I think events like revivals and other gatherings down through the years have fallen into such disrepute. They have been experiences where people have tried to whip up others’ emotions, prey on them, and cause them to make emotional decisions that aren’t really going to last.

Commitment must be based on content if it’s going to be a valid, lasting commitment. Anytime a person makes a commitment and doesn’t understand the content they have committed to, then they’re going to be in trouble.

Read what Paul said: “I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God” (Acts 20:27). Essentially, he was trying to tell them, “I have explained to you all the mind of God that God has revealed to us, so you know the God with whom you have to do.”

Commitment, if it’s mature, must be based on content.

God’s people need to rediscover God’s Word and then start applying that content to their lives.

I have talked with numerous people who say, “I have 37

experienced exactly what they experienced in the book of Acts” (supernatural activity). Then, they go out, share this, and oftentimes breed a lot of confusion within the body of Christ. Because if any doubt is expressed toward them, they reply, “I don’t care what you say, you can’t take away what I’ve experienced.” At this point, I can no longer have a reasonable biblical discussion with that person because they have elevated experience and emotion above God’s Word.

The problem is they have started living by the authority of experience rather than the experience of authority. As Christians, we were created as creatures to live under the experience of authority, specifically the authority of God. Since we’re in rebellion against God, we often live under the authority of experience. In other words, our experiences, as fickle and erratic as they are, constantly dictate our behavior. Therefore, we live under the authority of every new “spiritual” experience or fad that comes along. We do this instead of living under the experience of authority, under the propositional, objective Word of God and in a relationship with Him, regardless of experiences.

The Throne of Your Heart Let’s talk about what the Bible calls the carnal Christian, as opposed to the spiritual Christian. Remember 38

that we’re talking about the heart first as the seat of reflection and then affection. The Bible says to be carnally minded is death and to be spiritually minded is life.

Tragically, we have gotten to the place in the church where carnal Christianity has often become the norm, and spiritual Christianity has become the exception. We have gotten so far off base that what was subnormal has become accepted as normal, and what was normal is now called supranormal. We have accepted carnal Christianity as normal Christianity, and that is perverted Christianity. It is fleshly Christianity, as Paul would call it, whereby Christians are living under the authority of experience. This is absolutely displeasing to God. Let’s put it this way. In the heart of every believer there is a throne. Rather than putting God’s Word on the throne, a person lives more by experience and feeling.

They often run around from one meeting or revival to another, trying to get spiritually pumped up. They tend to evaluate every so-called spiritual experience by how many goosebumps they get! The more feeling, the more spiritual, and that’s not necessarily reality.

As a result, we have elevated experience to the throne of authority. And yet, the authority of experience always leads to a fickle, fluctuating, frustrating Christian life, never satisfying. Why? Because it’s a spiritual rollercoaster, going up and down, from elation to depression, hot to cold, on and off, and so forth. This is carnal Christianity, living by the flesh. To be carnally minded is death.

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How, then, can we learn to live? Walk by the Spirit.

Think spiritually rather than carnally or fleshly. I am by no means discounting emotions and feelings and experience. God gives us great spiritual experiences from time to time. But we must live with the authority of God’s Word where we rely on what He has said rather than how we experientially feel at any given point in time.

Experiences are in a secondary position.

We elevate God’s Word through His Spirit to the throne of authority in our hearts. This is the experience of authority. In other words, God has the authority over our lives that He originally created us to experience.

And this is all done by faith. Faith is that attitude which pleases God. Faith honors God and therefore God honors faith.

As the writer of Hebrews says, “Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” (11:6). And Romans 14:23 adds, “Everything that does not come from faith is sin.”

Tragically, most Christians are more carnally minded than spiritually minded. We live in the Age of Unreason and Emotion. Therefore, we’re on the rollercoaster of faith rather than living a spiritual life, walking by the Spirit, and having the mind of the Spirit.

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Wrapping Up Wrong Thinking God emphasizes the role of the mind and thinking in the Bible. He wants us to let Him renew our minds and teach us how to think rightly again. God never asks us to deny our feelings and our emotions. He does give us many genuine experiences, but He never intends that we walk by feelings. We should always walk by faith and therefore honor Him. God said, “Come now, and let us reason together” (Isaiah 1:18 kjv). However, some believers want to retranslate this verse into “Come now, let us experience together.” To be clear, Christianity is not a cerebral religion. By that I mean that there are those who want to get to heaven headfirst. You can’t do that. We come to faith through a new birth experience. If we wait until we comprehend it all intellectually before we decide on it, we will never get there.

We can’t really get to heaven headfirst, but neither can we get there by completely denying our reason. This is why Peter said in 1 Peter 3:15, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” Be ready at all times to give a reasonable answer.

So, let’s summarize. We are what we think, because all our actions rise out of our attitudes. The real crux of the problem is this: we are not capable of right thinking

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in our fallen condition. Therefore, we’re not capable of right living. And because we’re not capable of right living, we are creatures victimized by our perverted feelings, living by our emotions.

We’ve also seen that our minds are fallen and darkened. Even when we become Christians and have the new birth experience, many of us continue to think with the old natural mind more than we do the new spiritual mind. Therefore, the work of the flesh will still characterize our lives more than the fruit of the Spirit. Paul chastised the church at Corinth for this reason. They continued to think with the old mind after they had received the new. This is why Paul admonished Christians in Colossians 3:2 to “set your minds on things above.”

When we start thinking and setting our minds on the things above, we will be able to live with a new quality of life.

We have lived for so long in the futility of our minds, with wrong thinking and a darkened understanding, that we have accepted it as normal. But the Lord gives us a new mind to think His thoughts and transform our behavior.

As Christians, not only do we receive a new heart with new affections, we receive the “mind of Christ,” as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2:16. We have the privilege of thinking God’s thoughts after Him, having the mind of Christ. And that’s where we’ll look next: making preparations for right thinking.

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Part II Preparation for Right Thinking

5 It All Starts with God We started by talking about the problem of right thinking. We are what we think. We learned that the quality of our living cannot rise above the quality of our thinking. The only way to change our living is to change our thinking. God created man and woman to be rational creatures with a mind nearly infinite in its capabilities.

We saw that in our fallen state we do not have the capacity to think right. Through the fall, our whole nature, including our mind, was ravaged by sin. In this fallen condition, we are still capable of great mental achievement, but we lack the moral capacity to properly function.

Here are some of the words the Bible uses to describe the fallen mind: wicked, evil, corrupt, futile, depraved, perverted, vain, fleshly, sensuous, defiled, and darkened (Genesis 6:5, 12; 8:21; Psalm 94:11; Matthew 17:17; Romans 1:28; 1 Corinthians 3:3; Ephesians 4:17–18; 2 Timothy 3:8). Living this way (unregenerate), our moral inabilities overshadow our mental abilities and it eventually brings destruction. This is why the Bible calls us fallen, because we are spiritually dead and soulishly sick.

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The Bible also reminds us that, before conversion, “You were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior” (Colossians 1:21). A mind like that is not just passive to God and His truth. Paul assures us that the sinful mind “is hostile to God” (Romans 8:7). As such, we have a fallen, rebellious mind that actively suppresses the truth (1:18). We are dominated by our own perverted emotions, living in the futility and fantasy of our darkened minds, and doing our own thing by the exercise of our disobedient free will.

Willful unbelief is the mindset of unbelievers. It is not that they can’t believe—it is that they won’t believe.

Through willful unbelief they suppress the truth of God that is so evident in the natural and spiritual world.

Tragically, many Christians continue to live the same way even though God has made provision for such a glorious alternative in Christ.

Now that we understand the problem, we are going to learn how to prepare for right thinking.

Two Principles I want to start by giving you two simple principles. The first principle is this: Since all right living begins with right thinking, all right thinking begins with right thinking about God. This is what we might call the fountain46

head of right living. Previously, we looked at the problem of going from acting to thinking. Now, we want to move to the ultimate source of right thinking: right thinking about God. Every problem that you and I have or will ever have can ultimately be traced to wrong thinking about God. This is a staggering thought because it means that every problem at its core is essentially a theological problem.

You are thinking wrongly about God. In Proverbs 1:7 and 9:10 it says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” and “the beginning of wisdom.” The ultimate source of right thinking is right thinking about God. There is a well-known philosophy called humanism.

This philosophy believes that we understand humanity by studying men and women. In other words, if we want to know what makes a person tick, let’s metaphorically take them into the operating room, hook them up, cut them open, and examine them. Through the study of humans, we can understand everything there is to know about them. This philosophy of humanism is diametrically opposed to Christian doctrine. The Christian doctrine says that we do not understand humanity by studying human beings. We understand humanity by studying God. You can obviously see that these two belief systems have different starting points. Therefore, they lead to different alternatives. Humanism says the beginning of 47

knowledge about man is studying man. Proverbs says that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge. You can only understand the created (humanity) by a knowledge of the Creator. The more you understand the Creator, the more you will understand His creation.

Here is the second principle: Just as the quality of a person’s living cannot rise above the quality of their thinking, the quality of the Christian’s living cannot rise above the correctness of their thinking about God. Tragically, in the church of Jesus Christ today, we have many wrong understandings of God. I encourage you to read J. B. Phillips’ book Your God Is Too Small. He spells out exactly what we’re talking about. He takes all the supposed ungodlike attitudes of God and explains how these affect our living. Then he shows that these concepts of God are far too small and are unworthy of the God of the universe. We have an incorrect thinking about God.

Isaiah’s Encounter Look at what Isaiah 6 says, because I want to give you a dramatic example of thinking correctly about God. This passage describes Isaiah’s great encounter with God in the temple. What we will see is how this experience affected Isaiah and how he got his thinking correct 48

through revelation about God. Here is Isaiah 6:1–8: In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying.

And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”

And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

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This is a tremendously important portion of Scripture. When Isaiah saw God for who He really was, it radically altered several areas of his life. As a result of seeing God’s holiness, Isaiah had a radically different view of himself. He saw himself for who he really was.

Likewise, the more you come to know God as He really is, the more you will know yourself as you really are. When you see the holiness of God, you will also see your own unholiness. And the result? “Woe to me!”

I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips.”

It’s sometimes characteristic of a new Christian that they feel like God is just tickled and proud to now have them on His team. I mean, if there was ever a person that is just making God rejoice and can now give God a hand, it’s this person. But the more that person begins to grow, if they continue in the folly of this fantasy, the more it will erode the presence of the holiness of God. If you’ve read any of the autobiographies of the notable Christians of ages past, you know that they had gotten close to God through discipline and perseverance. They rightly saw themselves in comparison as simply the dust of the earth.

Look at it this way. The further my hand is away from light, the less dirt I see. The closer I get to the light, the more that dirt is visible. Similarly, the closer we get to the holiness of God, the more we are made aware of the unholiness in our own lives. I am convinced that when Christians really begin to see God 50

for who He is, we will be driven to real repentance as Isaiah was.

Isaiah also gained a realistic worldview. Contrast this with the evolutionary humanistic mindset where we want to delude ourselves into believing that the world is getting better and better. This is what we would like to believe and what Satan wants us to believe.

However, the moment we get a realistic concept of God, we get a realistic worldview. Isaiah said, “I live among a people of unclean lips.” He realized that not only was he fallen and unclean, but that everyone else was as well.

Once Isaiah realized this, he then received forgiveness and cleansing, giving him a new foundation for his thinking, living, and serving. God never reveals our unholiness in comparison to His holiness just to destroy us. Instead, it is to drive us to repentance, so that we can then be clothed in His righteousness and become partakers of His holiness. This is the grace of God, because if we got what we deserved, His holiness would slay us.

God’s holiness should drive us to repentance, just as it did in the case of Isaiah. God sent the seraphim to the altar to take a coal and touch his lips. “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” Only after the realistic self-analysis had taken place was Isaiah ready to say, “Here am I. Send me!”

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6 Knowing God Is the Key If I were to ask you to name at least five attributes of God, could you do that? Try to list just five attributes or qualities of God’s nature that He has revealed to us.

Many of us probably couldn’t do it, so how can we ever hope to give ourselves to a God we do not understand?

It’s like two people marrying each other—entering into a covenant relationship—but knowing nothing about each other’s attributes.

Let me make a few suggestions of some books on this topic, because there are so few of them. You can go to Christian bookstores in person or online and find the shelves groaning with experiential books. You’re not going to find very many books on the nature and attributes of God. Does this tell us something about the reason for the impotency of American Christianity?

The first book is Knowing God by J. I. Packer. You’re probably going to need some time to read it, because it’s not a book that you “read”—you study it. But it will really bless you. Another is The Knowledge of the Holy

by A. W. Tozer, and a third is The Attributes of God by A. W. Pink.

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I guarantee you that if you read these books, you will climb to new heights in your Christian life because your understanding of God will be significantly and eternally magnified. They are not necessarily easy to read. These are books that are going to make your mind and spirit be challenged, so you’re going to have to read them when you’re totally alert. It will absolutely revolutionize the quality of your thinking and the quality of your living.

According to John Calvin, “It is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself.” Why? Because we have a fantasy knowledge of ourselves. We do not often have the honesty to deal with ourselves realistically. We cannot have a clear knowledge of ourselves until we have first looked upon God’s face, as Isaiah did, and only then can we move from contemplating Him to scrutinizing ourselves. You will never know who you are until you know who God is.

The age-old problem of man is the identity crisis of who am I ? This is the question of adolescence as well as adulthood. Who am I? Well, we will never know who we are unless we know who He is. God is the great I am (Exodus 3:14). He is the eternal one—I am. Therefore, we only know who we are by knowing who He is.

Once again, this drives us back to the principle that we do not understand ourselves by studying ourselves.

We understand ourselves by studying God. The ap54

proach to knowing and understanding yourself is not to study who you are. Rather, it is to study who He is, the great I am of the universe.

Satan’s Lies about God Remember that Satan’s oldest and most successful attack is on our concept of God. He tries to either confuse or lower your understanding of who God really is. He knows that if he can do this, soon he’ll keep you from being able to really worship or be obedient to God because that false representation of God is too small for you to worship.

I’ve oftentimes found this in debates with people who call themselves agnostics, existentialists, atheists, or just rebellious people. What they’ll immediately do is start throwing out questions like, How could a good God send anybody to hell? What about sincere Buddhists? How do you explain the problem of pain?

What they are trying to do is one of Satan’s greatest tactics. He is trying to get them to find God’s feet of clay.

But He doesn’t have any! However, Satan knows that if he can get people to spot what he claims is an inconsistency, an act of changeability, or an instance where God has acted ungodly, then that gives us the justification to say, “You do not deserve my allegiance. Therefore, I can go and do what I’d already intended to do anyway, and that’s to do my own thing.”

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Go back to the Garden of Eden. What was Satan’s attack? He came to Eve and asked, “Did God say . . . ?”

What’s he doing? He’s trying to lower Eve’s concept of God. If he’s going to get Eve to be disobedient to God, he must make Eve believe that God is an unworthy God who is trying to restrict her. He’s not really the gracious God that He’s made Himself up to be. If we start to question God, soon it will lead to disobedience.

If you understand the oldest temptation to humanity, then you understand Satan’s tactic. He has not had to change it. All he has done is refine it for thousands and thousands of years. And because we’re fallen, we just keep buying the same lie over and over again.

The first thing he will do is point out something that makes God appear unworthy. Pretty soon, he will lead you down the path of disobedience. Listening to the wrong source gave Eve a wrong understanding of God. It then led to a disobedient action.

So, remember there is more than one power in the universe vying for the attention of your mind. The Bible teaches that everything in the universe either comes from God through His Holy Spirit or from Satan through demonic influence. The moment you start listening to the wrong source, you will get the wrong information.

The wrong information will lead to the wrong action.

This is how Satan sets up every temptation.

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Two More Principles Let’s pull a principle from this: We cannot give ourselves to a God we do not know. Paul spells this out in Romans 10:14–15: “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’” And then in verse 17: “Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.”

We cannot give ourselves to a God we do not know.

This is why we have the Great Commission in Matthew 28:19 and are called to make disciples of all nations.

As a result, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13). They will come to know God. Correct knowing will lead to right thinking. And right thinking will lead to right living, which leads to right loving. There’s your formula. How do you get your thinking right? Get your knowledge right. What’s the greatest knowledge? You’ve got to have a right knowledge about God. Where does that come from? What God has revealed about Himself in Jesus Christ through the written Word.

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Here’s the other principle: Right thinking must be based upon right knowing, and right knowing must be based upon the truth. Jesus prayed in John 17:17, “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.” What is truth? By His Word the truth is known. So, to what degree will you know correctly? To the degree that you know God’s Word. Correct knowledge, correct thinking, correct living.

You will never get to know God casually. You will never get to know God in a halfhearted way. Daniel 11:32 (nasb) is a telling verse. Speaking of how God’s people will handle adversity, in the second half of the verse it says, “but the people who know their God will display strength and take action.”

Hosea 6:3 (nasb) states this about knowing God: “So let us know, let us press on to know the Lord. His going forth is as certain as the dawn; and He will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain watering the earth.” I hope you’re seeing from these selected verses that you are not going to get to know God casually. You are not going to get to know God by just sitting in the church pew once a week. You’re only going to get to know God if you persevere and have a heart that longs for Him. In Philippians 3, Paul shares about his strong religious background, culture, education, and other aspects that he used to think were important. But in verse eight, he declares: “I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for 58

whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ.”

The original Greek word used for garbage is translated more precisely as “dung,” so he’s being pretty graphic here! In other words, all those things that I used to think were fantastic, that my little world revolved around, that I was pursuing as hard as possible, were just a pile of manure compared to knowing Jesus Christ.

Paul then states in verse 10, “I want to know Christ— yes, to know the power of his resurrection.” And then Paul sets a path: “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (verses 13–14).

This was the passion of Paul’s heart and his plea to believers. You will never get to know God with a casual, halfhearted attitude. It’s going to take real desire followed up by real discipline in your life.

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7 Know Jesus, Know God Let me follow up the previous principle about truth with a question. How much can you love and trust a person?

Have you ever thought about that? This is a big question. Let me give you the answer: You can love and trust a person to the exact degree that you know them. Loving and trusting is based upon knowing.

Sometimes we hear people say with enthusiasm (and a bit of spiritual naivete), “I just love the whole world.” I say baloney! You can’t love the whole world!

There’s only one in this universe who has the capacity to love like that and it’s God. You can’t love people you don’t know, except theoretically, and theoretical love is not real love. You can only love people you know, and your loving is in direct proportion to your knowing.

Oftentimes, the more we know people, the less we love them. This is why it takes a supernatural love. In Greek this is called agape love, a God kind of love.

Why? There is nothing lovable about us. We were absolutely unlovable to God, and yet, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). This is agape 61

love. This love can be commanded because Jesus said, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you” (John 15:12).

It’s like Jesus is saying He couldn’t care less how you feel about each other. There are people who turn you off and you would like them out of your life. Jesus is basically saying, “So what? I command you to love them with My agape love that is available to you.” Humanly speaking, the more we know them, oftentimes the less we love them. This is contrary to God’s way.

The more we know God, the more we love Him. The more we know people, the more we should love them.

One time I was sharing this message with a group of people who didn’t know me at all. My family was in the back of the room. I told the crowd, “None of you here would probably trust me with your life. You don’t trust me, and rightly so, because you don’t know me yet.”

One of my daughters was just absolutely appalled when she heard this, and she nudged my wife sitting next to her. She said, “Well Mommy, I trust Daddy!” Do you see why she was upset? What was the difference? My daughter knew me. Therefore, she had ultimate trust in me because of my track record with her. To that point I had been proven trustworthy.

You know how fathers are with our children sometimes. They may be standing on the sofa or a table or something. We will say jump and our child will take off airborne and jump. Why? They know and trust us. Now, 62

if we ever say jump and step aside, the next time they’ll say no, because we proved last time that we couldn’t be trusted.

This is what Satan does. Satan tries to make you believe that when God says jump, He’s going to let you fall. He is going to interject himself into a situation where God is asking you to make a step of faith, and then he’ll try to make God appear inadequate. However, right knowing about God leads to right thinking about God, which leads to right loving and living for God.

Jesus Is the Way This really gets to the heart of the issue. How do we gain accurate knowledge of God so that we can think correctly about Him, love Him as we ought to love Him, and then live our lives in keeping with His plan? How? Jesus Christ. You cannot know God to any greater degree than you know Jesus Christ, because in Him the Word has become flesh and we have beheld His grace, glory, and truth (John 1:14). “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him” (Colossians 1:19).

Many of us as Christians still have wrong understandings of Jesus. There are all kinds of ways Jesus is portrayed in the church that are incorrect. One of them is the gentle Jesus who is meek and mild; that guy who never raises His voice and looks like He’s just stepped 63

out of the beauty parlor. Every hair is in place, and He is poised! My point is that we oftentimes have images of Jesus that are not really the Jesus of the Bible. You’ve got to really get to know Jesus Christ. Saturate your being in Jesus—and that takes place through the gospel.

John 1:18 tells us that Jesus made God known to us. Later in John 14:9, Jesus tells us that anyone who has seen Him has seen the Father. We just read this in Colossians 1:19. Literally what the Bible is saying here is that Jesus Christ is the exegete of God. This simply means that Jesus gives us the perfect interpretation of God. In other words, in Jesus Christ, God has taken a picture of Himself so that we can really see Him. The cardinal principle, then, is that all right thinking about God begins with right thinking about Jesus Christ. So, saturate yourself in the first four books of the New Testament. A lot of times we focus on the rest of the New Testament. But the point of these latter books is to drive you back to the four gospels.

Peter said, “To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps” (1 Peter 2:21). How can you know what those steps are unless you go back and absorb them from the gospels? Study them and walk through them and saturate your very being with Jesus Christ. The more you know Jesus, the more you will know God. Since my knowledge comes from the Bible, which is 64

the basis for my right thinking of Jesus Christ, my right thinking about God through Jesus also comes from my study of the Bible. I cannot know God to any greater degree than I know Jesus. I cannot know Jesus to any greater degree than I correctly know the Bible. Do you see how this keeps coming back to an accurate knowledge of God’s Word?

New Birth The door to our right thinking about God is Jesus Christ.

The door to our correct understanding of His Word is the new birth, also known as conversion. This is the experience that gives us a new mind, a new spiritual being, and a new spiritual nature whereby we have the capacity to know and love God. There are two things that we must do to receive the new birth experience. We must repent and we must believe. Repentance is turning from and believing is turning to. We turn from our past way of living, thinking, and wrong understanding about ourselves. We repent and turn from the world, and we turn to Jesus Christ.

We release our embrace on the world to embrace Jesus Christ. This is the way that we are regenerated.

Repentance is the Greek word metanoia, and it comes from meta, meaning “afterward” (implying change), and noia, meaning “to perceive.” Therefore, repentance 65

means to think again, to have a second thought, to have a change of one’s mind. This is the reason why the gospel always expects change to take place.

John the Baptist came preaching repentance. Jesus also came, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 4:17). What was He saying?

He was saying our thinking was all wrong. We’d better give it a second thought. We’d better think things through again. We’d better think about Him again. We’d better think about sin again. We’d better think about what the Lord says. Repentance is to have a second thought and a change of mind.

In 2 Corinthians 5:16–17, Paul shares a truth that took place in his life: “From now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come.” He’s basically saying that he used to think of Jesus Christ in human terms. Paul saw Him as just another rabbi or teacher. He used to see Jesus from a human standpoint, but he repented.

When we have a change of thought about Jesus, it always results in a change of direction. The change of mind is what the Bible calls repentance. The change of direction is what the Bible calls conversion. We repented and then we converted. We turned around and it led to a different direction in our life.

The entire New Testament expects that when some66

one has truly repented, there is going to be demonstrable change in the direction, quality, and course of their life. Therefore, if we have not seen a change in someone, we have every reason to suspect that there really hasn’t been a metanoia, a repentance, a change of mind.

Through a new birth, a new nature, and a new life, we are on the way to being able to think correctly.

As non-Christians, we were walking away from God, had no time for Him, doing our own thing, living our own life, being the master of our own fate, and so forth. But then, we had a change of mind. That change of mind led to a change of direction. The changed mind led to repentance, which led to conversion, which led to a new nature. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Not only did we receive an “undivided heart,” according to Ezekiel 11:19, but we also received a new “heart of flesh.” We lost that hard heart that was impenetrable and not submissive or responsive to God. As we’ve already read in 1 Corinthians 2:16, we received the mind of Christ. All of this is preparation for right thinking.

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8 Double-Minded Now, here’s the problem. Many people after their conversion to Christ continue to be dominated by the flesh, or the old nature. Why? They continue to think with their old, fleshly, carnal mind rather than with this new mind, which is in Christ Jesus. The mind of the flesh, the old fallen nature, still wants to be preeminent. Most Christians, then, continue to think with the old mind rather than the new mind. The mind of Christ thinks and meditates on the things of God. As Paul said in Colossians 3:2, “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”

And in 2 Corinthians 10:5, he further instructs us to “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

James said that a double-minded person is unstable in all their ways (1:7–8). They are tossed like the waves of the sea. One minute they’re thinking with the flesh, then something happens and they begin to think by the Spirit. This is double-mindedness. How can this man or woman expect to receive anything from God? They’re constantly vacillating between the desires of the flesh and the desires of the Spirit, trying to capture the best of both worlds.

The old, fleshly mind leads to the specific works of the flesh Paul lists in Galatians 5:19–21: “sexual immo69

rality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.” What is the ultimate result? The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God and prevents experiencing Christ in all these areas. We’re thinking with the old, carnal mind and are really saying to God that we couldn’t care less that Jesus died and that He has another plan for us in.

So, rather than experience the life of Christ, we’re experiencing death in these areas. We may be regenerated, or born again, and when we die, we’re still going to heaven. But between here and there, we’re going to look more like a worldly creature than a heavenly creature.

Satan may have lost us for eternity, but for all practical purposes he still has us for a time here on earth.

On the other hand, the new mind in Christ results in the fruit of the Spirit, as opposed to the works of the flesh. Setting the mind on the Spirit brings life and peace (Romans 8:5–6). So, we have two options set before us: either the mind is set on the Spirit, or the mind is set on the flesh and is hostile to God. Wrong thinking leads to wrong living, and right thinking leads to right living.

Make a Choice God’s Word teaches us all the things about Him that we could never figure out or understand with our fallen hu70

man reason. And He personally became the Word to us in Jesus. He put flesh and blood on all these biblical principles and made them demonstrable in Jesus Christ.

We can look at Jesus and know what God is thinking about us. We can read Jesus’ words and know they are God’s words. We can look at Jesus’ actions and know that they’re God’s actions. We can look at Jesus’ life and know that it’s God’s life, and thereby really know who He is. May our right knowledge of God cause us to love Him better and serve Him more perfectly.

Choose now the mind of Jesus Christ. Reject and crucify anew the old nature and reckon ourselves as dead. Don’t be double-minded. Live by the Spirit, so that we don’t gratify the desires of the flesh. Exemplify the fruit and the grace of His Spirit, so that God can get some of the same glory that He got in Jesus when He was here.

We have to confess that we often continue to think with the old mind rather than with the new mind in Christ Jesus. We have to acknowledge that the works of the flesh typify our lives more than the fruit of the Spirit.

But it shouldn’t be our desire to remain double-minded.

God’s Word and His Holy Spirit will lead us into truth.

Get into His Word and dig out the truth, as a prospector digs for hidden treasure, so that we might learn to think aright and live aright. In so doing, Jesus will indeed be more and more glorified in us.

I’ll leave you with this passage from Paul: 71

As it is written: “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived”— the things God has prepared for those who love him— these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.

The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. (1 Corinthians 2:9–16) 72

Part III The Process of Right Thinking

9 Deprogram and Catharsis We cannot ask someone to make a particular commitment unless they know something of the content.

A mature commitment is based on an understanding of the content they are committing to. For example, people sometimes make a decision for Christ without adequately understanding the content of their faith.

Therefore, they may end up making a sincere but naive commitment.

We want to start committing ourselves to act on the information that we have received about right thinking.

Look at the 139th Psalm. In the first three verses, David wrote, “You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.”

David went on to say, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain” (verse 6). God’s wonderfully intimate knowledge is too much for us to comprehend. Why would the holy God of the universe know us this well? Why would He set His affections 75

upon us to the degree that He would go to any lengths— even the death of His Son—just to see us redeemed so that we might have fellowship with Him? God knows us more intimately, more perfectly, and more realistically than we even know ourselves.

David said later in this psalm, “Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (verse 16). God knows every aspect of us. His knowledge of us must become more and more our own knowledge of ourselves. We need His help to see ourselves as He sees us, rather than how we see ourselves or how the world sees us.

We need God’s vantage point. We need to have His thoughts about us. Isaiah 55:9 declares: “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

We should seek to bridge the chasm between what He thinks and what we think through an understanding of His Word.

Now, we’re going to move to the actual process needed to achieve right thinking. We have been looking at how wondrously the mind of mankind was originally created. But we fell and our minds became darkened.

We now have a perverted mind that is no longer capable of receiving God’s thoughts or thinking His thoughts.

Therefore, we need Him to renew our minds so that we receive and start appropriating or adopting the mind of 76

Christ. And we also need to have our minds cleansed of our unworthy concepts of God. Our principal thesis has been that the quality of a person’s living cannot rise above the quality of their thinking. Therefore, if you want to alter someone’s living, alter their thinking. The quality of our lives as Christians cannot rise above the quality or the correctness of our thinking about God. This is where Jesus Christ comes in.

In Need of a Good Cleanse Now I want to share with you how to deprogram the mind of all the wrong concepts of God. Satan’s chief point of attack is to try to constantly call into question, lower, and confuse our concept of God. He knows that if he can get us to think wrongly about God, soon he will cause us to act disobediently toward and independently of God. There’s a key verse that I want us to look at, and it’s John 15:3. Jesus said, “You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.” Isn’t this great?! We are made clean by the word which He has spoken to us.

There are some prayers printed in the back of the hymnal in Methodist churches. When congregations take communion, they sometimes read a prayer that deals with cleansing. It says this: 77

Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid: cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy name: through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

We should indeed ask God to cleanse the thoughts of our heart. Remember that the heart is the seat of reflection more than the seat of affection. “Cleanse” is an exceedingly rich word because in the original Greek it is the word from which we get catharsis.

Psychologists talk a great deal about catharsis. It is the experience of emotional cleansing. When a person breaks down and weeps and lets everything pour out, we say that this person has had a cathartic experience.

They have had a cleansing. They have allowed all that had been pent up to flow out.

So Jesus said in John 15:3 that we have been cleansed.

We have received a catharsis through the Word that He has spoken to us. Since we’re talking about deprogramming the mind from an incorrect view of God, His Word gives us a mental catharsis. It deprograms us and cleans out all the mental garbage if we will allow it to do so.

Garbage In, Garbage Out As we grow up and live in a society where we are con78

stantly bombarded mentally and emotionally by the garbage of this world, we collect it all in our minds. Then all that has been stored up tends to come back and trigger certain thought patterns. This worldly junk manipulates our thoughts and causes us to think with the carnal mind rather than the spiritual mind. This is why we need to have a mental catharsis.

I want to give you a rather graphic illustration of this. I hope you won’t take it in a crude sense because it’s not meant that way. What a colon cleanse is to the body, the Bible is to the mind. It cleanses. As we study and memorize and meditate on God’s Word, it literally cleanses our minds. It gives us a mental catharsis that begins to clean out all the garbage that we have collected through the years.

Unless we let this cleansing take place, we will keep that garbage stored up in our minds. We need God’s cleansing desperately, because unless we have a mental catharsis, these old thoughts and habits will constantly come back and trigger certain behaviors.

Our problem is that we can be like the Pharisees, the religious leaders of Jesus’ day. We are far more concerned with external cleanliness than with internal. Let me share a quotation from Matthew 23:25–28. Jesus was speaking to the scribes and the Pharisees, saying, Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup 79

and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

Jesus pointed out that the scribes and Pharisees had cleansed the outside and looked clean and pure and righteous to others. But on the inside, they were full of hypocrisy, lawlessness, and unrighteousness. This is the real problem of mankind. We are far more concerned with externals. When we try to cleanse the externals, we’re dealing with the fruit rather than the root. Jesus said it’s far more important to cleanse ourselves internally, and then the internal catharsis (mental and emotional) would lead to an external catharsis.

The Prodigal Son’s Brother There is an appropriate example of this internal catharsis in one of the stories that Jesus told—the story of the 80

prodigal son. One of the great messages of this story in Luke 15 is found in the attitude of the elder brother.

When his younger brother came home after squandering all his father’s inheritance in a distant country, the elder brother saw his father receive him back not as a slave, but as a son. The father reinstated the younger son to his previous condition of full sonship. The elder brother got very upset.

Jesus believed the Pharisees were like the elder brother. When Christians read this story, we tend to condemn the younger brother more than the older. The older brother reprimanded his father and said, “When this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!” (Luke 15:30).

What he said revealed what had really been in his heart. The elder brother needed to have a mental catharsis. He was good on the outside. He was clean on the outside like the scribes and the Pharisees. But inside, he was filled with sin.

I can certainly relate to this because I was always a good kid externally. I learned that external rebellion was a dangerous and unpopular thing. So, my rebellion was internal. I could go through all the externalities of conformity, but inside there was total rebellion, anarchy, lust, and everything else going on in my mind. I didn’t need to go to a faraway country because I carried it with me all the time in my mind.

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This was the story of the elder brother, and it is one of the great problems that religious people have. Those of us reared in Christian settings learned quickly to restrict certain external behavior. What we did instead was imagine internally what we could not or would not do externally.

Jesus is saying we need to have a real catharsis take place in our minds, not just appear so externally. It is what comes out of our mouth that defiles, because what comes out of our mouth testifies to what is really on the inside. When spoken or acted out, these things that come out of us not only show the defilement that is in us, but they also reach out and defile other people. The lustful things, the profanities, the lewd stories, the bad jokes just testify to what’s going on inside us.

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10 Vivid Illustrations Pardon the crude illustration, but defilement is like regurgitating or vomiting on people. People go around and constantly defile others with the defilement that’s inside of them. When I’m among certain company and hear those kinds of things, I want to just turn and say, “Keep your garbage inside. Quit vomiting on me!”

Jesus said that it’s not what goes into a man that defiles him. It’s what comes out of a man that defiles him.

What comes out testifies to the defilement that was on the inside all along. This is why it’s so important that we have this mental cleansing or catharsis, so that the inside can be clean. Then the root will testify with pure fruit.

Jesus said, “For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of” (Luke 6:45). What comes out of your mouth is an eloquent testimony to the contents of your heart.

This is precisely what Jesus is saying. So, if you want to change what comes from your lips, then change the content of your heart. Have the necessary mental and emotional catharsis and it will lead to a radical alteration in the externals. The principle, then, is this: The way to stop bad habits such as evil thoughts and profanities is washing your mind out with the Word.

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My dad was a Methodist minister and we lived in parsonages on the property of the churches. The lawn of one of the parsonages adjoined one of the main walkways in town. When my older brother was very young, he often sat out there a great deal and would hear some colorful conversations from those passing by.

One day when he was seated at the table, there were visitors there for dinner. He began to recite all that he had heard to the great embarrassment of my mom and dad. There were very profane things coming out of his mouth. My mother looked back on it many times and laughed. She tried everything to stop my brother’s bad habit, including washing his mouth out with soap to try to stop him from saying those things.

Parents used to do that as a way of punishing bad language. But we all know that washing one’s mouth out with soap is not going to change language. We must wash our minds out with God’s Word. This is what Jesus is saying. His Word will cleanse our minds, and when our minds and hearts are cleansed, then the words we speak will be pure words.

Of Bread and Brides In the first five verses of 1 Corinthians 5, Paul is dealing severely with disobedience and immorality in the church at Corinth. He then says, “Your boasting is not 84

good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed” (verses 6–7 nasb).

There’s that word again: clean (or cleanse). If you know the nature of leaven, or yeast, you know that it quickly permeates a whole lump of dough. Leaven must be cleansed out so that it will not permeate everything.

Jesus is saying through Paul exactly what He had said in John 15. We must have the leaven of our old self cleansed out (that is, have a catharsis) so it will not poison the rest of our being. In any area where we have not allowed the catharsis of God’s Word to cleanse us, we are not holy.

Ephesians 5:25–26 is another important and beautiful illustration. The context is Paul speaking about the husband and wife relationship. The husband is to love the wife in the same way that Christ loved the church.

Paul says, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word.”

What Christ is doing is preparing the church as His bride. One day at the feast known as the marriage supper of the Lamb, the bride (the church) will be presented to the bridegroom (Christ) without spot, blemish, wrinkle, or any imperfection. What is the process for this? It 85

is the cleansing that is to take place corporately within the body of Christ.

The Bible tells us that we not only need to be cleansed individually, but also corporately. Paul made no bones about cleaning out any kind of immorality within the church. This is what we call church discipline.

Anytime there was a person in the early church who continued in flagrant immorality and had no intention of changing, Paul said they should be put out of the church.

Why? You must cleanse the church or it will destroy the integrity of its witness to the watching community. Just like you cannot allow defilement in your own life, you cannot allow it within the corporate body of Christ.

The Records in Our Mind One of the most important applications of deprogramming the mind is the healing of the memories. All of us have certain mental and emotional memories that tend to constantly hound us and destroy the quality of our lives. We have certain thought patterns and memories going back to childhood or our teenage years or early in marriage that continue to haunt us. We try our best to get rid of them, suppress them, repress them, and run away from them. We try to ignore them, but try as we may, they keep constantly coming back to us—and oftentimes unexpectedly.

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Here’s an illustration. We might compare these memories to scratches or grooves in a vinyl record. Depending on your age, you might struggle with this analogy.

A record would sometimes get a scratch on its surface, and then as it rotated, the needle would just drop right into that scratch and the song you’re listening to would loop the same few seconds over and over. If CDs get scratched, they don’t work well either. (This problem doesn’t exist anymore thanks to our music now being in digital form!)

This is similar to how emotional experiences work.

We have certain mental and emotional scars or scratches. Our mind constantly falls back into these old grooves and keeps us locked into certain attitudes and patterns of thinking.

These emotions can be triggered by something small or unexpected, a thought, an experience, or a flashback.

Any number of things can suddenly trigger one of these memories that we thought we had taken care of. It can come rolling back on us like the ocean tide if we’re not right on top of our thoughts, disciplining ourselves, and making sure that we keep these things suppressed. Otherwise, we tend to put our mind in neutral and just drift right back into some of these old patterns of thinking.

These thoughts are oftentimes fantasies and are almost always both negative and unhealthy by nature.

And yet, we continue to harbor them in our minds. We can’t seem to get rid of them. When they come, they seem to take over our behavior and our outlook.

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What’s taking place on the inside always determines what we are seeing on the outside. Therefore, feelings such as anxiety, guilt, fear, and frustration take root and we can’t seem to handle them. We become emotionally fixated.

Take for instance holding a grudge against someone.

They either did something to you or didn’t do something to you or for you that you expected and wanted.

You begin to harbor a grudge, nurse that grudge, and then carry that grudge. Pretty soon, you’re not carrying the grudge—the grudge is carrying you! It becomes a fixation that you cannot shake. It constantly consumes you.

I see this illustrated often in marriage counseling where problems have occurred (maybe an infidelity) or where harsh words were said. One spouse tucks it away in their mind and emotions. They begin to dwell on it and nurse it and constantly keep it in their mind. It becomes a fixation that they can’t shake. Going forward, every time they view their mate, they view them through the lens of broken emotions. Until they’re ready to give these up and really let God heal them, there’s no chance of healing that marriage.

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11 Heal Bad Memories This is a longer chapter, but I want you to bear with me because it’s crucial. We will never be able to experience emotional healing until we experience the healing of the memories. This kind of healing is far more significant and miraculous than a physical healing. A person who has these emotional scars is constantly controlled by them, robbing them of the vitality and the mental and emotional health they need, rendering them crippled. So in my opinion, it’s a far greater miracle when God is able—through the submission of that person—to heal them of these emotional broken places than it is to cause a person who is lame to walk again.

As you’re reading this, perhaps there are certain scars that have come to your mind. If so, how can healing take place? This is the big question. Look at 1 Corinthians 13 with me. Paul says this: “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me” (verse 11).

We all know that when a person grows chronologically and physically, they do not necessarily grow intellectually and emotionally. We have scores of people in the world who are getting older and should be getting 89

emotionally and mentally more mature but, sadly, that is not the case. Why? Because we have not put away childish things.

The original word used here for “put behind,” “give up,” or “put off” means to reduce to inactivity, to free from, or to render inactive. It never means to destroy, and that’s crucial. Never did this word mean that something was going to be obliterated, annihilated, or erased.

What the original word means is that something is reduced to inactivity or someone is freed of its power.

Memories can’t be erased. We do not have the capacity to forget because our minds are not created that way. However, the Bible says that God will forget when it comes to forgiving our sins. He will cleanse us, forgive us of our sins, and separate us from them as far as the east is from the west and remember them against us no more. God chooses to forget all the sinful things that we have done.

When Paul said “when I became a man, I put away childish things,” he is not saying that his childhood memories and experiences were erased and forgotten.

What he is saying is that the negative emotions and trauma that surrounded those memories has been removed. The thought itself has not been removed. It’s permanently stored, but all the emotional pressure that surrounded it has lost its power.

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Stingers and Foxes Let’s consider this analogy. Our bad memories are like a cut that has healed. There is scar tissue there to remind us of the cut. We will bear that scar on our body the rest of our lives, just as we will bear the scars in our minds and emotions. But even though the scar tissue is still there, all the poison and infection has been removed.

This is what Paul is saying. He’s saying that God’s Word cleanses us and heals these memories and all the trauma and emotional sting around them to the degree that they no longer have their effect on us.

Paul exclaims in 1 Corinthians 15:55, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”

We know that the sting of death is sin and the strength of sin is the law. This is the reason we are absolutely impotent to do anything about our situation. We could not fulfill what the law required to pay the penalty of sin.

Therefore, there was a sting in death because death was mankind’s greatest enemy. Jesus Christ came along, and by fulfilling the law, He was qualified to pay the penalty for sin. He removed the sting of death. Paul could then face death or any fear because the stinger had been removed. Because Jesus has been triumphantly resurrected from the grave, the grave no longer has victory. Jesus has won the victory over death.

What is the sting of these emotional memories? It

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is the guilt that surrounds them, the fear, hurt, and resentment—those feelings of inadequacy and inferiority.

Through the catharsis and the healing of the memories, Jesus can remove the sting from that area of your mind.

Through His grace, love, and forgiveness, He can reduce those memories to inactivity.

They can’t be erased, but they can be rendered inactive to the point where they no longer keep rearing their ugly head, manipulating our outlook on life, and controlling our behavior. The Lord’s catharsis or healing of the memories will free us from their tyranny. This needs to take place in our lives. Jesus Christ not only heals our sin-sick soul, but also gives us the mental and emotional health that we need.

How does this healing take place? I’m hesitant to give a process or procedure for anything, but let me just share some general ideas for you to think about. First, honestly look at your past. Don’t get caught up in morbid introspection. God’s Word never asks us to do this.

Psalm 19:12 says, “But who can discern their own errors? Forgive my hidden faults.” These faults and thoughts have been repressed to the point that we can’t even look at them honestly. We need to sit down and ask God’s Holy Spirit to give us the ability to look at these areas in a real and honest way.

The memory could have been of something small that your mom or dad or sibling or neighbor said or did.

It was just like a pebble in your shoe. The longer you 92

wore it, the bigger the blister got. This is what Song of Solomon 2:15 says: “Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards.” These little rascals will destroy the vineyard. What does this mean? It’s the events in our lives that may seem small and foolish (and they are), but they begin to be built up and carried.

Rather than like the grain of sand in an oyster that turns into a pearl, it becomes something jagged and destructive in our heart and emotions.

It may be painful to look back at first, but we need to revisit these bad memories. It may have started very small and seemingly insignificant. However, over years of compounding thoughts and rehashing in our minds, we have literally turned the small mole hill into a tremendous emotional mountain.

Let the Healing Begin Once you’ve identified the bad memory, take Christ back to the experience and let Him be what you need at that moment. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). He is the great I am.

Everything is in the eternal present to Him. We live in the present. Yesterday is the past, and tomorrow is the future. This is not so with God. God is above time in the dimension called eternity. Everything is in the eternal present to Him. Let this reality sink in.

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The experiences that may have been years ago for you are present to Him. Therefore, it’s no problem for Him to go back with you into the past. Allow Him to enter into that experience because He was there anyway.

You were just not aware of His presence, or you were disobedient to His presence for some reason. But now, you need to take Him back to that experience. You are inviting Jesus Christ to come in and meet you at that time and be what you needed.

The kind of needs you may have had are as infinite as there are problems. You may have needed an experience of love. Something happened and you felt unloved.

As a result, you still have low self-esteem and an unlovable view of yourself. You need to have Jesus Christ meet you there. Just like He took children into His arms and loved them, you need to allow Him to give you the experience of love that you needed so that you can be healed.

Perhaps it was a misunderstanding. Something happened and you felt you were wrongly understood, and it left you with scarred emotions. You need forgiveness because you are harboring a sneaking suspicion that whatever you did is not forgiven by God. Maybe He is still holding it against you. You need to hear Him say that you are forgiven. You are cleansed. It is buried in the sea of His forgetfulness, never to be remembered against you; separated as far as the east is from the west.

You may have needed someone to believe in you.

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Now, you don’t believe in yourself and have an inferiority complex. As a result, you don’t think that other people could ever trust you. You need to go to Jesus. He is saying to you, “I believe in you. I created you special.

And if you’ll let me help you, there’s nothing we can’t do together.”

We could go on and on with a list of possible problems and scars. The point is, something happened in your past when someone was not able to be what you needed. You have to take Jesus back to that point and allow Him to be that Person you needed.

You’ll Probably Need Help It would be beneficial if you also confess this matter to a pastor, counselor, or mature Christian friend. Discuss it with someone who can maintain confidence and never discuss it with anyone else, but who can be a sounding board and confessional for you.

Oftentimes we Protestants have reacted against the Roman Catholic doctrine of confession to the point that we don’t confess to other believers at all. James 5:16 says, “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” There is something emotionally, spiritually, and mentally cleansing about us confessing to another representative of Christ and hearing that person in Christ’s stead say to us, “You are cleansed. You are forgiven!”

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This person will need to pray with you, perhaps lay on hands, and maybe even anoint you with oil (see James 5:14), depending on how the Holy Spirit leads.

They should claim with you God’s healing for your particular situation. And then, once it is done, you need to leave it there.

Very closely related to forgiving ourselves is forgiving anyone we are holding anything against. Other people were involved in our negative experiences, either physically or emotionally. As a result, we carry grudges, bitterness, and resentment that can lead to an unforgiving spirit and a negative attitude. Unless we forgive them, we will never receive forgiveness. We must confess these sins and forgive them for everything before God. We need to seek out a mature Christian to help with this process.

Even if we can’t forgive someone in person, we can say “I forgive you” in our minds and in our spirits before God. I absolutely absolve you from my experience.

Just as God has separated my sin and that situation as far as the east is from the west, I absolutely separate you from that experience through forgiveness; never to hold another feeling of unforgiveness toward you.

Go on the offensive in this area in the days ahead because Satan will try to make you think things are not taken care of. He will try to trigger those old thoughts again. Again, Paul said in 2 Corinthians 10:5 to “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

This means if your mind goes into neutral, then you’ll tend to drift toward the old thought patterns. So, you’ve 96

got to stay on offense—your greatest defense is a strong offense.

Give the Holy Spirit some time to work His healing in these areas of your life. Give Him time because you have been carrying these burdens for many years. God can bring healing instantaneously, but it may take time to appropriate it or integrate it. It must become a disciplined experience and a willful appropriation of His cleansing and healing.

Let’s Begin Healing Now I want to pause at this moment and pray for you. As I do, I want you to search your own heart for any area where you need emotional healing. You need to have your memories healed. Be honest about it. Quit running from it. Face up to it. Allow God in the days ahead to heal it by leading you to the right person, counselor, or pastor who can help you. Take Christ back to the experience, walk through it, and anoint it with His healing, love, grace, and forgiveness. Then, once and for all, you can walk away from it.

Father, right now I pray that Your Holy Spirit would speak personally and intimately to us.

There are many different skeletons in our emotional and mental closets that have haunted us for years. You know every one of them. You were there when it happened. Therefore, Lord Jesus,

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You are the only one who can go back with us to that experience and bring healing to it.

All our sins were nailed to the cross and Your Son’s body, and by His stripes we have been healed. Father, we know that You want to heal us mentally and emotionally. I pray right now for every person reading this for the liberation of any emotional scars, bad memories, and damaged emotions. There are some that You can heal right now. I claim this healing in the name of Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit and by the cleansing of Your Word.

Lord, others can start this process by a commitment. I pray that we would either claim the healing now or commit ourselves to the steps of obedience needed so that we might be mentally and emotionally whole. Cleanse the thoughts of our minds by the inspiration of Your Holy Spirit.

Father, I thank You for those who have accepted Your grace at their point of need. In the name of Jesus Christ, I pronounce them forgiven, healed, and loosed from their emotional memories, that they might be freed to be your children.

I claim this in the powerful name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

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12 Reprogram Your Mind Thus far we have been deprogramming. We’ve been going through mental catharsis and getting out the garbage. Now it is time to reprogram.

Jesus shared a parable in Luke 11:24–26 about a demon that had been removed or cleansed out of a certain person’s life. This cleansing needed to be followed by the filling of the Holy Spirit and the Word. In this story, the filling did not follow the cleansing. The reprogramming didn’t follow the deprogramming. So, the demon came back and brought seven of his cohorts.

We must reprogram and make sure that, in the process, we so fill our mind with all of God’s truth that there’s not any room left where Satan can inject anything else negative. Let’s now learn how to reprogram.

Jesus states in Matthew 4:4 that “man shall not live on bread alone, but on a few of the words that come from God’s mouth.” Wait—is that what it says? No! “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” God did not have a couple hundred good verses that He wanted us to know.

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God wants us to know everything that He has spoken to us. We must learn to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Everything that God utters is of absolute importance.

Jesus likens God’s Word here to bread. What bread does for us physically, God’s Word does for us spiritually and emotionally. We eat bread, which is food, resulting in physical growth. We should partake of every word that proceeds from the mouth of God because it results in spiritual growth.

Here is a basic principle: Whatever you feed, grows, and whatever you starve, dies. It’s a fundamental principle of life. Any area of your life that you feed will grow, and any area of your life that you cease to feed or you starve will eventually die. We are often zealous in feeding our bodies and emotions, but are constantly starving our spirits. Therefore, we become individuals who are physically overnourished, emotionally unbalanced, and spiritually malnourished. We’ve become very lopsided individuals!

Three times a day, we feed our physical selves. We also go through all kinds of things to feed ourselves emotionally, but we starve in the spirit. As a result, many of us are large physically and emotionally, but we’re spiritual pygmies. What God wants us to do is reprogram our inner selves.

When Paul prayed in Ephesians, he said, “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with 100

power through his Spirit in your inner being” (3:16).

This is because “though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16 nasb). Our “outer man” is dying, and one day it’s going to be in the ground and will return to dust.

Healthy Food and Healthy Marriage Healthy bodies have healthy appetites that feed on healthy foods. Likewise, healthy minds will have healthy thoughts. This will result in healthy attitudes and healthy living. So, our goal is to keep a positive mental focus as much as possible.

American businesses and media are always pushing healthy foods and buying natural products, foods that have no impurities or preservatives. God’s Word is spiritual food for us. It doesn’t have any additives or impurities. Peter said the pure unadulterated Word is what we’re supposed to eat (1 Peter 2:2–3). Unlike health foods, however, God’s Word has preservative power. It will preserve our spirits with eternal life.

So, we need to partake of God’s food. This is what Paul is saying in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy— think about such things.”

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How many negative things do you read in this list?

Are any of them negative? Not a one of them! So, what is he saying? Program your mind. Fill your mind with truth—what’s honorable, just, pure, lovely, gracious, excellent, and worthy of praise. There won’t be room for anything else.

A dear friend of mine became a Christian later in life. Her husband was an alcoholic and is still not a Christian. Due to all the negative things that had transpired in their marriage, she had tremendous animosity and resentment toward him. All these things built up in her and she just could not forgive him. She couldn’t relate to him as she knew she should as a wife. She fixated on his alcoholism, and it colored everything that she thought about him and did with him.

I read this verse in Philippians 4 and told her to make several lists. At the top of each page, she was to write down one of the words: true, noble, right, and so on.

Then, I told her to start focusing on the positive things in her husband—even in his current condition.

On the first list, she needed to write down everything that she could think of about him that’s true, past or present. Anything true that she saw in his life, she needed to add to the list. Then think of anything that he has ever done that was noble and write that down, and so on through the words of this verse. Once the lists were done, she needed to start thinking about these things.

A couple of months later, she came to see me. This 102

reprogramming exercise absolutely transformed her relationship with her husband. Consequently, he started relating to her differently. Why? Because she was relating to him differently. This can work for you as well. If you transform your thinking about a person, it can transform the health of your relationship with that person.

Good Intake In the reprogramming process, we’ve also got to look at good reading, good viewing, and good listening. In other words, we need good intake. We could spend a lot of time looking at this area and its implications.

Read more. Don’t waste your time reading trite garbage. Read something worthwhile. Everywhere my dad went, he was always reading. He always had a small book handy, and if he had a few minutes to spare, he would pull it out and read it. My mom was the same way.

Consequently, my siblings and I are avid readers.

Why? Because we saw this trait in our parents. They modeled good habits of reading the kinds of materials that edified and built us up.

There needs to be good viewing and good listening too. The eyes and ears are the windows and receptacles to the soul and spirit. You’ve got to be careful about what you watch and hear.

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The Bible teaches that there are two entities in this world seeking to influence our minds. God is seeking to influence us and fill our minds through His Word and the Holy Spirit (good intake). If He has control and can influence our mind, He will direct our behavior. Through all the things of this world, Satan is also trying to get the attention and allegiance of our mind. He knows that if he does, he will also influence and control our external behavior just like he did with Eve. Her wrong allegiance gave her the wrong thoughts. Thinking the wrong thoughts (bad intake) led to wrong action.

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13 Guard Your Mind Now then, after we have reprogrammed the mind, let’s talk about guarding the mind. Not only does it have to be deprogrammed and then reprogrammed, it must be maintained. I call this the maintenance dimension, guarding the mind, or mental maintenance. This is keeping yourself under the control and good intake of the Holy Spirit.

Paul said in Ephesians 5:18, “Do not get drunk on wine.” Why not? When you are drunk with wine, it leads to excess and to the poor behavior of a drunk person. Paul goes on to say, “Be filled with the Spirit.” It is the basic principle that whatever fills you, controls you.

So, let God’s Holy Spirit fill you and control you. Then, you will be able to walk by the Spirit.

As a drunken man has the external behavior of drunkenness, a Spirit-filled man has the external behavior of the fruit of the Spirit. If we allow God’s Holy Spirit to fill us and thereby control us, then the fruit of the Spirit will typify our lives, as opposed to the works of the flesh. So, zealously and jealously guard your intake.

David asks the question in Psalm 119:9, “How can a young person stay on the path of purity? By living according to your word.” If you want to keep your life 105

pure, then put a guard up. The sentry, or guard, that God put in place for your eyes, ears, and mind is God’s Word.

It is to be a filter that helps you only take in what is good and noble and pure and so forth, and reject what is bad.

Get Ready for Battle Here is a final principle: The battle is always won or lost in the mind. If you win the battle and appropriate the victory that Christ has already won for you, you will have learned to bring your thoughts into obedience to Jesus Christ. In 2 Corinthians 10:5 Paul said, “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.”

You will need the spiritual armor that Paul lists in Ephesians 6:13–17. It starts with the helmet of salvation. What does a helmet guard? It guards the head or the mind. There is also the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, sandals of peace, the shield of faith, and the sword of the Spirit.

If you were to analyze the various parts of the armor that we Christians have, you will notice that all are defensive weapons except for one. The only offensive weapon we have is the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. It is the sword that we use to cut away, destroy, and defend ourselves from all onslaughts by the evil one.

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This is precisely what Jesus used when He was tempted by Satan. He didn’t answer back except with God’s Word. He said, “It is written . . . it is written . . . it is written.” And three times He cut the ground right out from under Satan. So, how can you guard your ways?

By putting on spiritual armor.

As Saint Augustine said many centuries ago, “You can’t keep birds from flying over your head.” He means that you cannot keep thoughts from coming into your mind. You can control them by controlling your thinking and your reading and your viewing. But Satan will still try to slip them in from time to time. They’re like the birds flying over your head. You can’t keep it from happening, but you can keep them from setting up housekeeping in your hair! This is what 2 Corinthians 10:5 is saying: take every thought captive to obey Christ.

Picture the ugliest vulture or buzzard that your mind can conjure up. Can you picture it flying nearby? It comes with one of those thoughts and tries to literally land and build a nest on your head. In your mind, imagine this ugly bird coming down and trying to take up permanent residence there. Then, see yourself pull out a sword, which is God’s Word, and reach up and jab him hard. I guarantee you he’ll go airborne.

This is why Paul says we must take every thought captive to obey Christ. You can’t control the thoughts that come into your mind, but you can control how long they stay there. You can control what you do with them 107

after they land—whether you allow the old vulture to sit there or whether you get rid of him.

Transformed In closing, let’s read 2 Corinthians 3:18 (nasb). Paul is alluding to how Moses put a veil on when he came down from the mountain. He had just seen God and was shining brightly. Paul says, “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.”

The word beholding is in the present tense in the Greek. Anything that is in the present tense in Greek is a continuous action. Paul didn’t say that we should glance at Jesus and then turn away—although that’s what most of us do. He said we continually behold the glory of the Lord. It’s a dynamic, never-changing singleness of focus, locking in on Jesus Christ and beholding the glory of the Lord. We will be changed into His likeness from one degree of glory to another.

The word here in the Greek for transformed is the word metamorpho, from which we obviously get the word metamorphosis. We say that a tadpole goes through metamorphosis and changes into a bullfrog.

What Paul is saying here is that if we fix our attention on Jesus Christ through His Word and His Spirit, He 108

will keep our attention on Himself. As we continuously behold Him, we will go through constant spiritual metamorphosis from one degree of glory to another. We will be changed into His likeness.

The metamorphosis of the mind is an internal change. The carnal mind doesn’t want to behold Jesus.

It wants to behold the world. But the more you behold Christ, the more you are metamorphosed, the more you are changed and transformed into His image from one degree of glory to another.

As we become transfixed on the Lord Jesus Christ, let us daily appropriate and integrate God’s Word so that we are changed. As the message of a famous hymn shares, may we turn our eyes on Jesus and look full in His wonderful face. Then, the things of this world will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.

He will transform us into His image from one degree of glory to another—and for the glory of God.

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Part IV The Practice of Right Thinking— Christian Meditation

14 Defining Christian Meditation In all my years of being raised in the church, I never heard a message on the practice of right thinking or Christian meditation. It is a subject that’s unknown to most Christians because it has been tragically neglected by the church. Therefore, it has left a vacuum that has been filled by worldly alternatives.

Let me start by providing two definitions. When I’m doing research on a topic like this, I look at a secular definition to see how the world defines a particular thing, and then I look at it from a spiritual perspective.

Merriam-Webster defines meditation this way: to reflect on, to muse over, to contemplate, or to think deeply.

Now, let’s consider what I believe to be the Christian definition of meditation. The most thorough Christian definition of meditation I found was penned by J. I. Packer in his book Knowing God. He says this: Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about 113

the works and ways and purposes and promises of God. It is an activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God, under the eye of God, by the help of God, as a means of communion with God. The purpose of meditation is to clear out our mental and spiritual idea of God and to let His truth make its full and proper impact on our mind and heart. It is a matter of talking and reasoning with ourselves about God, moving away from doubt and unbelief into a clear understanding of His power and grace.

When we meditate, we practice right thinking. We humbly contemplate God’s greatness and glory, and, by contrast, our smallness and sinfulness. We encourage, reassure, and comfort ourselves as we contemplate the unsearchable riches of divine mercy that are displayed in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a total and deep preoccupation with the person and works of God and all the results He brings in our life.

Biblical Examples of Meditation Meditation is talked about in the Bible, more particularly in the Old Testament than in the New Testament.

With this in mind, let’s look at some of the biblical background of meditation. Joshua 1:8 might be familiar 114

to some of you. God was speaking to Joshua when He said, “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will achieve success” (nasb).

God lays out a fantastic proposition here. He says if we meditate on His Word and become obedient to what we learn, then our way will be prosperous and successful.

There are several references to meditation in the book of Psalms, starting with Psalm 1:1–2: “Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night.”

Psalm 5:1 (nasb) says this: “Listen to my words, Lord, consider my sighing.” The word for “sighing” is variously translated as “groaning,” “lament,” or “meditation.” The original Hebrew word is hagig, which means to mutter or meditate.

Here are a few more examples. Psalm 19 concludes, “May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer” (verse 14). In other words, the words of our mouth are largely determined by the meditations of our heart. In Psalm 77:12, David said, “I will consider all your works and meditate on all your mighty deeds.”

David also said in Psalm 104:34, “May my medita115

tion be pleasing to him, as I rejoice in the Lord.” We’re going to see as we go that all of us are meditators, but not all our meditating pleases God. Our meditation is either pleasing or displeasing to Him. Psalm 119 has more references to meditation than any other psalm. It’s the longest psalm in the Bible and is predominantly about God’s Word. For example, verse 15 states: “I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways.”

Every student of the Bible ought to remember verse 99: “I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes.” If you want to be a person who has spiritual insight and truth, then meditate on God’s Word and you will be able to teach your teachers.

In the New Testament, there is one main example I would like for us to consider. It is 1 Timothy 4:15.

Paul has been talking to Timothy about not letting people look down on him because he’s young. Instead, he should be an example and devote himself “to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching” (verse 13).

Paul further tells Timothy, “Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress” (verse 15). The New American Standard Bible puts it this way: “Take pains with these things; be absorbed in them.” And the New King James Version translates it: “Meditate on these things; give yourself entirely to them.”

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The Greek word for meditate or be diligent means to be careful, to take care, to attend to, to practice, or to revolve in the mind. Paul is saying to Timothy, if you meditate on these things that God has done in your life, then your progress and growth in the Christian life will be evident to everyone.

Single- or Double-Minded?

From these biblical references to meditation, we can deduce several things. Meditation must have an object, so we need to look at the objects of biblical meditation.

The Bible teaches that there are three primary objects of Christian meditation. First is the person of God. He is the highest object of our meditation. Many psalms focus on meditating on and worshipping the person of God. Second, we are to meditate on the Word of God. And the third object of Christian meditation are the works of God. The Christian meditates on the person of God through the Word of God and the works of God. Or another way of putting it is that the Christian meditates on God through the written word, the living Word, and the natural word.

The person of the world meditates on the things of the world. These include pleasure, success, popularity, lust, and other fantasies. The things of this world 117

are transitory and will pass away. So, it’s like trying to grasp at a vapor.

The real tragedy is this worldly meditation is taking place among Christians. They are double-minded.

A Christian can spend part of their time meditating on the person, Word, and works of God, but can also focus on the world. When there is double meditation, there is double-mindedness.

We talked about this problem in Part Two. James 1:6–8 states that a double-minded person is unstable in all their ways and is tossed about like the waves of the sea. They shouldn’t expect to receive anything from God. The double-minded Christian has two different sources giving them commands. They’ve got God saying “Advance!” and Satan saying “Stay!” So, they take one step forward and one step backward. This is the problem with double-mindedness.

What is the cure for this dual focus? Obviously, it’s singleness of mind and meditation. We’re in the world, but not of the world. We should have our focus on the things of God. We’re not just talking about physical eyes, but spiritual eyes as well. Eyes are the windows of your mind, which controls your meditation. What filters in through the physical and spiritual eyes becomes the raw material that your mind begins to meditate on. So, we need to have a singleness of purpose, of eye, and of meditation.

This challenge of double-mindedness is a dynamic 118

that we’re constantly going to be struggling with as long as we’re in this world. It’s not easy to be in the world and not of it. There is so much pressuring us toward the things of the world that we start lusting after the things of the world.

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15 Principles of Meditation Now, let me give you eight principles of Christian meditation, which is the practice of right thinking. These are not necessarily laws, but principles I think might be helpful. Here are the first four. First, it’s important to realize that human beings are meditators. It’s not really a matter of whether you are going to meditate, but on what or on whom you’re going to meditate. We are basically meditators. We are incurably religious, and a crucial part of religion is meditation. So, a human being is incurably a meditating creature.

Second, biblical meditation and all other meditation is work. This is why every form of meditation on the market today involves some kind of technique. It might be a breathing process or a yoga exercise or some other method.

It’s interesting to learn that we don’t find a physical technique for meditation listed in the Bible. Yet, if meditation is going to have powerful results, then it must be worked at. Powerful meditation is not going to happen accidentally; it’s got to be given disciplined effort on our part.

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Number three is the central principle of meditation: The object of our meditation determines the validity of our meditation. Meditation is like faith or belief. We can’t just have faith; it must have an object. Even if we’re meditating on the wrong things, meditation must have an object. To meditate on the right object means to meditate on the person, Word, and works of God. So, the object of our meditation determines the validity of our meditation.

Fourth, biblical meditation becomes a means whereby we may think God’s thoughts after Him. The Bible teaches that God’s ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8–9). Meditation is one of the means by which we can begin to develop His thoughts.

Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 2:16 that “we have the mind of Christ.” This gives us an opportunity to think the thoughts of God after Him. With the mind of Christ, we can increasingly set our minds on Him. Once again, Paul tells us in Philippians 4:8, “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” These are the thoughts of Jesus Christ and should be ours as well.

Further, in Colossians 3:1–2 Paul says, “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, . . . set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.” The more we set 122

our affections and think on the things above, the more we develop the mind of Christ within.

We all have the mind of Christ because it’s our birthright when we’re born again. Tragically, however, many of us never develop it and never learn to think with it.

Biblical meditation is the process of developing the mind of Christ within us so that we can really begin to think like Christ. And since thinking is the dress rehearsal for action, we can begin to act more and more like Him as a result.

Four More Principles Go back and digest these first four principles when you have time, because I want to move on to the next four.

The fifth principle is this: Meditation is a practical means of increasing and maturing your faith. The more we meditate on God’s faithfulness, the more our faith is increased. This is one of the reasons that many of us have weak faith—we have such a small concept of God. The more we meditate on the person of God and His faithfulness, the more our faith will be increased.

All wrong thinking starts with wrong thinking about God. As our meditation is, so is our faith. What is it then that destroys faith? Unbelief. Faith and unbelief are mutually exclusive. They cancel each other out. We are incapable of having more than one mental or emo123

tional focus at the same time. We cannot be meditating on faith and on unbelief at the same time.

If we’re being honest, all of us have periods of unbelief. The question is, Are we going to side with our unbelief or with our belief ? Which one are we going to meditate upon? Whichever one we meditate on really shows what we’ve chosen.

What do you mainly meditate on? Do you meditate mostly on the things that you don’t understand, your doubts, your perplexities, and your confusion? Or do you meditate on the things that you do know and that you do understand?

The German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said this about doubt: “Tell me of your certainties. I have doubts enough of my own.” It doesn’t do any good to go out into a doubtful, confused world and just further propagate this doubt. Are you going to practice doubt or faith?

Principle number six: Meditation is a means of enhancing our worship. Since meditation is focusing on the person, Word, and works of God, it will naturally lead to adoration. The more we begin to meditate on who God is and what He has done, the more we will be driven to adore Him. When King David meditated on the person of God, it drove him to worship. Meditation is one of the great ways to enhance our own worship because it lifts us out of the mundane.

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Principle number seven: Meditation will make us more aware of sin in our own life by making us more aware of His holiness. The more we meditate on the person of God, the more we are going to understand the nature of God, which is absolute perfection. The more we see His absolute perfection and holiness, the more like Isaiah we’ll be: we’ll fall down and yell, “Woe to me!” (Isaiah 6). We’ll be aware of our sin.

Recall the illustration that the closer our hand gets to a light, the more dirt we can see on it. Many of us would prefer not to meditate because what we see scares us.

The more we really see God in His holiness, the further away from Him we feel because of our unrighteousness and unholiness.

Principle number eight: Meditation will enlighten, deepen, and intensify our prayer life. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14:15 that we can pray in the Spirit by meditating and having our mind become one with God’s mind. Meditation, then, will become more of a dynamic dialogue rather than a monotonous monologue.

Most of us tend to pray as a monologue. We go to God and tell Him what we want and how we feel.

There’s no real dynamic dialogue taking place. It’s a monologue where we’re doing all the talking and not very much listening. We need to listen as well. Jesus said in John 16:13, “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.”

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16 Meditation Prepping We’ve looked at eight principles of meditation. Now, let’s go to the actual act of meditation and make some practical preparations for it. The vehicle of meditation is the inner self, or put another way, the human spirit working through the human mind. The human mind is like a computer: garbage in, garbage out. Whatever we allow into our mind is what our mind starts processing, meditating, and musing over.

First in the process of preparation, we’ve got to avail ourselves of the proper raw materials for a fruitful meditation. This includes things like good books and music.

Our minds are basically evil. Perhaps this is why we seemingly remember every dirty joke, every dirty picture, every bad thing that’s ever happened in our life. We have no problem remembering evil. However, we’ve got to start pulling our mind in a more positive direction.

Next, we need to clear our minds of all random thoughts. Remember that meditation is a concentrated focus, a deep thinking or musing. It can’t be a random kind of action. Satan will constantly infiltrate our minds and try to scatter our thoughts to keep us from being able to focus on Jesus. It seems we can be praying, med127

itating, or memorizing a verse one minute, and the next our mind is drifting to something it shouldn’t be thinking. We need to fight this temptation to drift.

After that, we need to cut ourselves off from audible and visible distractions. This means TV, internet, radio, music, magazines, hobbies—anything that can keep us from meditating. Even if it’s “Christian” music, we may not be able to focus because, as we’ve said, our minds are not capable of more than one emotional or mental focus at one time. Therefore, we’ve got to begin to clear these things out of our minds.

Location, Location, Location We must also consider our environment. For example, I know I can’t go out to my workshop and meditate.

When I go to my shop, I’m ready to work, not meditate.

We all know there are places where we can’t properly meditate. The moment we get into that context, there’s a conditioned response and our mind is going to be on something else. So, cutting yourself off from audible and visible distractions will necessitate getting alone and away from people.

We read in the four gospels that Jesus frequently went off to a lonely place. He got away from His disciples and the crowds to a place where He could spend time focusing on the Father. Remember how Jesus di128

rected us to pray in Matthew 6:6: “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.”

This is a profound principle here. We’re not going to have a vital prayer life when there’s a lot of distractions. We must get away from people. Our most valuable meditation will take place in a secluded setting. If it’s not in a secluded place, then it needs to take place early in the morning or late at night outside of audible and visible distractions.

Personally, I must either get up early in the morning or stay up late at night to have real, focused attention.

The TV is off. The kids are asleep. There’s no traffic.

My neighbor’s dogs have finally stopped barking, and so on.

Let’s look at some specific verses about this. God tells us in Psalm 46:10, “Be still, and know that I am God.” It can be the hardest thing in this noise-polluted, insanely fast-paced society to really be still and know that He is God. Yet this is what we are called to do.

Psalm 62:1 (nasb) says, “My soul waits in silence for God alone.” This means we’ve got to shut up and quit talking. Start listening, so God can talk to us.

The prophet Elijah had just witnessed victory in the showdown with the false prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel in 1 Kings 18. God showed up there in an amazing way. However, the evil queen Jezebel was not deterred and announced she was going to have Elijah 129

killed by the next day. He was scared, wanted to die, and hid in a cave.

Here was Elijah after an incredible mountaintop experience—now in despondency and depression! God told Elijah to go out of the cave on the mountain where he had fled (1 Kings 19). God then brought a violent wind, an earthquake, and a fire. It was only when there was a gentle whisper of a wind afterward that He recognized God’s presence.

What was the lesson? Elijah had gotten so attuned to the dramatic that he couldn’t hear the still small voice of God. He needed to get tuned in; he needed to get his mind right.

In addition to location, I recommend always having a Bible nearby and using it as a springboard for meditation. Also, keep a journal or notebook handy. The Bible is our launching pad, and the journal is our landing strip. All meditation should spring forth out of God’s Word. Then, the notebook or journal should be used to record what He says.

What’s Holding Us Back We also need to look at four hindrances to meditation.

The first is failing to deal with unconfessed sin. Let’s look at a few verses, starting with Psalm 66:18: “If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.”

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Proverbs 28:13 says, “Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy.” And Isaiah 59:2 adds, “Your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.”

What’s the point here? Sin short-circuits the meditation process.

Second, and just as important, is failing to fix any broken relationships. Jesus said in Matthew 5:23–24, “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.”

It’s interesting to note here what Jesus is saying. If we remember that someone has something against us— even if we’re completely innocent—what are we supposed to do? Do we sit back and say, “Well, that’s their problem, so let them do something about it”? No. The Lord says we’re the ones who must take the initiative.

Matthew 18:15 is another example: “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you.”

Number three is failing to deal with mental distractions. Satan uses visible, audible, and mental distractions to try to keep us from hearing the voice of God. And number four is allowing an idle mind to be the devil’s workshop. We can be sure that if our mind is idle, 131

Satan will not keep it that way. He will quickly send a couple of his cohorts (demons) to start dropping things into our mind that we begin to dwell on.

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17 Time to Practice Now let’s look at how to meditate. These are just some principles or guidelines to aid your learning in this area.

First, begin by reading some portion of the Bible that deals with the person and attributes of God. Focus your thoughts from the lowly and mundane to the glorious and eternal.

Have you ever really considered the attributes of God? He is omnipresent (always present), omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), immutable (unchanging). Have you considered the depths of His love, holiness, justice, and so on? Begin to meditate on these attributes. Also, reflect on what He has done in your life: your salvation, your growth in the faith, how far He has brought you, and His faithfulness to you.

Meditate on His providence and provision for your life.

Focus on what He’s teaching you, both the pleasant and the painful things. Worship and praise and adore Him. Express your love for Him. Then, gradually start focusing on what the theme of your meditation time is going to be. Perhaps it’s one attribute of God, a truth, or a principle from a particular verse out of His Word. Maybe there is some problem

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that you don’t understand and you’re seeking enlightenment from Him. If you use this process, what has been accomplished?

You’ve lifted yourself above the mundane and begun to get into the presence of God. The worship, adoration, and love for Him gets you in tune with Him. You’ve begun to focus on a particular area where you need some enlightenment and understanding. Concentrate on this one area. Discipline your mind to focus and meditate on it with the mind of Christ.

As God gives you a deeper understanding about a particular truth, memorize some of the key verses that He used to bring this understanding. To be clear, though, meditation is deeper than memorization. Just because you can quote a hundred Bible verses doesn’t guarantee you know what they mean. You can know the letter of the law but not the spirit or truth of it.

Once you meditate on a verse, it becomes a part of your very being that can never be taken away. Truth that God has revealed to you through meditation can become as much a part of your being as you are!

The real truths of God are not going to be perceived from a cursory, halfhearted reading of His Word. If you’re really going to perceive the truth of God, you’re going to have to seek it as a prospector seeks gold.

Proverbs 2:1–5 brings a clear message: “My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your 134

heart to understanding—indeed, if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.” Does this sound like a casual pursuit? We should go after it like a prospector looking for precious metal. Meditation is a reliable way to mine out of God’s Word.

And remember your journal or notebook? Write down the things that God has revealed to you. Have multiple journals around your house and car if needed, so that you can jot down some things on short notice. These moments of illumination can be temporary.

You must capture them when the illumination comes, or they’re gone.

For example, maybe we’re listening to a sermon or reading our Bible or praying or even lying in bed when God brings insight. He begins to pour out truth and illumination and revelation to us. Remember to write it down because He’s giving it to you for a purpose.

The Voices in Your Head When you’re meditating, don’t sit there and try to listen for audible voices. What are you listening for? If you hear audible voices, take an aspirin and go to bed! I certainly believe that Satan can move in this dimension.

Therefore, you must be very careful.

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I wish there was a simple lesson for this, but it happens by trial and error. It’s like living with another person. I still misread my wife from time to time. But the longer I’ve lived with her, the more intimately I know her; the more intimately I can read her without a word ever being said. This is a reason why meditation is a real discipline. It’s the process of learning, of trial and error.

We have fantasized so much and heard so many other voices and distractions that it’s hard for us to know God’s voice well. If our meditation on God (His person, Word, and works) is the launching pad, then we’ve started properly. The more we know who He is, the more we understand His promises and the more we can perceive His voice speaking to us in our spirit.

It’s like a man who left his farm and went to New York City with a friend. He walked down 5th Avenue, with all the video billboards, lights, and traffic. The farmer stopped and asked his friend, “Can you hear that cricket?” His friend responded, “You’re crazy! I can’t hear anything but horns and noise.” The farmer was so attuned to the sound of a cricket that he could hear it anywhere.

Here is a personal example. When our children were much younger, our bedroom was down the hall from our kids’ bedrooms. They would have to let out a pretty good yell to wake me up. However, my wife is so sensitive, it seems like they would only have to miss a breath and she would be up and headed down the hall!

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The point is, whatever you get attuned to, you can perceive it better going forward. Therefore, it’s important to know what voices you’re listening to in your head and really develop the ability to recognize the input of God—and reject the input of Satan. Measure what you’re hearing with what the Bible says about the person of Jesus, the nature of God, and what His Word says. It’s a matter of testing the voices.

Post Meditation Let’s now look at the actions needed to accompany meditation. What happens next? First, be immediately obedient to whatever God has revealed to you. Be ready for any reproof, correction, command, or impulse from the Lord that you received during your meditation time.

Otherwise, you might become less and less sensitive over time. You will not be able to perceive as well, and your spiritual radar will not be nearly as fine-tuned.

Immediately confess any sin. Don’t tolerate, justify, or rationalize anything in your life, even though this is the natural inclination of the human heart. Deal with sin quickly and decisively. Say to God, “You’re right.

I’m sorry. It was a sin. I was wrong. I confess it and I acknowledge it.” Deal with it decisively.

Next, write down any broken or estranged relationships. Apologize. Humble yourself and reach out to 137

them. Also, correct any distorted or perverted priorities or values that God has revealed to you. Sometimes in meditation, the Lord will put His finger on a particular area of your life where you have been drifting along with the tide. God wants you to change your values and priorities from the temporal and worldly to the spiritual and eternal.

Next, commit yourself to any necessary change away from an excessive, extravagant, self-indulgent, self-seeking lifestyle. Maybe in your meditation God shows you something that you’re doing that’s not honoring Him. Be willing to change.

Be obedient to whatever God reveals to you in meditation. Remember this principle: Light not acted upon equals a cessation of further light. In other words, God is not going to spend time talking about other important things until you act on what He has already shown you.

Share your insights with someone else. We talked about this in the Process of Right Thinking, but it needs to be reiterated here. This doesn’t mean running out and immediately sharing something personal with someone who has no business knowing. As God gives you guidance, share your insights with a trusted individual.

Sharing will accomplish at least three things. First, doing this can keep you from misunderstanding God. Check the revelation you have received during meditation with a spiritual elder or someone who has a greater 138

perspective on the person, Word, and works of God than you do.

Tell this person something like this: I was praying and meditating the other day and I feel like God told me this. Perhaps this person can validate what you think you’ve learned—or let you know when you’re on shaky ground. This is an important function of the body of Christ.

Next, talking about what you’ve learned will further clarify or crystallize it in your mind. The more you talk about it and share it under God’s leading, the more you understand it and the more real it becomes.

Lastly, it will become a means of edification for somebody else. Many times, I’ve had God reveal something to me that was a tremendous truth, but I didn’t know the reason for it. However, not long thereafter, I might be having a conversation with someone and need to share the truth that God had given me earlier. God edifies us in order that we might become a means of edification for somebody else.

It’s this application phase that separates Christian meditation from other forms of meditation. These others are an inward journey, a self-oriented experience.

The meditating is for them, and not focused on anybody else. Christian meditation is the opposite. It forces us to live in reality, not escape from it. After you have finished Christian meditation, it forces an outward experience of obedience to the truth God has given.

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18 The Wrong Kind of Meditation The last area to consider is the peril of negative meditation. As we continue to tie all of this together, you will remember that we briefly touched on fantasy in the first section. Imaginations, musings, mutterings, fantasies, and daydreaming are terms that need further clarification. Merriam-Webster states that to meditate means to muse. It means to become absorbed in thought, wonder, or marvel; to think or speak reflectively.

Musing and muttering means talking to ourselves.

We’re always doing this. It’s happening on a conscious level during the daytime and on a subconscious level at night. The question is, Do we invite God into our musings and mutterings? Is this a monologue, or is it a dialogue between us and God? Under God’s direction, this can become a dynamic area of productivity by turning random musing into creative brooding. Personally, this is where I get a lot of my teaching ideas and biblical insight. I begin to turn my musings and mutterings into what I call creative brooding and meditation.

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If you put an a before muse, you get “amuse,” which means to not think and to divert the attention. Too much amusement dulls our spiritual sensitivity if it’s worldly amusing. Most amusement in this world is designed to keep us from doing deep thinking about the things of God. We just go and watch a movie or TV program or listen to music. Next thing we know, we’re being amused. Our mind is not really in play regarding the things of God. Before we know it, we’ve been subtly sidetracked.

Fantasy or daydreaming is a process whereby we willfully recall certain events, conjure up some situation in our minds, or create some kind of images or drama.

It’s something that we willfully create, a form of perverted meditation. Therefore, it is a satanic counterfeit to keep people’s minds from deep, life-changing meditation on the things of God. We often don’t recall what our mind is doing while we’re asleep. Fantasy is what I would call directed daydreaming. We begin to pursue some pleasurable thought in our minds while we are awake. They reveal who we really are more than anything else.

Fantasy and daydreaming are forms of wish fulfillment. This means that we escape to our fantasy to be or to do what we cannot be or do in reality. If I really want to pull something off and I can’t do it in real life, I retreat to my fantasy to do it. So, it’s a form of wish fulfilment. It’s normal in children, but progressively un142

healthy into adulthood. The older we get, the more we should be moving from fantasy to reality.

Who are you really in your daydreams? What kinds of things do you do there that only you and God know about and that you wish He didn’t know about? What kinds of things do you do there when nothing or no one is forcing you to think or meditate on something particular? What does your mind naturally start thinking about? Would you be comfortable to have your fantasies and daydreams broadcast? Christian meditation is a way of controlling and directing these fantasies and daydreams in a godward direction.

Biblical Examples The Bible talks a great deal about the imaginations of the heart. This is a biblical way of describing what today we would call fantasy, daydreaming, and so forth.

Here are some examples of what the Bible says about the imaginations of our heart: • Genesis 6:5 soberly states, “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.” Our minds are perverted.

• Later in Genesis 8:21 it says, “Every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood.”

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• Proverbs 6:16–19 declares, “There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.”

• Romans 1:20–21 (nasb) says, “They are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their reasonings, and their senseless hearts were darkened.” The King James translation renders “futile in their reasonings” as “vain in their imaginations.”

• Ephesians 4:17 instructs us: “So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking” (see also 2:3).

• Finally, 2 Corinthians 10:5 declares: “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.” The King James translation starts with “Casting down imaginations . . .” In other words, we are to get rid of these vain imaginations and instead take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.

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Rather than think on God’s person, words, and work, most of us dwell on ourselves, the imaginations of our hearts, and our own happiness and pleasure.

I was talking with a rather eccentric professor about musing, meditating, and fantasies in the mind.

He summed up his view in the form of a question: Do your thoughts dwell on the tinseled artifacts of a dying age? In other words, are we meditating on the fading pleasures that this life has to offer? Meditating on these things is Satan’s subtle way of pulling down the shades on the light of the world. When you begin to become preoccupied with these things, it’s like Satan dimming God’s illumination coming into your life.

There are three selves in us. There’s the person we really are, the person we like to think we are, and the person we project to the world. Each of us has a problem with the person we really are in our mind.

However, Galatians 2:20 reminds us: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” The fantasized version of ourselves has to die so the real person can come alive.

Meditation Recap Now, let’s conclude by reviewing the benefits of practicing right thinking through Christian meditation. First, it deep145

ens our understanding of the person of God and therefore deepens our relationship with God. Second, it deepens our faith. As our meditation is, so is our faith. It also strengthens and conforms the inner man or woman to the image of Christ and is therefore a means of sanctification.

Christian meditation makes our very fiber biblical.

We as Christians need to live in God’s Word to the degree that we continually think the things of God. It also brings peace, tranquility, confidence, and strength to a soul in turmoil due to depression, fear, and anxiety.

Meditation helps us have God’s perspective on sin and evil in the world. And lastly, it is a practical way of controlling our fantasies and daydreaming, thus giving meaning to our musings and mutterings.

Meditation is a rich way of developing our Christian life and deepening our relationship with the Lord.

Tragically, it’s been severely neglected in the lives of so many believers.

Humanity is crying out to find and practice real meditation and right thinking, and as Christians, we’ve got to present the answer. We can understand God because Jesus has revealed Him to us. We can understand God because we can have the mind of Christ. We don’t have to be double-minded.

Going forward, may Psalm 19:14 be true for each of us: “May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.”

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Part V The Product of Right Thinking

19 Sound Mind and Self-Acceptance We began this journey together by looking at the problem of right thinking. We understood that mankind does not have the capacity for right thinking. And then we moved to the preparation for right thinking, followed by the process for right thinking, and then the practice of Christian thinking or meditation. Now we want to close out with the product, or fruit, of right thinking.

Remember that our thesis has been this: the quality of someone’s living can never rise above the quality of their thinking. We can only alter our quality of living by altering the quality of our minds. Right thinking brings both sanity and sobriety to a person’s life. So, we’ve looked at how to get our thinking right, which is the root. Then our living can be right, which is the fruit.

Let’s now look at the fruit, the product of right thinking.

Before we begin this final section of the study, let’s look at God’s productive, profitable, and fruitful Word to set the stage for the product of right thinking. Isaiah 55:6–11 says,

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Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near.

Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts.

Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.

“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”

Don’t Lose Your Mind Allow me now to summarize the story of Jesus healing a demon-possessed man in Mark 5. Before Jesus healed 150

this poor man, he was violently possessed. He wandered among the tombs and mountains, was loud, and would often hurt himself. He had been bound in chains but had broken free.

When the tortured man saw Jesus, he cried out that he was possessed by many demons. Jesus healed the man and cast the demons into a nearby herd of pigs that then drowned in the Sea of Galilee. Word naturally got out about this amazing incident, and the people nearby took notice: “When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons, sitting there, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid” (verse 15).

We see here that conversion is meant to bring both sanity and sobriety to a person’s life. When the people came out from the town, they saw him “dressed and in his right mind.” So, here we can see both the root and the fruit. Jesus was dealing with the root when He cast the legion of demons out of the man and put him in his right mind. The fruit was that he was no longer naked.

He was clothed because he was now in his right mind.

No longer was he hurting himself and living a life of self-destruction, but he was clothed and living a life of sobriety.

The word in Greek for “right mind” comes from two Greek words. The first is sozo, which means “to save,” and is the root word of salvation, and phren, which means “understanding” or “mind.” It literally means to 151

have a saved mind. This is what salvation does. It not only saves the soul, it saves the mind. Our mind needs redemption, and so this demon-possessed man’s mind was saved by this ministry of Jesus Christ.

What the Bible calls the sober mind or the right mind or the sound mind is what we’re referring to here. For other examples, look at Romans 12:1–3, 2 Corinthians 5:13, Titus 2:6, and 1 Peter 4:7 on your own.

The sound mind is that mind of Christ that we receive the moment we are born again. When we take on this mind of Christ, it leads to a transformation of behavior. The man was clothed because he now was in his right mind. His mind had been saved and healed. This is the great need of humanity today, because until someone’s mind has been healed, they’re not really ready to have correct or sound thinking.

The Paralysis of Analysis Right thinking also brings a life of self-acceptance.

It’s no secret that humans have a great tendency to be self-destructive. We’re constantly trying to destroy ourselves in many different ways. The story from Mark 5 was an extreme example. No longer was the healed man destroying himself. When we come to have a sound mind, it leads to a self-acceptance that results in tranquility and a life of learning to live in accordance with Jesus’ example.

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Psalm 139:23–24 says this: “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” When Isaiah saw God (Isaiah 6), he began to have a realistic assessment of who he really was. Today, there are many popular routes toward self-acceptance where people try to find themselves.

How do we learn to live in self-acceptance? Here is what not to do. We need to avoid the trap of introspection or self-examination. Satan is constantly seeking to get us to turn in on ourselves and relentlessly analyze.

If we get turned in on ourselves, we are not able to focus on Jesus. As we previously looked at 2 Corinthians 3:18, we are “being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory.” We cannot have our minds focused on Jesus at the same time we are focused on ourselves.

Satan’s tactic of getting us to pick ourselves apart always leads into what I call the paralysis of analysis— and it is never healthy. We begin to go into these deep, moody, introspective recesses of our mind and soul.

We have changed the focal point from Jesus Christ to whom? To ourselves. When we turn in on ourselves, we are not capable of focusing on Him and thereby walking the Christian life. It leads to paralysis, immobility, and the Christian walk coming to a screeching halt.

Don’t let Satan get you caught up in introspection!

He will constantly try to do this. He will come in and get you to start analyzing your motives, why you’re doing 153

this, why you’re doing that. He will try to bring condemnation and to get you on a guilt trip.

Get God’s Perspective To be clear, God’s Holy Spirit does minister to us in areas of sin, but He never comes to get us caught up in guilt and condemnation, because “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). However, if you turn in on yourself, you will always find many things in there that will breed disillusionment, despair, futility, and depression.

If we’re really honest about ourselves, if the outside world knew what we looked like on the inside, we would probably deserve hanging ten times over! However, we are not to focus in on ourselves and exist in the paralysis of analysis. We don’t get to know ourselves by analyzing ourselves. We get to know Him, so we need to keep our focus on Him. Go to God when you want to know something about yourself—don’t turn in on yourself. Ask God as David did to search your heart and your thoughts. Ask Him to reveal things you need to know. Open your life to the searchlight of heaven through the Holy Spirit and through God’s Word.

What you shouldn’t do is sit around and constantly take you own pulse, picking yourself apart and analyz154

ing everything, because if you do, you cannot be looking at God at the same time. So, get out of this this trap because it will always lead to stumbling and immobility in the Christian life.

The times when I have had the biggest bouts of depression or defeat were when I allowed Satan to get me turned in on myself. The next thing I knew, it became a downward spiral that led to becoming immobilized in my Christian life. Satan had me exactly where he wanted me.

Self-acceptance comes when you really begin to think right, behold God, and get His perspective of you rather than your perspective of yourself. With His perspective of you, you’ll realize how much He loves you and no longer condemns you. When God looks at you, He sees Christ. In the eyes of God, you are just as much accepted as Jesus is by God. Talk about something that will liberate you!

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20 Self-Control through Spirit Control Not only does right thinking and having the mind of Christ result in a sound mind and in self-acceptance, it will also result in a control of fantasy. We all tend to fantasize; to escape so we can do and be in the mind what we cannot be in reality. Paul referred to this as living in the futility of our minds (Ephesians 4:17–19). However, you no longer need to escape to fantasy because you have learned to accept yourself. Gradually, you will get to the place where these thoughts can be controlled, because you have learned to live in reality as God has revealed it. You no longer have to escape.

Fantasy is a real problem in society today. Having the mind of Christ is having a mind that has been healed and redeemed. No longer does it have to escape and take all these retreats into fantasy, because you can live in the real world.

Correct thinking is spiritual thinking, as opposed to fantasy or carnal thinking. It is not thinking with the old mind or the mind of the flesh, but thinking with the mind of Christ. This is our spiritual birthright accord157

ing to 1 Corinthians 2:16. Correct thinking and spiritual thinking will always result in spiritual walking. Carnal thinking will always result in carnal walking. However we think, we always walk.

When we learn to think correctly with the spiritual mind of Christ, we walk by the Spirit. As Paul said in Galatians 5:16, “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” The verb walk is in the imperative; it’s a command. In other words, he is saying, “I command you to walk in your new nature and quit walking in your old nature. Start thinking with the new mind rather than the old, fallen mind.”

If we do, we will move more and more into a life of self-control through Spirit control. If we’re honest, we would admit that self-control is the biggest problem we have. All of us have areas where we can’t seem to bring that old nature in line. We try everything we can, yet that old nature will just not give in. Romans 7:18 expresses this reality: “For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.”

It doesn’t matter how religious you try to be or how much you go to church. The old nature is no good. It’s absolutely rebellious against God. Don’t try to spiritualize it and make it good. Condemn it! It was executed in Jesus Christ on the cross, so start walking as a new person in Jesus Christ.

If this change happens, it will lead to more and 158

more self-control by Spirit control. The basic principle then is this: Self-control is primarily mind control, and mind control, biblically speaking, is Spirit control. And that’s why Paul was saying to “be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18). Remember, whatever fills you, controls you. And whatever controls you, manifests itself as either the fruit of the Spirit or the work of the flesh. So, let God’s Spirit, not fantasy, control your life.

Spirit, Soul, Body Once we have learned to have Spirit control, it will result in several things. First, this control will result in less and less disobedience in our life (less walking by the flesh). Now, you might be wondering, How can I quit thinking with the old, carnal mind, so I can walk more by the Spirit? The more we think with the new mind, the more Spirit control there will be.

The mind of Christ will never cause you to walk in the flesh. The mind of Christ, this new mind, will always lead you into walking by the Spirit.

Let me remind you that when we’re saying flesh, we’re not talking about skin. That’s our definition of flesh today. We’re not talking about the material stuff that our real spirit and soul are walking around in. The flesh is another name for the old nature that mankind has without God. It is everything mankind is without God. None of this pleases Him in any way.

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Therefore, your spirit cannot sin just as the Holy Spirit cannot sin. Your soul can and does sin anytime it acts independently of the spirit. Think about this for a minute. We received the new nature and the new spirit because it was regenerated by rebirth (salvation). First John 2:1 says, “I write this to you so that you will not sin.” Your spirit cannot sin any more than the Holy Spirit can.

Let’s illustrate it this way. Mankind was created with a spirit. Remember from Part One when we talked about the fall of Adam? He continued to live in the body and in the soul. The soul is the mind, the emotion, and the will or personality. Ever since Adam, fallen mankind has continued to live with darkened emotions and a disobedient mind. But when someone is born again, God’s Holy Spirit comes in and brings life to that dead human spirit.

This new spirit that is within us is absolutely sinless.

This spirit does not have the capacity to sin because it is of God and nothing that is of God can sin. When I finally understood this truth, it revolutionized my thinking about walking by the Spirit. It really made it clear that I do not have to sin.

Try to follow this logic. Can the Holy Spirit give you the power to not sin for one minute? Can He? If you can keep from sinning for one minute, can you do it for two minutes? If you can do it for two minutes, can you do it for a half hour? If you can do it for a half hour, can you 160

do it for a day? He can do it for a day. Can you do it for a week?

Did you follow the logic? As long as we walk by the Spirit, we need not sin because the Spirit cannot sin. The only time we sin is when we do not walk by the Spirit.

Therefore, Paul encourages us to walk by the Spirit. We will not sin as long as we are obedient and submissive to Him. So, anytime we sin, it’s because we cease to allow the Spirit of God within our spirit to control us.

We start making soul decisions that then manifest themselves outward.

The Carnal Two-Step In James 1:5 it says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.” In other words, we should ask for wisdom with the attitude that conveys we believe God is going to give it. He will give what He has promised. But we “must believe and not doubt” (verse 6).

Remember that Satan’s great tactic is to sow doubt in our minds that God is somehow not adequate or qualified enough to save us. This is what happens if we give into the doubt: “The one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.

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Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do” (James 1:6–8).

It’s an interesting thing that in the original Greek, the word for double-minded means “two-souled” or “double-souled.” Isn’t this fascinating? In other words, the verse is saying a double-minded person is a double-souled person. It’s a person who has a two-souled nature that leads to a two-fold focus and constant vacillation. The old, fallen nature is constantly trying to go after the things of the world, while the new soul that we have through the Spirit is trying to be obedient to the Spirit.

If we live a double-souled life we will never be able to receive anything from God. Why? Because we will constantly waver between the flesh and the Spirit. We will take one step forward in the Spirit and one step backward in the flesh, which means we’re not going anywhere. I call this the carnal two-step!

Anytime we allow the soul to act independently of the Spirit, it will always result in sin and disobedience.

Our soul’s natural inclination is to go back to our previous way of life, think old thought patterns, and make independent decisions. This will always result in disobedience.

So, the only way that we can keep from sinning in this area is to keep the soul absolutely dependent upon the Spirit. The Spirit is supposed to call the shots.

Self-control is Spirit control.

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21 Resisting Temptation Let’s look later in the first chapter of James regarding the subject of temptation. In verse 13, he states, “When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone.” Why is this true? God’s Spirit cannot be tempted with sin. He is above the temptation of sin. Never forget this fact.

Sometimes I hear people say, “Well, God is putting a temptation before me.” No! God never tempts us. Then where do temptations come from? Look at verse 14: “Each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed.”

Now are desires wrong? No. Think this through very carefully, because what I’m about to share may sound controversial, but it’s not. I’ve often spoken with young people who are facing real struggles with lust toward the opposite sex (I’m not speaking of same-sex attraction here). I’ve heard them say that they wished the Lord would take these sexual desires away from them. Never pray this prayer. God will never answer it, so don’t ask Him to take away this natural drive or desire. He put it there.

Let’s look at this another way. There’s nothing wrong 163

with the desire for food. Likewise, there’s nothing wrong with the desire for sex. There’s nothing wrong with any basic desire that we have. What the Bible is teaching is that the desire is not wrong. It is wrong when we allow the desire to move beyond the natural realm in which it was created to operate, such as sex outside of marriage.

In other words, when the desire is no longer under our control, but the appetites of the desire have us under their control, then it leads to sin.

Okay, so we’re lured away and enticed by our own desires. “Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death” (verse 15). The choice of the word “conceived” is significant. It takes two people for conception to take place. Similarly, it takes two wills before the conception of sin can take place. Our will is conceiving with Satan’s will, and this always results in the wrong use of desires, which results in sin and then death.

I’m Hungry Let’s look at the food analogy again. When Satan came to tempt Jesus as recorded in Matthew 4, he knew that Jesus had been fasting for 40 days. He knew that Jesus was hungry. He knew this was a natural desire given by God for food. As a result, Satan came in and tried to get Jesus to use that desire in a wrong way.

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Jesus responded that this was not the way. He would rather be hungry and in the will of God than be physically full and outside the will of God. This is what would have happened if Jesus gratified His desire for food in the wrong way.

Do you remember Eve in the Garden of Eden? Satan came to Eve and planted doubt. He said to Eve, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1). He got her to look at the fruit on that tree. He appealed to her natural hunger, and then the enticement and conception took place, Eve’s will with Satan’s will.

Satan will try the same tactic with you. Every time we sin it’s because we have let Satan come in and entice our souls. This is where the real battle is. Rather than immediately bringing that thought or temptation under the subjection of the Spirit, we often suppress the Spirit.

We no longer walk in obedience to the Spirit. Instead, we start walking in the soul, which results in sin and death.

Do you understand this principle? Your renewed spirit cannot sin any more than God’s Holy Spirit.

Where sin comes in is when Satan tries to take one of the normal body or soul appetites, entices you to use it in the wrong way, and leads you to gratify these appetites or desires in a way outside of the control of God’s Spirit.

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Spirit versus Soul Let’s pause here and revisit what we mean by the soul and the spirit. Most people tend to group these two together and say that the soul and the spirit are the same.

Remember that humans are living souls. When God created Adam, He took dust from the earth and made a body. Then He breathed into the man the breath of life and the man became a living soul. A man or woman is a soul that has a body and a spirit.

When Adam sinned, he made a decision in his soul independent of God. God’s Spirit then left mankind, and the human spirit died. Since then, every man and woman has been born into a state of spiritual death.

It’s the moment of spiritual regeneration, or being born of the Spirit, when we invite Jesus Christ to come back into our lives. Then we are born again spiritually.

We start living back in the Spirit, and then the soul and the body under the control of the human spirit, which is under the control of the Holy Spirit.

As long as we walk by the renewed spirit, then the soul and the body will be in alignment. It’s like the analogy of the dog and his tail. For most of us the tail (soul) ends up wagging the dog (spirit). Anytime the spirit is in control, the soul and the body will follow right along.

Anytime the soul becomes disobedient to the spirit, the result is sin.

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You might be wondering, then, How do I keep my soul from being disobedient? Let’s first look at 1 Corinthians 3:16: “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?”

Your body is the temple of God’s Holy Spirit. It is the residence of God’s Spirit within you. Therefore, anything that you do in your body that is unworthy is defiling the temple, which is the residence of the Holy Spirit.

Now, how do you keep your soul from being disobedient and leading your body into sin? Read 2 Corinthians 6:14–16: “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial [Satan]? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God.” Paul is talking about two individuals. One is a believer, and the other is not a believer. They come together in the union of marriage. It is absurd to think that someone who has God’s temple in their body should enter into a sexual relationship and oneness with someone who is not a Christian. This would be like trying to bring Jesus and Buddha together in marriage!

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can the temple of God in a believer be brought into union with one who is an unbeliever and whose body is the residence of Satan? This dramatically demonstrates the importance of the whole issue.

My son, Joseph, was bothered by this when he was only four. He asked his mother, “Mommy, who am I gonna marry?” She responded, “Son, you ought to at least wait a year or two before worrying about that!”

Just kidding, but we continually talked to him and his siblings about it over the years. We told them we don’t know who they’re going to marry, but God does. What they shouldn’t do is marry anyone who doesn’t love Jesus like they do.

Our Weapon Is the Word Do you remember the principle that the heart, or soul, is the seat of reflection rather than the seat of affection? David proclaimed this safeguard for his soul in Psalm 119:11: “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.” The Spirit will bring to mind the truths of God’s Word that have been put in our minds to keep us from disobedience.

It works like this: Satan brings us a temptation.

God’s Holy Spirit working with my spirit is going to immediately go to my mind and take one of those promises of His Word. He’s going to use it to put up a roadblock for Satan.

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I hope you have already anticipated the one point where this breaks down. The Holy Spirit cannot bring to remembrance truths and promises if I have not stored them up in my mind to begin with through study, memorization, and meditation. If I haven’t treasured God’s Word in my heart, then every time Satan comes in, I am going to be absolutely vulnerable to him.

This reality causes Christians who are weak in the Word to go down right and left. The Holy Spirit wants to help us, but we haven’t given Him the spiritual material to work with. Therefore, we become vulnerable and most often fall.

Let’s look again at the temptation of Jesus in Luke 4.

Satan first moved in with a temptation of the body. He knew Jesus was hungry. He then moved on to two additional temptations. What was the response of Christ?

He said “It is written . . .” each time. His weapon was the Word. Three times Jesus said what the Spirit immediately activated—the Word.

Our spirit through the Holy Spirit can bring to mind what we have laid up in our hearts. “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”

However, when there is no word laid up in our hearts because of laziness, then we quench and grieve God’s Holy Spirit. Why? Because we haven’t taken up the armament needed in order to bring the protection in our life that God wants us to have.

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22 Transformation Spirit control will result in less and less conformity to the world. We have been learning that the old mind (the mind of the flesh) loves the things of the world. And every time we let it go, it’s going to immediately conform to the world. Therefore, we end up walking by the flesh.

Paul says in Romans 12:1, “I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.” Why should you do this? Because your body is the residence of your spirit, and your spirit is the residence of God’s Holy Spirit. Therefore, you’re His temple.

A friend of mine once said, “The problem with us living sacrifices is we keep crawling off the altar.” Paul is saying we’ve got to constantly stay on the altar. How do we do that? Look at the second verse: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

We have some options when it comes to the world, which the Bible says is in the hands of the evil one. We might conform to it. Or we could constantly fall into the folly of trying to reform in order to keep ourselves from conforming. Let me explain what this means.

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Every New Year, many people make New Year’s resolutions. In essence we’re trying to reform ourselves.

These seem to last maybe two or three minutes after midnight! You get my point. Reformation is our attempt to clean ourselves up, and it cannot work. Humanity does not have the capacity to reform itself any more than a drowning man has the capacity to save himself.

Reforming ourselves is what the Bible calls religion, and it is abhorrent to God. The first attempt at religion was when Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves together. They had sinned, realized they were naked, and tried to cover themselves before God. Their son, Cain, took matters into his own hands as well. Instead of submitting to God, he killed his brother.

I like the way J. B. Phillips’ translation puts Romans 12:2: “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold.” This is exactly the pressure we experience. We are constantly being bombarded in an attempt to squeeze us into the world’s mold.

Don’t be conformed to this world. Why not? If you’re conformed to this world, then what a pathetic, disappointed, and disillusioned person you’re going to be. The Bible said this whole world is going to pass away. If you have been conformed to it, you’re going to one day be standing before the Lord stark naked, spiritually speaking. Transformation—not conformation or reformation—is the hope of mankind. “Be transformed 172

by the renewing of your mind.” Your mind is transformed if you do not conform or try to reform yourself.

Peace Peace Next, spirit control will result in mental and emotional health. Let’s look at two passages in Psalms, starting with 32:1–5.

Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.

Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord does not count against them and in whose spirit is no deceit.

When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.

For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.

Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity.

I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.”

And you forgave the guilt of my sin.

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What does the Bible say here? Anytime we refuse to acknowledge our sin, our bodies will begin to literally punish us. This is called psychosomatic sickness. When your psyche is sick, your body will become sick as a result.

Here is another passage from Psalm 38:3–8 to demonstrate this further: Because of your wrath there is no health in my body; there is no soundness in my bones because of my sin.

My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear.

My wounds fester and are loathsome because of my sinful folly.

I am bowed down and brought very low; all day long I go about mourning.

My back is filled with searing pain; there is no health in my body.

I am feeble and utterly crushed; I groan in anguish of heart.

This is a biblical definition of psychosomatic illness.

When we have sinned and become disobedient and refuse to accept God’s forgiveness, then our sin can begin to manifest itself in illnesses. Some people in hospital beds today in America don’t have anything organically 174

wrong with them. They have issues in their mind that are making their bodies sick. If they could have emotional and spiritual healing, it might transform their physical health.

Isaiah 26:3 shares a beautiful promise with us from God on how to have peace regardless of the circumstances: “You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.” The original Hebrew here literally says, “You will keep him in peace peace . . .” You read this right. In other words, it is double peace! He will bring this level of peace when our mind is focused on Him. The Christian who develops the discipline of meditating day and night on God’s Word will be “like a tree planted by streams of water” (Psalm 1:2). Our thinking and acting then reveal that we are either a deeply rooted tree, or the wind-blown, wavy foam on an ever-changing sea! Look also at Philippians 4:4–7: Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all.

The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

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So you see, there are two alternatives. Keep your mind on God or don’t. If you don’t, there may be psychosomatic sickness because God has created us in such a way that the body is dependent upon the soul. When man is spiritually sick, it leads to physical sickness.

Keeping your mind on God brings transformation and peace.

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23 Other Benefits of Right Thinking Next, keeping your mind on God leads to a dispelling of fear. First John 4:18 says, “Perfect love drives out fear.” Why is this true? Because fear has to do with punishment. When are my children “afraid” of me? When they’ve been disobedient and know that discipline is soon going to be applied. So, they get scarce and hide like Adam and Eve. They don’t want to find Daddy or want Daddy to find them because they know what’s going to happen. They are afraid because punishment is coming.

The punishment has been removed from followers of Christ: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Just as the sting of death has been removed, condemnation, which is the sentence of judgment that made us afraid, has also been removed. Jesus crucified this on the cross, so there is no fear, but perfect love.

There is nothing to be afraid of when we realize the perfection of God’s absolute love for us. It’s a basic fact that either love will cancel out fear or fear will cancel 177

out love. They’re mutually exclusive. We are not capable of more than one emotional focus at a time. We cannot be appropriating God’s love for us and at the same time be listening to all the adversary’s fear barrage. Either love will cast out fear or fear will cast out love.

There is not only love, but rest also. Look at Hebrews 4:2–3, which says, “The message they heard was of no value to them, because they did not share the faith of those who obeyed. Now we who have believed enter that rest.” Why did the Jewish people of that day not enter that rest? Because they were disobedient. But there is a rest for God’s people.

Go to Bed Insomnia is one of the great problems of our day. People take all kinds of sleeping pills to get to sleep, then pills to get awake, and then more sleeping pills to get back to sleep again. It’s a beautiful thing to realize that God gives His people sleep. You can lay down and sleep in absolute peace and tranquility (unless there is an underlying medical problem, of course).

The greatest way to assure sleep is to take God’s Word as your sleeping pill. Take some of God’s principles and meditate on them before you go to sleep. Give this a try! It may very well transform your sleep. There are many Bible verses that deal with sleep. Read on your own examples like Psalm 3:5, Psalm 4:8, Psalm 178

119:148, Psalm 127:2, Proverbs 3:21–24, and Proverbs 6:20–22.

Another thing this will do is take care of bad dreams.

When you were a young child or have had young children, you know that from time to time they will see things on TV or somewhere else that frighten them.

Then they will wake up in the night after a nightmare.

One night, one of our two sons had a bad dream. He was crying, and so we had prayer with him and told him to go back to bed.

About 15 minutes later, he came back to our bedroom, unable to go back to sleep. Finally, he asked me to come sleep with him. So, Daddy went in and laid down with him for a few moments and everything was fine. No more bad dreams. Do you know why? I was there with him, and my presence automatically made everything okay. Whatever might come along again to scare him, Daddy could handle it.

Do you see the point here? When we absorb God’s Word in our mind with our last conscious thoughts before sleep, then our subconscious mind dwells on these things. It’s like the Lord Jesus is laying down with us, so that we have true rest.

If you have problems sleeping or with bad or fearful thoughts at night, take some of God’s spiritual truth into your mind. Then, pray and go to bed, talking to the Lord, and go to sleep while meditating on His Word. He will give you rest and peace.

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In Joshua 1:8, God made a conditional promise: “Meditate on [God’s Word] day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.” God will bring spiritual prosperity. Why? Because you will be living in accordance with the flow of history. You will be living in the stream of the Spirit rather than constantly trying to swim against the current of God moving in history.

Therefore, there will be a prosperity and a wholeness to your life.

Spirit Walking Lastly, when we think with the new mind of Christ, we are no longer victimized by the old, carnal mind, which leads to the works of the flesh. Instead, we can walk by the Spirit. Therefore, more and more the fruit of the Spirit will abound in our lives: “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” This is the character of Jesus.

What does the Holy Spirit come to do as Jesus said in John 15:26 (nasb)? “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, namely, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, He will testify about Me.” Therefore, when we walk by the Spirit, then more and more the life of Jesus Christ will be manifest in us.

After all, isn’t this what life is all about?

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Paul said we should grow “in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13). The only way we do this is by ceasing to be victimized by the flesh, to cease walking with a soul disobedient to our spirit, and to allow our spirit to control our soul.

The Spirit will activate biblical principles and give us the guidance that we need. Then, the character of Jesus and the fruit of the Christian life will be manifested more in us every day. People will see less and less of us and more and more of Jesus. He will then get the glory.

We will be what He originally created us to be: creatures living under the experience of authority. Jesus will be able to look at us and say of us as God was able to say of Him: here is a beloved son or daughter in whom I am well pleased. They keep their lives open and available to Me, so that I can guide their lives.

Christian worship and fellowship are also essential to walking by the Spirit. It is why we are exhorted to “spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another” (Hebrews 10:24–25).

Have you noticed how wrong thinking and wrong behavior are usually preceded by someone’s lack of Christian fellowship? They no longer want to be held accountable, nor do they want to be reminded of the biblical position of their intended course of action. As a result, they simply give up meeting together.

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Isolated and insulated from the corrective of Christian fellowship, they feel less inhibited toward their disobedient behavior. They are most vulnerable to the immaturity and carnality of independent and selfish thinking and acting. They are easy prey for Satan, who devours the isolated!

Christian worship and fellowship are essential to the process of renewing our minds and walking by the Spirit. As we meet together as the Body of Christ in a church where the Word is faithfully taught and practiced, we nurture the process of mental renewal: “Be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks” (Ephesians 5:18–20).

That last phrase, “always giving thanks,” is what I call developing the attitude of gratitude.

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Conclusion So often we act like carnal Christians, dominated by the old nature and the fleshly mind, and not having right thinking. But God has given us the mind of the Spirit to guide our thinking. The spirit in us can no more sin than the Spirit of God can sin. Therefore, if we remain obedient to Him, He will give us the guidance and the leadership that we need.

We need to do our part by storing up all the principles of God’s Word so that His Holy Spirit will have the materials He needs to bring these principles out during our times of need. He will give us the guidance and the direction we need, so that at every juncture we can walk by the Spirit and not by the flesh.

When we do go back to our old ways and walk in the flesh, God will help us to be sensitive to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. He can check our hearts and discipline us, so that we can stop walking by the flesh, repent, and once again walk by the Spirit. If we do this, God will glorify Himself in us. We must let Him live in us so that we would be pleasing in His sight.

So, as we close this journey on right thinking, let me repeat one more time the biblical prescription for spiritual and mental health: “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excel183

lent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” What will be the result of such biblical thinking? “The God of peace will be with you” (Philippians 4:8–9).

With the mind of Christ, we can think God’s thoughts after Him. As Paul exhorts, “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things” (Colossians 3:2). And the result of that spiritual mindset is spiritual peace of mind.

“The mind governed by the Spirit,” writes Paul, “is life and peace” (Romans 8:6). That way, both our thinking and our living will glorify God. Then and only then will we not become victimized by immature and irrational thinking and behaving.

If you learn to develop the discipline of biblical thinking, you can increasingly live “to the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:14). In the process, you will strengthen your relationships, secure the emotional well-being of others, and confirm your example and reputation as a spiritual man or woman. God wants you to have victory in the secret battlefield of the mind. May you be committed to right thinking both now and in the days ahead!

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