Part II: Preparation for Right Thinking 5 It All Starts with God

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 fountain-

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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

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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

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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

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