Transform Your Thinking: The Renewal of Your Mind

TRANSCRIPT

And the number one subject that I want to cover today is the mind. The mind, I believe, is our greatest battlefield. In terms of our Christianity, how you think determines how you act. Determines how you have relationships, determines everything about you. And I believe that the mind is seriously our greatest battlefield as a Christian.

And we're going to talk about mind renewal, transforming your mind. Just get organized here. There's a big Bible there might be using that later. So we're renewing our mind and you know what? This doesn't happen. I don't believe in the first quadrant. I think this happens in the whole four quadrants of what Pastor Kev was sharing last last week.

This battlefield of the mind, this mind renewal needs to start, it starts at our, at our conversion, but it then takes some participation and some diligence and some daily activity for us to keep moving forward. renewing our mind. I wish it just happened overnight and then we'd be just perfect. God hasn't produced robots.

He's produced people and we have to participate in this process of renewing our mind. So let's go to Romans 12 2. It says, do not conform to the pattern of this world. But be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Now, this scripture is very, very dear to me, and I want to share a story about how this scripture and a couple of others transformed my life.

And I know that I've shared this story before, but I think it's the best example that I can give you of a renewed mind. So bear with me. So I I left school pretty early. My mum was on the five year plan. I was the youngest of three children. And so she put my age up so I could get into school early and hence I got out early.

And I succeeded at school, but I had no clue what I wanted to do. I had no desire to go to uni. I had nothing really lined up, you know, so I just got job after job Then I decided to go on a trip overseas. And I thought I'll just travel a little bit, you know. Two years later, I'm still travelling.

Things are just happening. I had many, many different adventures. Not all of them healthy, I'm gonna say. But we had, I had many adventures hitchhiking through Scotland and Ireland and driving a little Chevrolet Vega through America, 17 states and 17, 000 miles. And I had some fun while I was over there.

And yeah. But it didn't lead to anything amazing. And I came back and I was still doing some aimless activities getting jobs, you know, doing stuff. And then I found that my mind actually started to go a little astray and I didn't understand it, but it was later diagnosed as manic depression or bipolar disorder.

And if you Google that, you'll find that it says, Dr Google says there's no cure for this condition. It's, it's manageable, treated by drugs, whatever. But the word manic is very, very apt. And I started to progress into a manic stage, which was absolutely, it was just like your mind on fast forward. all the time going hard and you start to act on these impulses and it is basically a real deception and so what happens is you just keep getting faster and faster and then you're going 18 hours a day and you're acting on these impulses and things are going really really fast and because I had no knowledge of it you begin to give yourself to it and I I did that for, for quite a few months.

Prior to this, my mum had become a Christian and she was attending this particular church, not here, but back in the Share and Care Centre, and my mum was praying for me. And ladies, praying mums are absolutely gold. She was praying for me and one day she was in her little sitting room and she felt like God said to her, Philip will be alright.

Not a, not a huge word, but a word that she hung on tenaciously to. And so I'm progressing through, I'm progressing through, this is a good story, Gem. I'm progressing through this illness, and it's manic, it's all happening. And so ultimately I have to be admitted to hospital. I went to Lismore Base Mental Hospital.

And that was no fun at all. And I got introduced to some powerful drugs and several other treatments that I'm not going to tell you about. It's, it just wasn't fun. And I escaped a couple of times in my pajamas and I thought this will be good. I got to get out of here. But ultimately I realized that you've got to play the game.

And I just played the game. It took me a while. It took me a while to figure that one. But I had to play the game, and ultimately I did get out, and I went back to Kingscliff, where mum and dad had a lovely house, and we, and I stayed there. Now, then it went over into the depressive side. And the depressive side lasted many, many months.

And I was basically in my room, didn't want to come out, getting fat, not doing anything, no desire for life really. I wouldn't say I was suicidal, but I wouldn't have cared one way or the other. And so I was in that position for a long time. And then I had become a Christian. And I knew that God wanted to do something in me and I, but it just kind of was all too hard.

And then one day I went down to the beach and I was pouring my heart out to God. And when you're depressed, it's all about you. You know, it's not God is so hard, you know, God, this is terrible. Oh God. And so that was my, my basic prayer. And he, and basically he, he cut me off and he said, Phil, there's something wrong with your mind, Jim.

There's something wrong with your mind. And you know what? Even in all of the, all of the stuff that had gone on, the manic, the depressive, this and that, I hadn't allowed that thought to happen. I didn't want that in my life. And, and it was, I thought I'll just, you know, this will all just blow over and it'll be fine.

But I had to acknowledge there was something wrong with my mind. And Then, I, it was a trigger that was, allowed God to enable the start of a healing process. And so, I got to thinking, you know what? The Bible must have something to say about the mind. Surely it does, you know. The Bible must have something to say about the mind.

And so I started looking up scriptures in Mum's old dusty concordance about mind and thoughts and, and other stuff, you know. And I thought, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna find some scriptures. So the first one I found was that one, Romans 12, 2. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And I thought to myself, well, it must be possible.

How do we do this? How do we get transformed by the renewing of your mind? And I thought, well, okay, well, okay, this is good, but I need something else. So then I got another one. It was 2 Corinthians 10 5. And it said, we demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God.

And we take captive every thought. and make it obedient to Christ. And I thought, whoa! Whoa, this Liz, this, this is encouraging. There was starting to be a ray of hope, a ray of light in my little dark, depressed mind, and I was thinking, I, maybe I can do this. And so I thought, what? So take every thought captive.

Do you know what I thought? Well, what I'll do is I'll take thoughts captive. I mean, that's what it says. So why don't we just do that? And so every time I had these dark thoughts, you, you know, you're fat, you're ugly, you'll never do anything. You'll never get a job. You'll ne you'll be on this bed forever.

I said, no. I'm not having that and then I started to replace it with a Bible thought and I said I Can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I am loved by God. I have you Lord as my Lord and Savior and I am blessed and and so I started to capture these thoughts and Replace them with Bible thoughts and you know what?

Things started to improve. Things started to improve, and I thought, well, this is cool. And then I found another one. And it is Philippians 4, 8. And it says,

Whatever is admirable, if there is anything excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. Do you know what? I practiced that. I thought, I'm going to do that. And, and that was the three scriptures that helped me move out of this dark depression and into the light again. And my life started to resume, and that Is the transformative power of the gospel.

That's what it is. And you know what, no matter what your situation is, no matter what you're facing, there is an answer in here. There is an answer in the gospel. There is an answer for you. It may be not the answer you want. But you have to get the answer from the word and start to apply it. That's the soap that we talk about.

And in my situation, when we go back to our primary scripture, the devil wanted to take something from me, like just my life, just my sanity. But Jesus came to give me the tools that I could be back. in my normal state and hallelujah, praising God. And then I was able to go and get a job and find a few beautiful girl who's just gone outside and who became my wife and had kids.

And, and so life could have been a whole lot different if I had not known the transformative power of the gospel. One more thing on that. You know, sometimes we need a reset and I want to ask you a question. You know, When you wake up every morning, what's your first go to? Is it the socials on your phone?

Is it your problems of the day? Is it all the things that you've got going on in your day that you know you have to deal with? Or do you take 10 minutes to just go down the road and talk to God and tell him how good he is and be thankful and be grateful and just say, God, you're amazing. Thank you for my life.

Thank you for what you're doing in my life. And as you do that, it's another reset every morning. And I would encourage you to do that, to do your devotions. First thing, it's a great to do it. Maybe later, but you know, I got to do it first thing. And I love to go down the road. And you know, my favorite scripture, Tommy, this is the day the Lord has made.

I will rejoice and be glad in it. So I would encourage you to do that. You know, our mind is the battlefield, but we got to set up for success. First thing in the morning. The second thing I want to talk about is relationships. We're going to just touch on that briefly, but God wants to transform our relationships and make sure that our relationships are good.

And so I think what I want to do this morning is give you a list of one another's, one another's in the, in the new Testament. And so we have that here. So let's go through these. You can put them all up. It says, love one another, accept one another, greet one another, Speak not evil against one another. Use hospitality towards one another.

Have fellowship with one another. Pray for one another. Encourage one another. That's one I do like. And forgive one another. All of those are important. All of those are important. See, we're not islands. God wants us to be in relationship, to be friends, to have people of like mind that can encourage you, can love you, can greet you, can, can.

The one I really want to talk about is forgive, to forgive. And you know what? Sometimes we find that tricky. We find that really difficult to be able to forgive. But the scripture I love to fall back on and it's not here, but I, I like this one and it says as much as it depends on you live in peace with all men and women.

It's as much as it depends on you. And I really believe that as we forgive it also, it just cleans our heart. It just makes us fresh. It is, is, you know, we want to be operational as Christians. And when we have unforgiveness operating in our hearts, we lose something. We lose our effectiveness and we need to be able to forgive one another.

The final thing I want to talk about is purpose. You know what? The gospel transforms us and he gives us a purpose in life. And you know what? We've all, we've all been chosen by God. When I was in primary school, we used to play footy a lot. I love footy. I used to play every, every morning, noon and night. I could play footy all day if I had to.

I really loved it. But what normally happened was two boys would pick the teams. And And so, one guy get picked, and another guy get picked, and another guy get picked, and another guy get picked. And what was really tough, is if you got down to the bottom, and you weren't picked. That was embarrassing.

And I always just think, oh man, you know, pick me, pick me, pick me. But you know what, the good news for us here is, we're all chosen. We are all chosen. No one is not chosen. We have a saying here that everyone plays. We're all part of this team. We're all part of the team that God has chosen. It says in Ephesians and Paul writes that God chose us before the foundation of the world.

I don't know if you can ever get your head around that. This is not an accident that we're here today. It's not because you just said yes to Jesus. It's because He chose you before the foundation of the world. He knit you together in your mum's womb. He knows you better than you know yourself. He chose you and you decided to say yes.

Hallelujah. But when He chose us, and that means we have a purpose. It was God's instigation. We said, yes, we are chosen. Therefore we have a purpose. So what's our purpose? I believe our purpose is to help other people find their purpose. Our purpose is to help others find their purpose in Christ. Do you know what, we get to enjoy all the benefits, don't we, of the transformative power of the gospel.

Hallelujah, it's so good. And we, we get to enjoy the benefit of thinking, you know what, we're going to be with Jesus forever. And we're in heaven, it's going to be good. It starts right now. We are in the eternity right now. And we get to enjoy all those benefits. Here's another question for you. What's stopping us from sharing?

The gospel? What stops us? Well I'll give you a little list that's pretty, pretty pathetic and I gotta say that I, I have, you know, partaken of this list but here it is, I'll do it later. They're not ready to hear this right now. What if they don't like me anymore? Isn't that terrible? Isn't that pathetic?

What if they don't like me anymore? You know, it's not that hard. I know, you're like, if you asked ten people, if I could, can I pray for you? You know, when, when you're sharing with people and they're telling you their story and they're doing it tough and they've got this wrong and that wrong and it's going, it's going wrong, if you just ask them, you know what, I'm a Christian, can I pray for you, is that alright?

Nine out of ten say yes. Nine out of ten say yes. And, you know, God has a funny way of, of doing things when you're getting up to preach. And so I had an opportunity for this just yesterday. So there's a guy that lives over the back. He's a widower. And he just lives over the back from me. He comes down with his little dog.

His wife died about four years ago. He just looks like he's beaten. And he, I, I said, how you doing? He said, Oh, not too bad. And then he started to tell me about somebody, he had this thing called Trigeminal neuralgia. Never heard of it. But, you know, it's a, it's a, a, a nerve condition that gets in your face and gets really, really painful.

I said, oh man, that sounds awful. And, and I, I had the tugging in my heart and I said, oh, I said, right, right, right, Lord, we're going to do it. I said, here it comes, here it comes. I'm ready for you. Okay. So I said, look. Look, mate, I'm a Christian, you know, do you mind if I pray for you? He said, yeah. He was keen.

I said, yeah. I said, oh, great. Happy days. So, so I just put my hands on his face and he loved it. And he said, oh, thank you so much. You know, well, next week he's coming over for dinner, you know, he just wants a roast. So I said, I've got 10 girls that cook really, really good, good, good rice, you know, look after Jen.

So it's not that hard. And so you know. Sometimes we make it a lot harder than it should be, you know, just respond to the moment of what is happening right in front of you and just say, Hey, can I pray for you? Hey, do you know what? I know Jesus and he's been a real help in my life, whatever. But here it is.

Matthew 28, 19 and 20 says this, therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and the son and the Holy spirit. And teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always to the very end of the age. What's our purpose? Just help others to find their purpose.

And you know what? In the light of our little scripture today, the devil takes, and he wants to take away our opportunities. He wants to make us too scared, too embarrassed to this, to that, to share. But Jesus gives us the confidence and the boldness and the love to share. If we don't do it, who's going to do it.

And this is something that we just can't leave to Pastor Kev and Pastor Ruth and, and the other pastors. This is our responsibility. We get to share, we get to share. We don't have to share. We get to share. And that's the transformative power of the gospel.