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Father, we come before You and we just say thank you for meeting us in this place. And we just ask, Lord, even now, that You would search us and know us, God. That You would see if there's any anxious way in us, God. We thank You that You know our thoughts better than we do.
And Father, we ask that You would just use Your Word to speak to us deeply, completely. And Father, we ask for the grace, Father, not to just hear the Word, God, not just to be hearers of the Word, God, but that we would be doers of the Word. That as You pour Your Spirit out, God, and Your life illuminates and brings to life Your Word, God, that it would change and transform us. Holy Spirit, we say come, have Your way. We want to think like You, God. We want to know You. We want to be near You, God. We want to look like You, God. We want to speak like You. We want to walk like You, God. In order for us to do that, God, we must have Your ways, Your thoughts. So Lord, we come tonight and we say help us to focus, help us to reign in. We have to have more of You, Lord. Yes, more of You, more of You, God, and less of our old nature, God, our old man. Father, even now, we take, we take those things and submit them to You, God. Our ideas, our ways, God, our, our mode of operation, God, we submit it to You right now in Jesus' name. And we sit at Your feet, Lord, and we say we are Your students, God, and You are a great teacher. And You come to instruct, to lead, to help us to know the way, God. And we're asking by Your grace, God, that You would light the way for us today. In Jesus' name, amen.
Well, I want to welcome you to our Freedom in Christ class today. Our thought, our, our lesson is on thoughts. And many of us would, would agree that we, we want to see change in our lives. And the number one way that we're going to see that change begin to happen in our lives is by changing the way that we think. As children of God, we're called to higher thoughts, to a new way of thinking, to a renewed norm in the kingdom of God. So my question is this: Have you ever really thought about the thoughts that you think?
From the very beginning, God's intent was for His Word to fuel our lives, to fuel our thought process, to fuel how we think and process. In Deuteronomy 11:18, He says this: "Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your children may be many." See, God's intent was that His Word would fuel the thoughts of our lives.
So if I were to ask you, you would all agree that the thoughts, ideas, and opinions written in this book are God's thoughts, His, His ideas, His truth. And the primary way that God speaks to us and reveals His thoughts is through His Word, through His written Word. So if we agree with that, that truth, why is it so difficult for us to believe what's written in these pages? I believe it's because we don't tend to take an active, progressive look and examine the thoughts that we think. We don't filter or check our way the thoughts that just pop in and run through our minds. We don't look and examine to see if they align with the Word of God. We don't, we don't take the time and we passively meditate on every thought that enters into our minds.
What we think is important. Why? Because we're in a battle, and this battle has a battlefield, and that battlefield is our mind. The, a battlefield is a place of conflict. See, our old way, our old nature, is in conflict with the new creation and the new revelation that God has given to us as children of God. And in, on this battlefield, it is a place that is hostile ground. The enemy wants to, to give us thoughts, he wants to plant thoughts, he wants to throw and hurl his accusations and his condemnation at us in hopes that on this battleground we will just grab ahold and get in and align with what he speaks. This place of our mind, this battle is fought for the prize of agreement. See, we're going to agree with something. We're going to either agree with the kingdom of darkness or the kingdom of light. There will be a winner. There is no neutral ground. There is no place to just say, "Well, I, I read and I hear and I, and I, um, understand God's Word, but I, I'm not going to choose that today." By default, we automatically are choosing the kingdom of darkness. We have to understand that the stakes are high. In a battle, there's life and death, there's victory and defeat, and there's good and evil. On every battleground, every thought that we think, there is going to be an outcome. The war being waged for our mind is for the prize of agreement.
Do you know that the average human thinks between twenty thousand and eighty thousand thoughts a day? Do you see the incredible opportunity the enemy has to come and get us to agree with toxic, unhealthy, deceptive thoughts? See, every thought and action speaks allegiance to God or the enemy. Both are empowered by this thing called alignment and agreement. So renewing our minds means discerning which thoughts come from heaven and what thoughts come from other sources, and then choosing to agree with the kingdom of God. Whoever and whatever gains control of our thought life gets the right to influence our behaviors. God, the enemy. See, our thoughts are so vital and so important that because they lead to emotions. You know, you don't have an emotion that doesn't originate with a thought. If I wake up in the morning and I already feel like it's just going to be an awful day and I'm just sad or whatever, it begins to fuel those emotions. And those emotions fuel our decisions. And those decisions fuel our actions. And our actions fuel our habits. And our habits fuel our character, which points directly to our destiny. So thoughts are a big deal in the kingdom of God. They, what is at stake is the destiny, purpose that God has for each one of us. And it's all fueled by what we're choosing to believe and think on.
So it's vital for us to realize that we have a choice. That no longer are we, are we in this place of futility where we are just left to our own devices. As children of God, by the cross, through the cross, Jesus purchased for us a right to choose which kingdom we're going to think from and operate out of, which kingdom we're going to meditate on and reflect. Those that have asked Jesus to be Lord and Savior of their lives have asked the Way, the Truth, and the Life to come into them to direct and to lead and to guide their lives. But it's more than just believing in Jesus. Scripture tells us that we're to believe Jesus, present tense. That is an ongoing, moment by moment, thought by thought, we are to believe Him. Jesus desires that we take Him at His Word and believe Him. To believe is to have faith, to trust, to know, to be persuaded, to place confidence in. We have the mind of Christ. We are in Jesus, and we have the mind of Christ. We don't often take the time to slow down and to reflect on those thoughts, to see if they align with Him or not.
I love the story in Matthew 16. Jesus is talking to Peter and He asks them, "Peter, who do the crowds say that I am?" And Peter says, "Well, some say You're John the Baptist, some say You're Elijah, some say You're Jeremiah, and some even say that You're just one of the other prophets." But Jesus presses Peter and He says, "But Peter, what do you say? Who do you say that I am?" And Peter answers, "You are the Christ." Jesus replies, "This is not revealed to you, Peter, by man. This was revealed to you by My Father in heaven." See, the reason I love that story is because Peter had every opportunity to look at and allow external things, external voices, external circumstances to dictate what he thought about who Jesus was. But he didn't. What he ultimately believed to be true was what he heard the Father in heaven speak to him. And Jesus commended him for that. You and I are called to believe. But what are we to believe in? Is the question.
Ephesians 1:18 and 20 says, "I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe." See, that's present tense. That was not for us who believed in Jesus at one time. That is present tense for us who believe. There is incomparably great power for us to experience. And He goes on to say, "That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead."
I want to talk about belief for a moment. It matters to God that we believe Him, that our minds are filled with faith thoughts, because the alternative is unbelief. Thoughts are like seeds that spring forth and produce something. They are buried in the secret place until they spring forth into action. See, that's the beautiful thing about thoughts. I don't know what you're thinking right now. It's in the secret place. Only you and Holy Spirit, only the two of you know what you're thinking. I, I learn what you're thinking by the fruit that it produces, by your actions, by what you begin to do on the outside. So it matters to us the seeds that we're planting in our minds in the quiet, in the secret place.
Now, the seeds, there's also seeds produced through the kingdom of darkness. The seeds of unbelief. The seeds of unbelief are double-mindedness, doubt, worry, anxiety, stress, vain imagination, logic, reasoning, wavering, mistrust, grumbling, complaining, fear, and torments. Those are seeds of unbelief that are secretly being planted at times in our minds, and they're going to produce something. But we're called to believe God. And so the seeds of belief through the kingdom of God are trust and faith, peace, rest, wisdom, signs, miracles, and wonders, and life. Those are seeds of belief. They are manifestations of that, that original seed of choosing to believe God. When we operate, and the fruit that comes out is trust and faith and rest and wisdom, speaks of what we've chosen to think on.
See, in Mark 16:14, Jesus rebukes His disciples for their lack of faith and stubborn refusal to believe, even those that had seen Him do miracles and wonders. They start to question, and their lack of faith is rebuked by Jesus. I don't want to stand before the Lord and have Him have to rebuke my thought process. I want to believe Him and take Him at His Word.
So how do we believe God? How do we invite God to invade our unbelief with the kind of power that raised Jesus from the dead? Well, Jesus Himself tells us in His Word. God's put it plainly in His Word. Romans 12:2 says, "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." See, we're all about the, the Jesus part of that scripture, where He says, "Hey, be transformed by the renewing of your mind." We, we typically will understand that we can't renew our mind on our own, but Jesus can renew our mind. But I love what He says in the beginning of that, that we very rarely take notice of what He's saying to us, is that as believers, we have to no longer conform to the pattern of this world. So we've got to know what the pattern of this world is. And I, I'm here to say that in this day and age, we are in a season, in a time where it is really scary some of the thought patterns that are coming out in our world, in the way that our world thinks. And so we need to be aware of how those are contrary to the Word of God.
Jesus gives us a clue from Romans 8:16: "The mind of sinful man is death. It is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's laws, nor can it do so. It cannot please God." Why? Because faith pleases God. Facts, reasoning, logic exclude us from the realm of faith. Now, it's not that those things are, are bad in and of themselves. God gave us our mind. He gave us a mind that can think and reason and, and have logic and all of those things. But He never intended those to be separate and apart from His Lordship and His leadership and His molding and shaping. They're not to be shaped by the world.
Ephesians 4:23-24 says this: "You were taught with regard to your former way of life to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness." See, the more we pay attention to a thought, the more it grows. In other words, our attention to a thought actually feeds it. It grows.
And Deuteronomy 30:19 tells us this: "Choose life or death. Choose the thoughts, choose what you're going to meditate and focus and, and dwell on, because when you choose, you will eat of its fruit. He tells us, choose blessing or curse." What are the thoughts that are rolling around in your head on a regular basis? Do they speak life? Do they speak blessing? Or are they mostly cursing, critical, condemning?
See, I want us to get a picture of our thoughts. See, it used to be when, um, when they would build homes, there was an entryway into your home. And I think sometimes of our mind like a house. And God desires that we entertain a thought. He's just pretty particular about what thought we're entertaining. So get a picture of your house, and each thought that comes is like a thought that comes to knock on the door. And we have a choice as to whether or not, just like if there was a stranger at your door and they knocked on your door, when you open the door, you don't automatically just throw the door wide open and invite them back into your most intimate places in your home. Yet we do that every day in our thought life. When the enemy comes knocking and he tells us that we're unworthy, or that we're worthless, or that we're stupid, or that we're whatever, you fill in the blank, and we invite him right into the deepest, most intimate, most personal and private places of our hearts. And God says, "I don't want that to look like that."
Each thought that comes is like holding and retaining that thought for a moment in that entryway and going, "Okay, are you friend or foe? How far into my belief system, my belief process, am I going to allow that thought to get?" I may have to weigh that thing a little bit. I, it may get as far as the living room. You know, I can let pretty much anybody into my living room. But there's very few people I'll let into my bathroom or my bedroom or really even into my kitchen. And so we, we get that choice. We get that, that process.
The other thing that I want us to see is thoughts kind of like on a scale. And we're going to weigh them. Weigh our thoughts. That if they are not from the kingdom of God, then why would we, why would we let that tip the scale for us? Colossians 3:2 tells us this: "We are to set our minds. We are to be intentional and purposeful at setting our minds on things above, not on earthly things." That word "set" is like cement. See, we're to know the Word of God. We're to know His ways. We're to know Him. We're to know what He says about us in such a way that it is set like cement, that the enemy cannot erode, and he cannot get in there, and he cannot move that thing.
So I have a question: Are we seeing the importance of taking every thought captive? Because if we don't, our thoughts will captivate us. Second Corinthians 10:3-6 says this: "For though we live in this world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish every argument and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. And we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."
Now, I don't know about you, but go back to thinking about the fact that we think between twenty thousand and eighty thousand thoughts a day. For some of us, I think we tipped the scale even on the 80,000. It's more like a, you know, 100,000 for some. It seems like our mind never stops and never quits and is constantly racing. But God desires that as we, as we take that thought and we yield it over to Him, it begins to silence a lot of that racing and those random thoughts that just keep, the more we entertain them, the more they come. They just start snowballing and racing out of control. But if we will stop, and if we will take them captive, we will begin to find the rest and the peace and the calm that we so long for and desire.
What is a stronghold? A stronghold is a mindset. It's a pattern of thoughts that are fortified by many lesser thoughts. See, I may, I may think, I may have a, a stronghold of of rejection. But it's fed and fueled by many lesser thoughts like, "I'm stupid. I don't belong. I'm, I'm whatever, ugly. I'm whatever." Those random little thoughts. The little thoughts aren't the big deal. The big deal, the stronghold, the, the strong man in the center of the whole thing, is that that thought and, and belief that "I, I don't belong anywhere. I'm rejected." And God wants us to deal with those. And the way that we deal with those is to take all these lesser thoughts, set them in submission under the Word of God, and allow Him to speak truth.
These thoughts, according to Ephesians 4, have an attitude. Have you ever thought about your thoughts having an attitude? Our thoughts have attitudes like anxiety, worry. Our thoughts can be, have an attitude of fearfulness to Him, of criticalness, of anger, of complaining, of hopelessness. We can have thoughts of, of vain imaginations. What is a vain imagination? A vain imagination is a thought that just spins us round and round and round. It's like a cow chewing on cud that never accomplishes anything. It's a thought that just keeps going and going and going, and no matter what rabbit trail it takes you down, it just ends to, um, nowhere. It's vain in its, in its originality. We can have an attitude of wandering and wavering in our thought process. We can have an attitude of fault-finding, of comparison. We can have thoughts that are rehearsing every wrong we've ever done over and over and over again. Those are attitudes in our minds. And God says He wants us to take those attitudes to the Word of God so that He can determine and decipher for us what is a godly attitude and what is an ungodly attitude.
See, this is where God's Word comes into play. God's Word comes in to renew and make new the patterns of our minds. Philippians 4:8-9 says this: "Finally, brothers, 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 on such things." See, God has, has a way of renewing our mind. We're not going to get there if we're thinking all the negativity, all the ways of the kingdom of darkness, just running rampant in our minds. See, as we think on the things that are lovely, as we think on the things that are noble, as we think on the things that are just and right and true, we talked about earlier how those spring forth fruit of action. It begins to cause our emotions to be in a healthier state.
See, John 8:32 tells us, "You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free." I, we have to meditate on the truth of God. Hebrews 4:12 says, "For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to the soul and spirit, joint and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of our heart." See, we, if we just rely on ourselves to try to figure out what is wrong with this thing, we're sunk before we even start. But God's Word will go in like a knife and begin to carve for us what is true, what is noble, what is lovely, what is it that He wants us to meditate on us on. So we must be intentional and purposeful in the renewing process of our minds through the Word of God. There's no other way. And I'm so grateful and thankful that God has not left us to our own devices. He has given us the tool to renew and transform how we think.
Would you pray with me? Father God, we just ask even now, would You deal with our thought life? Is there any lie that we've been believing and living with that has hindered You from from stepping into what God has called you to be or what He's called you to do? Have we developed patterns of thought that are vain and causing us to be fruitless in any particular area? Is there a particular attitude we've gotten stuck in in our minds? Maybe for some, it's anger that doesn't take but a moment for everything to turn to, to anger. We want to, we want to take that attitude and pull it down. Can we be really honest with ourselves? Is there any one of us that have developed a habit of thinking that is excessively about ourselves? It's all about how I feel, all about what I want, and we haven't even thought about God's ways or His thoughts about a matter. If any of those things ring true, then just right where you're at, we're just going to repeat together. You're going to repeat after me: "Father, I give You my attitude of..." "I give You the lie that..." and you fill in the blank. And then we're just going to ask Him, "Holy Spirit, what is the kingdom attitude or truth that You would want to give me that will renew my mind?" As soon as we receive it, we have a choice. Choose to receive and believe it. Not only receive and believe it, but repeat it. "Father, this moment, I choose to receive, believe, and put on the truth that You've given me today." In Jesus' name, amen.