The Need for a Christian Mind

[0:01] Father, we ask that you would bring your word home deeply into our hearts and minds and lives. You know, Father, the fears we have about surrendering even more of who we are into your hands.

[0:15] Father, continue to bring before us how much you love us and that your son died on the cross to redeem us so that as we are gripped by what you have done for us in the person and work of Jesus, that we, Father, will ever more willingly surrender more and more of who we are into your hands, knowing that you only mean our good and our wholeness.

[0:38] And this we ask in Jesus' name, your son and our savior. Amen. Please be seated. One of the great fears that we have, probably not just in our culture but in every culture, is losing our mind.

[0:57] Many of us have probably known people who've suffered from some type of dementia, Alzheimer's, and it's very, very hard to watch somebody who might have been quite brilliant, even if they weren't brilliant.

[1:12] They don't have to be brilliant to make it tragic. It's just really hard when you see somebody just getting lost in their own thoughts. And, you know, I guess maybe in other cultures in earlier times, many people who now suffer dementia, they would have died from something else.

[1:30] So maybe it wasn't something as common. But for us, with all of our medical technology, it's very common. In fact, as you all know, one of the things which is driving the desire in our culture to have doctors be able to put people to death is, in fact, not only the fear of pain, but the fear of losing our minds.

[1:52] And just somehow if we lose our mind, we lose ourselves. So I don't know if you noticed when Anne was reading the text, But for many of us, this idea that Paul or the Bible desires to capture every single one of our thoughts and capture all of our thinking so that somehow our thoughts or thinking belongs to him, this is not an attractive thing to most of us, if we're honest.

[2:25] And so let's just look at it. Is what it is that the Bible is saying, what it is that the Bible is not saying about this. So it would be a great help to me and to you if you took your Bibles and turned to 2 Corinthians chapter 10.

[2:38] 2 Corinthians chapter 10. And we're going to look at that chapter. Just sort of going along with it, you know, for many people in our culture, the idea of becoming more and more deeply Christian is also sort of the idea that you become more and more irrational, more gullible, and more nuts.

[3:00] So this idea from all sorts of directions of having every thought captive to Christ, if we're honest, isn't very attractive.

[3:12] So we're going to look. And here's how it begins. We'll read the first few verses before we get to this troublesome bit. And in many ways, actually, the entire sermon is just around verses 4, 5, and 6.

[3:25] We'll use all of the chapter to illustrate it. But the different fears and objections that we tend to have to this idea, it's a very interesting how Paul sort of deals with it in the verses all around it.

[3:37] But here's how it begins. I, Paul, myself entreat you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ. I, who am humble when face to face with you, but bold toward you when I am away.

[3:52] I beg of you that when I am present, I may not have to show boldness with such confidence as I count on showing against some who suspect us of walking according to the flesh.

[4:07] Just pause there before we get any further. Chapter 10, 11, 12, and 13 of the letter. All the way through the letter, Paul's been dealing with a group of people in the church who are really against him and ultimately against the gospel.

[4:23] And it's really now in chapters 10, 11, and 12 in particular that he's going to address in a more pointed way some of the things that are going on in the church, which has provoked the letter. But we're not going to look at that today.

[4:34] We're going to look at a bit more of it next week and the week after. But that's sort of what's going on behind it there. Basically, one of the things that they're saying with him is, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, when he's, you know, a couple of hundred kilometers away, he writes these big, tough letters.

[4:50] But when he's, you know, when he's around us, he's a big wuss, you know. And that's one of many complaints that they have against him. And so that's sort of the background to some of this. But we're not going to look at that.

[5:01] We're going to look at that more in the coming weeks, but not today. So back to verse 3. For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh.

[5:14] For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience when your obedience is complete.

[5:45] You might have noticed as I read, I sort of almost said louder certain words. You can just imagine what it would be like if you were to just get a group of people together in a Tim Hortons or a Starbucks or a Bridgehead and say, how would you like to look at a Bible text?

[5:58] And you read this Bible text. And you could just, you can just, if you just imagine where your coworkers, how this idea of every thought and destroy and punish, and there'd be a chill in the room as the text is being read.

[6:15] So what's going on? Well, just a couple of things at first to help, not to tone down the language, but to help bring out the underlying sense. And when you understand the underlying sense, it doesn't sound quite as bad, but it's still very dramatic, and it's still very, very challenging.

[6:32] So for instance, when it says destroy, which is a very, very good word, it literally means pull down. You know, in the next couple of years, the deck at the back of my house is going to have to be destroyed because it's old.

[6:49] And if we want to put a new deck, if we want to get a proper deck that actually is workable, probably the only way to do it is at some point in time to destroy it or pull it down so that a proper one could go up.

[7:05] Or maybe in the meantime, you destroy or pull down parts of it and you put in new planks or new supports to keep it going for a longer time. And that's the language here. Destroy, pull down.

[7:18] And the language of punish, which is a very, very good word, but it's a technical legal word. One of the interesting things is that often in the New Testament, Paul in particular will use technical words from economics or business or law.

[7:35] And the word punish is one of those technical legal words. But if you understand its legal sense, it loses some of its sting. And its technical legal sense is make justice.

[7:50] Make justice. So, you know, for instance, then, if you heard that there was somebody in the congregation and they were harassing women, you'd want me to make justice, wouldn't you?

[8:02] In fact, if the council and myself didn't do something about it, you would all be upset. You'd want me to make justice. And part of the making justice should be that there should be some type of, well, of punishment to them, an amendment of life, etc.

[8:17] But that's the idea there. So on one hand, it takes a little bit of the sting off of the text, but it's still a very, very, very strong text. And here, Andrew, if you could put up the first point.

[8:28] And in some ways, this is the whole point of the sermon. And everything else in the sermon is to make you want this. And what Paul is saying, what the Bible is saying, is that Jesus Christ is to be the Savior and the Lord of my mind.

[8:45] I often put my down there, because if you're writing this down in your notes or if you're going to use it as your prayer, then it says you're saying this for yourself, right? So Jesus Christ is to be the Savior and the Lord of my mind from its deepest depths to its highest heights to its furthest reaches and to everything in between.

[9:10] Jesus Christ is to be the Savior and the Lord of my mind from its deepest depths to its highest heights to its furthest reaches and to everything in between.

[9:25] That's what Paul is saying here. In other words, if you're saying that Jesus is Lord, well, what part of Lord don't you understand? You see, it isn't that just Jesus came to save the spiritual part of us and then the non-spiritual part of us can just do whatever it wants.

[9:43] You know, we can just sort of live like a typical Ottawa person and just accept all of the things that Ottawa people do and it's just something's going on to our body or our secular time, but that Jesus is to be somehow Lord of our Sunday morning when we get together or our quiet time or certain types of religious emotions or affections.

[10:03] No, the great claim of the Christian gospel is that God, the Son of God, really and truly, seeing human enmity against him and human need and human sin, human rebellion and human apathy, and seeing humanity's great need that God, the Son of God, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, but God, the Son of God, sets aside his divine prerogatives and divine splendor.

[10:29] He takes into himself our human nature and comes and lives amongst us, living a fully human life only without himself being in rebellion or in enmity or sinning against God.

[10:41] And he comes to die upon the cross and as he dies upon the cross, he's both dying upon the cross to, in a sense, deal with all of the debt that we owe God in terms of our rebellion, but it's also a means by which, as our substitute and our exchange, even his relationship with God is offered to us.

[10:59] It's as if he says, George, I will take your doom and die upon the cross. And as I take your doom, I offer you my destiny. And that's the great message of the gospel, that that's what God, the Son of God, does in actual history, in real time, and he does it out of real love for you and for me.

[11:20] And God vindicates this message by having Jesus rise from the dead and appear to those to show that he really did rise from the dead and he's ascended in heaven, he will come again.

[11:32] And you see, this is what makes the gospel and what Paul is saying here very different than something like Islam, which I think for many people in our culture is almost the pure definition of religion because at the heart of Islam is submission, to submit to God, to submit to whatever his will happens to be.

[11:53] And it can be just maybe send, you know, 95% of the people to hell and 5% to heaven or whatever the statistics are to ruin your life, to benefit another person's life.

[12:03] Whatever his will happens to be that day, we are just to purely and utterly submit to it and we submit to it with no gospel. That's the profound, profound, profound watershed difference between the gospel and all religion and all spirituality.

[12:21] That all religion and all spirituality and even irreligion and opposition to spirituality always involves some submission to something. Your own mind, to drinking, to your culture, to Islam, to Buddhism, to Krishna, whatever it is.

[12:37] Some type of submission with no gospel. But what we see here in this particular text is that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son to the end that all that believe in him will not perish but have eternal life.

[12:53] That the person who loves you more than you love yourself, who knows you better than you know yourself, and sees your need better than you see your need, and sees the glory you have, in a sense, in God's eye, better than you see the glory that you have in God's eye, that the one who knows you so well, he died for you.

[13:16] And the same one who loves you so much that he died for you to reconcile you to your creator is the same one who says, your mind belongs to me.

[13:27] I mean, there's other things. It's just here we're talking about the mind. Your sexuality belongs to me. Your money belongs to me. Your time belongs to me.

[13:39] Your body belongs to me. That when you trust Jesus as Savior, you put your hand out, and he comes and takes your hand to be your Savior at the same time you are taking him as your Lord.

[13:55] And that includes your mind. It includes your logic, your imagination, your memories, the furniture of your mind, the longings and habits and patterns of your mind.

[14:09] He comes and takes your mind. And so that's what Paul is saying in this particular text. It's bringing home in a very sharp and pointed way that Jesus Christ is to be the Savior and the Lord of my mind from its deepest depths to its highest heights to its furthest reaches and to everything in between.

[14:35] So some of you might say, okay, George, it's still a very type of violent language. And boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Don't you think language like this is dangerous?

[14:47] Don't you think it can be the case that, I don't know, George, doesn't it sort of lead to being a type of closed-mindedness that you know everything you need to know is just in this book and if it's not in this book, you're going to be really aggressive against people who disagree with you and, you know, there's something arrogant about this text.

[15:09] Don't you think there's something arrogant about this text? Like, that's a very good objection. And you know what? Part of the objection is because many people have met Christians who are extremely aggressive, who like the idea very much of destroying arguments.

[15:28] I used to be the chaplain at Augustine College and one of the things that I had to do as a chaplain of Augustine College is that once a week I did a teaching time as well as leading some worship.

[15:42] And there was this one particular year there that there was a fellow who was from a very, very high Reformed background. He had, and some of you might know a little bit about this and others of you don't, but it's like there's these massive theological works with in-house theological jargon and it's just very, very, very ornate and intricate with all sorts of little bits and pieces and he knew this system very well.

[16:10] And every week at chapel he delighted in trying to embarrass me with asking me questions. And frankly, most of the time I didn't have the vaguest idea in the world what he was talking about.

[16:21] Like, just to be honest, I'm a simple Bible guy. You know, and you know, if I could go back in time I'd say, you know, you should spend ten times more reading the Bible than you do reading this ornate, Reformed, theological, theologizing.

[16:38] But you know, many non-Christians have met Christians who are so aggressive. But is that, is that what the Christian mind is like? Is that what it's like when Jesus takes over, becomes the Savior and the Lord of your mind?

[16:51] Well, look at the text. Look at verse one again. I, Paul, myself, entreat you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ. Look at that. I, Paul, myself, entreat you.

[17:03] How? How's he doing this? Like, what's the ground by which he's begging them to think through what they're doing? Because that's what entreat means. By the meekness and gentleness of Christ.

[17:17] I, who am humble when face to face with you, but bold toward you when I am awake. If you could put it up, Andrew, the Christian mind is gentle, teachable, and strong.

[17:33] Why should you desire Jesus to be the Lord of your mind? Because as you start to call out to God that, that Jesus would be the Savior and the Lord of your mind, he will lead you to a mind that is gentle.

[17:46] and he will move and work in with you to start to create a mind which is teachable. And he will make your mind strong, not weak. Like, why do you say that?

[17:58] Like, how does that, like, partially, that's what the word meek partially means. It has several different senses. In this particular contest, it means, meek means submissive to God. You know, I love it.

[18:09] I love, I love, I love, I love. It's a perfect illustration. Some of you are old enough to remember when the Solidarity Movement was, was starting to bring down an empire.

[18:19] For those of us of a certain age, we thought the Soviet Empire would never come to an end, virtually. And it was a bunch of Polish ship workers who were the beginning of the end of the Soviet Empire.

[18:35] And there was a phrase that they were on their knees before God so they could stand before tyrants. They were on their knees before God so they could stand before tyrants.

[18:50] Some of you might have seen film clips of what Martin Luther King and the early Civil Rights Movement was like. And it is very, very gripping to see all these people in their Sunday best kneeling in the face of men in uniforms with truncheons and water cannons and I, there are so many images of them on their knees in prayer as the water cannons and the truncheons are unleashed against them.

[19:27] That is being meek. It's being strong. It's being gentle. I want that.

[19:41] That's what happens when we give our minds to Christ. And as his word and as his Holy Spirit begins to work in our minds, they become gentle and teachable and strong.

[19:55] But some of you might say, George, don't you think that this whole thing of a Christian mind can lead people to believe that they're always right? That non-Christians are always wrong?

[20:08] Don't you think that it can become that religion ends up divinizing their thought? You know, George, haven't you met these charismatic types who, you know, they say they have a word from God about this type of thing and it doesn't matter how crazy it is or how kooky or in fact how just wrong historically and accurate it is but they somehow, you know, everybody else just has an idea but they have a word that's come from God.

[20:36] Like, George, don't you think, well, okay. Once again, all of us have met people like that, right? You know, with this thing and the last thing about aggressive minds, these are both human problems. Many of us have had professors far from having believing in Jesus who are very aggressive with their thoughts.

[20:58] I mean, what are the new atheists other than people who are exceptionally aggressive in their thinking? It's a human problem and by the way, human problems like this become even more disgusting when they try to cloak themselves in Christianity to make it look like they're not a human problem but they're doing something virtuous.

[21:21] It even becomes more foul-smelling and repulsive if habits of aggression and of always thinking you're right are somehow clothed within the mantle of Christianity.

[21:37] It makes it more repulsive. But is that, in fact, what happens? Is that what Paul is talking about? Is this what the Bible is talking about? Is that type of divinized, aggressive mind?

[21:48] No. Let's look at verses 2 and 3. How does it go? I beg of you that when I am present I may not have to show boldness with such confidence as I count on showing against some who suspect us of walking according to the flesh.

[22:04] For though we walk in the flesh we are not waging war according to the flesh. Just pause there and it's a bit of a confusing thing. Just so you know it's a bit of a, you know, one of the things the word that, the original word that's translated as flesh, flesh.

[22:19] It has two different senses and you just have to know from the context which one of the two senses it is. And here in this case the Bible is using the word flesh the first part of verse 3 in one sense and in the second part it's using it in a different sense.

[22:35] Sometimes the word flesh just means frail and human and sometimes it means in rebellion against God.

[22:47] And you just have to know from the context which one of the two senses it is. And so here's the point if you could put it up and this is borrowing language from earlier in 2 Corinthians.

[23:00] The Christian mind knows it is a jar of clay redeemed by Christ. The Christian mind knows it is a jar of clay redeemed by Christ.

[23:13] Christ. I went to a presentation by the Dalit Freedom Network in India under Hinduism under its cosmology of Hinduism it creates different castes.

[23:28] Your karma means that you're reborn into certain stages of life and it creates a lot of injustice because you deserve where you are.

[23:39] If you're very wealthy you deserve that. If you're very very very poor you're born of certain parents you deserve that. And there's a sense that you don't have to show justice or compassion across these lines because you get your justice of desserts when you're born.

[23:54] And Dalits are the lowest of the lowest of the lowest. and in this presentation on how to try to both evangelize and educate and empower the Dalits for freedom and human flourishing one of the things that they gave out and I meant to bring it but I forgot was this little tiny thing made of clay and a little tiny drinking thing made of clay and the reason they gave this tiny little drinking thing made of clay was because if a Dalit went into some restaurants in some parts of India they wouldn't want the same cup that a Dalit had been used had used to be used by somebody who's of higher caste so they had these special drinking cups these little jars of clay which are very fragile and very impermanent so that after the Dalit had drank from it the owner of the store and they cost virtually nothing would just smash it to make sure that nobody else would drink from such a cup and earlier on in the book of 2nd Corinthians Paul says that human beings are jars of clay but that's how we are to understand we're fragile so really in verse 3 what Paul is saying is for though we walk in the flesh in other words though we live our lives as jars of clay we are not waging war sorry for though we walk in the flesh we are not waging war according to the flesh and there it means not just from human frailty but we're not living our lives and waging war as if we're in rebellion against

[25:25] God we've been redeemed see that's that's part of the Christian mind knows and understands that it is a jar of clay redeemed by Christ you know there's some very very smart people here in the room who could tell you a lot about intellectual history and development of thought and some of you are taking classes from really high IQ well educated people at University of Ottawa or Carleton and they could talk to you a lot about the history of thought but one of the things about the history of human thought is that on one hand we often want to imagine that our thoughts or our life are almost as if we are gods I mean part of the whole move of science is to try to come up with some type of almost godlike knowledge of the world and then when you have people like Nietzsche and Foucault and others who are very skeptical about the claims of human knowledge and how much we actually know it's almost as if the only options before human beings are that our minds if our minds are not almost godlike then we're garbage and the bible says no human beings are creatures and we know like creatures and no creature will ever know as if they are the creator and there are many things that human beings can only know if the creator makes it revealed to you and so the text here is trying to say that as

[27:13] Jesus grips our thoughts as he comes in to destroy to tear down parts of how we think whether it's how we think about music or poetry or art or dance or business or culture or politics or philosophy or physics that he's going to tear some things down and he's going to build some things up and one of the things he wants to tear down is any type of pretension that a human being is anything other than a jar of clay but at the same time that it makes it conscious that we are jars of clay if we understand that we are a jar of clay and our permanence is not something from within ourselves but a gift that comes from the God who has created us who sustains us who will bring all things to their proper end who in our enmity against him still he loved us and sent his son to die upon the cross for us that there can be a growing comfort with the fact that

[28:14] I am a jar of clay I am not a God and I stand here as a jar of clay in a room full of jars of clay whom God does not treat as garbage like a dalit who has to be smashed but loves you and me and dies for you and me and Jesus desires to be the savior and the lord of your thinking and your thoughts but some people might say okay George does this mean that the Christian mind only cares about the Bible like it's just all about knowing the Bible knowing the Bible knowing the Bible like when you were telling us that story about the guy who was that you know Calvinist hyper Calvinist type of guy and you said you know you should have said to him you should read the Bible ten times more than his theologizing is that you know George that you just want to read the Bible read the

[29:14] Bible read the Bible and you don't want to read economics you don't want to read you don't want to watch movies you don't want to be involved in the world no look again at what it says in verses 4 to 6 the central verses but we'll just look at one other thing about these in verses 4 and 6 for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh and here flesh Paul probably means it to have a double meaning that they're not frail but more in particular that they're not anything to do with acting in rebellion against God but you know they're not this but they have divine power to destroy strongholds in other words this idea of strongholds is that there's areas within our mind and here mind doesn't just mean logic it can mean for those of us who are more like we like poetry we write poetry or we have we're very good with images we could maybe be a director or we could be like a fashion designer or we could design dance or something like that and maybe those parts of our mind that are better towards business or better towards computers or better towards just being able to actually have that type of intelligence to figure out what a kid actually wants and help the kid that's intelligence you know but there's parts of our mind that are strongholds and what this means is that they're they're completely and utterly keeping God at bay and it has to be torn down and we tear down verse 5 arguments in every lofty opinion every pretension every person in the CBC or the

[30:58] University of Ottawa or the Supreme Court of Canada or the Parliament of Canada whose lofty opinions mean that God doesn't matter that there is no God that we have to worry about or think about if you happen to have a view of God that helps to give you a little tiny bit of peace and comfort some people like Jack Daniel some like bridge some like you know bird watching some like thinking about God as long as it's just private lofty opinions raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ being ready to punish make justice against every disobedience here's the thing which is going on in this text if you could put up the next point the Christian mind seeks and loves all truth all goodness and all beauty in the creator and in his creation the Christian mind seeks and loves all truth all goodness and all beauty in the creator and in his creation it's not talking here about Bible reading you know if you have if you're in science and you come up with a theory of how science works which you believe means that God absolutely doesn't exist well don't you think that's sort of covered under this text if you come up with a system of doing organizing business that in a sense specifically excludes

[32:30] God or anything about how God is revealed about human beings don't you think that's a stronghold like if you come up with a theory of aesthetics or beauty or dance in such a way that it can never point at any way that we're creatures or that there is a God don't you think that's a stronghold you see nothing here in the Bible is just calling us to somehow think that the Bible here is only referring to okay on Sunday mornings this text is just saying that you're going to go and you're going to make sure that people understand why Spong is wrong and Borg is wrong and you're going to understand you know why Keller is right or Piper is right and it's just all about no no no no no this text is not just talking about some tiny little religious or spiritual part of our mind it's challenging those of you who are in school still who are doing economics those of you in social work it's challenging how you think of human beings and how you think of human destiny and human purpose for those of you who are in medicine it's challenging you with ethical things in terms of how you treat people and how you see the person for those of you in dance or in fashion design or in business those of you who are retired or stay at home those of you thinking about politics there's nothing that this text doesn't involve there's nothing the Christian mind seeks and loves all truth truth is never the enemy of the Christian truth is never the enemy of the Christian goodness and beauty are never our enemy why because God is true

[34:19] God is good God is beautiful a beauty that would unmake us if we saw it even a tiniest sliver of the beauty of God if it was to be revealed to us right now without having our resurrection bodies and being the full bodies meant for the new heaven and the earth the beauty of God even the tiniest sliver of it would unmake us and not just knowing God and his truth and his goodness and his beauty but God is the creator and sustainer of all things and therefore this text is asking us to think through how we think and imagine everything every area of human intellectual and cultural endeavor and political endeavor here's a couple of hints I'm going to have to speed this up to get it done here's a couple of hints in terms of growing in our

[35:21] Christian mind one of the first things that has to die if you want to take this text and pray it is die to oil and water thinking which I've been sort of going through in the sermon in other words there's the spiritual and then there's everything else you know our culture says okay George you can have your spiritual thoughts you can have your spiritual beliefs as long as with everything else you act the way we want you to act and think the way we want you to think you can go to University of Ottawa you can get your degrees as long as you just see your faith as private and interior and emotional and not as having intellectual consequences you have to die to all oil and water thinking you have to learn to say if this then this cannot be so in other words if you're in counseling when I was being taught counseling the view in counseling was that human beings are fundamentally passive and it's just as if these wounds happen to us and these things happen to us and there's this type of basically passiveness but the Bible is that what the Bible says doesn't the Bible portray somehow that we actively seek out idols and we seek out meanings and we seek out significance doesn't that happen you know if you're in if you're in if you're in you know philosophy or science and if you know if this and that if the Bible seems to say there's miracles and if they really happen then that has to have some effect on how you think through sociology and psychology and physics and geology biology now I'm frightening some of you but it has to have some consequence it can't be that the miracle is just true here and not in terms of how we think about all sorts of other things in other words you have to learn to say okay if it says this in the Bible if this then what does that mean in terms of this other area and the other thing about it is that it's not saying that we have to have a

[37:27] Christian economics or a Christian sociology or a Christian social work because that would sort of imply that there's only like one type of person or one type of culture or one type of imagination but what do we know about people you know let me tell you if we just took random groups of us and we were all going to go on a road trip you know let's say somewhere eight hours away by the end of the eight hour time we would discover just how many how different we all are our imaginations work differently and so this text isn't saying that you have to keep searching for the one Christian politics or the one Christian economics or the one Christian psychology because human beings all of the different things in psychology all of the different complexity of a human being and trying to understand how human beings process things and how they work and how they act and so people will come up with different theories and different hints and different practices and that's completely fine it's not calling everybody to uniformity but it's saying that as people think those things through that there's a

[38:41] Christian critique to it and in a sense the Bible will both subvert part of all disciplines yet at the same time fulfill the true and good and beautiful insights within them I really have to I'm just going to have to run through these last points pretty quickly if you could put up the next point Andrew here's I think you get the text I could go through the rest of the text and bring these things out I'm just going to share you the different other things for the Christian mind the Christian mind regularly prays to God for wisdom and knowledge the Christian mind regularly prays to God for wisdom and knowledge that's going to be in this part of the text about divine power with its strongholds and all that it's that it's not as if somehow we just become a mind and we just become either an artist type or a poet type or an economist type or a business type or a philosopher or science type no you pray

[39:51] I mean you know students when you're working on your papers you should pray that God helps you to think you should pray that he helps you to focus you should pray that he leads you and guides you on to all truth you should pray that he helps you to write it if you're in government and you know you're having to deal with people or write reports you should pray about that you should pray for your boss you should pray for wisdom and knowledge why because I'm a jar of clay and there is a creator who's created and sustained all of us the next point Andrew the Christian mind regularly reads all of God's word written and bows to what it says the Christian mind regularly reads all of God's word written and bows to what it says you know I just want to challenge you if you haven't read all of the

[40:51] Bible and you've been a Christian for a few years you know talk to me I'd like to give you some help and encouragement but you should try to have it a goal to read all of it or listen to all of it one of the wonderful things about modern technology is if you go to an app like you version you can listen to God's word I remember 30 years ago you'd have to spend hundreds of dollars to buy a big big thing that was like this of cassettes to listen to God's word now I just have this little app on my phone and often when I'm driving when I'm going home in rush hour often I listen to the Bible and I encourage you to hear and regularly reads all of God's word written and bows to what it says and almost second to last the Christian mind longs to see the gospel shared especially with new people groups the Christian mind longs to see the gospel shared especially with new people groups this is a really important thing for the

[41:58] Christian mind because you see the gospel is an offense to our mind and it can be an offense get lost in a track of trying to have a Christian worldview and one of the ways that the devil can knock us up is we get so caught up with our Christian thinking but at the end of the day the gospel is offensive regularly to us you mean God you didn't choose me because I'm going to be such a great pastor you didn't choose me because I'm such a great guy you didn't choose me because I will be the perfect husband I'm not or the perfect dad like all of my apparent righteousness is like a filthy rag all of my great thinking is like nothing unless I give myself to Jesus who died for me and so the

[43:00] Christian mind has to regularly be offended by the gospel but not just offended by the gospel want to share the gospel that's partially how you deal with the offense of the gospel is want to share it and not just with your own people group but to the ends of the earth that's what Paul talks about at the very end of 2nd Corinthians 10 to the ends of the earth Andrew could you put the closing prayer up and I want to invite you all to stand here's what the thing is if my whole sermon was around trying to get us to understand that Jesus Christ is to be the Savior and the Lord of my mind from its deepest depths to its highest heights to its furthest reaches and everything in between and that it's don't be afraid of this of Jesus capturing your thoughts don't be afraid of it like pray for it take steps towards it encourage each other towards it encourage the artists to have a Christian mind the economists the government types the philosopher types the computer programmers the scientist types the ordinary people carpenter types to encourage them to seek this and

[44:12] I try to put it in a prayer and I'll just read it out loud you to pray it with me but the prayer is heavenly father you have given me your son to be my savior here's the scary part I give you my mind please tear down what needs to be torn down and build what needs to be built so that with all of my mind I will be a disciple of Jesus gripped by the gospel living for your glory and praise in Jesus name amen for those who have never given their lives to Jesus this can be your birthday prayer your coming to faith prayer and maybe when you say mine you can say not only my mind Jesus I want you to have all of me and for those of us who are trying to just become more like Jesus this is a prayer to help you so I invite you now to pray this be my savior

[45:18] I give you my mind please tear down what needs to be torn down and build what needs to be built so that with all of my mind I will be a disciple of Jesus gripped by the gospel living for your glory and praise in Jesus name amen Father pour out your Holy Spirit upon us help us to give you our minds on a daily basis Father may our minds be grounded in the gospel shaped by the gospel drawn by the gospel this we ask in Jesus name amen