Ridgecrest Baptist Church - Sermons | The Matter Of The Mind

Lance Griffin shares a message from Romans 12:2 entitled, "The Matter Of The Mind."

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Ridgecrest Baptist Church is located in Dothan, AL and exists to Reach the lost, Build the believer, and Connect people of God to the mission and purpose of God.

The matter of the mind - February 16, 2025

We’re going to be in the 12th chapter of Romans if you want to go ahead and turn there

It's a pleasure to be with you this morning.

We do not take any of us, when we fill the pulpit for Pastor Ray, we don't take any of that lightly.

And we appreciate you giving us the freedom to be able to bring the word to you.

Pastor Ray says this an awful lot, you're easy to preach to, and you are.

And we appreciate that as a staff.

We appreciate that...

that you support us, and I just want to thank y'all for that.

We're going to be looking at Romans 12-2 today, so if you would, turn in your Bibles there and stand as we read God's Word.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing your

You may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Let's pray.

Father, you are the only worthy one.

You are the great I am.

You are the reigning king.

So may we hear from you this morning, not me.

May your words reign supreme in anything that comes from me, Lord.

May it be forgotten.

May it go one ear and out the other.

May we hear from you.

Lord, let us receive it in Jesus Christ's name.

Amen.

Our brain is a pretty small thing to have a really big job.

It weighs about as much as a half gallon of milk, but there is a lot of stuff going on up here, all at the same time.

It's amazing what the brain can do.

Researchers tell us that up here, there are 86 billion neurons, billion, with a B, and those neurons form connections that take information in the brain where it needs to go.

Now, I don't know how they figured this,

But researchers also have been able to estimate the speed of information that travels in your brain.

And according to researchers, information can travel in your brain at 350 miles an hour.

Now, you're going to be tempted to elbow the person next to you and go, some slower than others.

Don't do that.

It's the brain that takes in the stuff that goes into our optic nerves and goes into the brain that helps us to see.

It's our brain that takes in what we smell and goes through the nasal cavities and gives us the sense of smell.

It's our brain that takes information in, like if we see a squiggly creature in our peripheral vision in tall grass, it's our brain that processes that and says, threat!

It's our brain that takes an information and categorizes it.

Good, bad, horrific, funny, inspirational.

It's our brain that when we get up in the middle of the night and we stub our toe on the end of the bed, that sends the signal up through our legs, through our spinal cord, and to our brain that says, pain.

Pain.

And then says, don't do that again.

You big dope.

Our brain, to be a pretty small thing, has a really big job.

So Paul, here in Romans, he tells us that we're transformed by the renewal of our mind.

And that seems like a pretty big deal, transformation.

So it seems like it's something we need to pay attention to.

So I want to take a look at this verse with you this morning and talk about our minds and how important that is to our spiritual growth.

Now, we're talking about the mind this morning, but let me throw in a disclaimer before we get started.

Our mind is not the only thing we need to concentrate on for spiritual growth, all right?

The Bible speaks about nurturing the heart.

The Bible speaks about feeding the spirit.

The Bible speaks about taking care of the rest of our bodies.

So many things.

But in the time that we have together this morning, we're going to focus on the mind.

It's not the only way to spiritual growth, but it is vital.

to spiritual growth.

So please understand that I'm not trying to distill Christianity into simply a mental exercise because it's not.

Christianity is supernatural.

Christianity transcends the mind.

But it does include the mind.

So we believe it's important to talk about.

There are at least five words in the New Testament that are used to convey the idea of the mind.

We don't need to go into the deep weeds with each one, but it can mean reasoning.

It can mean calculation.

It can mean judgment.

It can mean deep thought.

It can mean deep reflection.

And overall...

The word mind appears somewhere between 40 and 50 times in the New Testament depending on the translation.

So, if the Holy Spirit uses it that many times in a letter to us, we need to pay attention to it.

The word in our scripture today in Romans 12, 2 from mind is nous, N-O-U-S.

And it appears 24 times.

And we'll unpack what that means as we go along.

So when a verse jumps out to me like Romans 12.2, I always like to look around Romans 12.2 and see what comes around it to see if we can discern a thought pattern from the author.

And if you are still in Romans 12, if you would step back a chapter to Romans 11 and just look for a moment with me, Paul spends chapter 11 writing about how Israel's disobedience

Open the door for the gospel to come to me and you, the Gentiles.

And he goes on and on about that in chapter 11 all the way almost to the end.

And I don't know how this works.

The Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write.

So these are the Holy Spirit's words.

But he uses Paul.

And I'm trying to picture how this went down because he's writing, he's writing, he's writing, he's written 32 verses.

And it's almost as if he gets to the end of verse 32 and he reads what he just wrote.

Because look at what he writes in verse 33.

He says, "'Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.'"

Exclamation point in my translation.

How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways.

It's almost as if he read what he just wrote and looked at it and went, this is amazing.

This is absolutely amazing.

And then he goes on, one verse after that.

In verse 34, and he says, for who has known the mind of the Lord?

It blew his mind, and he wrote it.

The mind of the Lord.

Indeed, the Lord's ways are so much higher than ours.

But even here, as we start our time together this morning, there's a theme that's already being set of the mind and its importance.

And if you'll turn back over to chapter 12, in verse 1, Paul ties the body to the mind to the spirit.

He tells us to offer our bodies as living sacrifices.

And in doing so, in offering our bodies as living sacrifices, there's a spiritual worship happening.

You've experienced this.

I know you have.

When you give up something for somebody else, something happens inside of you.

When you give up yourself for the betterment of your children and you sacrifice yourself and it costs you something, you feel it.

You feel it.

Something happens.

When you give up yourself for your spouse because you love her and you want her to benefit and it costs you something, something happens there.

when you follow christ's command to do for the least of these it does something to you there's a spiritual worship happening there is something that is going on inside you it opens up a portal to the spirit sacrifice does

So, as you can see, there's a thought train already happening with this idea of sacrifice your body because in verse two, Paul is basically going to tell us to do the same thing with our mind.

Renew it.

There's an inference when he says that that if something needs to be renewed, if something needs to be refreshed, if something needs to be revitalized, it's not normally in a good state.

And to renew it, you need to give up some things that you put in it and put other things in it that will lead to the right kind of transformation.

So there is a sacrifice theme wrapped in this verse too.

So let's dive in.

to Romans 12 too and hopefully find some takeaways that will draw us closer to the image of Christ.

First blank here on your outline, conformity to the world is sin.

Conformity to the world is sin.

Do not be conformed to this world.

In this one verse, Paul's gonna take us on a journey.

He's gonna take us on a journey.

And Paul says at the beginning of this thought, not to be conformed to this world.

Simply put, to conform to something is to agree with it and or to take on its characteristics.

When you conform to something, you agree with it, you take on its characteristics.

And for some of you, high school may not have been too long ago.

For some of you, it may have been a good ways back.

But I bet you remember, almost everyone in high school was pretty much the same.

They wore their hair the same.

They carried the same backpack.

They dressed the same.

Whatever was in style, everybody wanted to wear it.

And pretty much everybody in high school was about the same.

But there were a few.

There were a few.

If pretty much everybody wore one thing, they were going to wear the opposite.

If everybody listened to this kind of music, they were going to listen to this kind of music.

If everybody was traveling this way, they were going to be the ones

that went this way.

And that may have been y'all, may have been some of y'all.

And I'm not saying that the nonconformists in high school were good or bad.

What I'm saying is they were easily identifiable.

They were easily identifiable.

You knew who the nonconformists were.

in high school.

They were easily identifiable.

They were always going in a different direction than everybody else was going.

And Scripture is clear here that we should be going in a different direction than the prevailing culture.

And Scripture is clear here that we, Christians, should be easily identifiable.

Easily.

It doesn't mean we have to be weird, but so what?

I would rather be considered weird...

and in line with Scripture than to be considered normal as the world defines it and disobedient to Scripture.

Scripture is clear.

Do not be conformed to this world.

That's a command.

And so it's understood in the first part of this verse that if we disobey that command and we are conformed to the world, we're in a state of sin.

I love how one commentator put it on the first two verses of Romans 12.

This is good.

He said, the cross of Christ has come in between the believer and the world.

To conform ourselves to the ways of this present evil age is to be unfaithful to the one whom the world has rejected but whom we confess as Lord and Savior.

So the cross of Christ has come between the believer and

And the world.

Put it another way.

If we choose with our mouths.

Decide.

With the one the world has rejected.

If we choose with our mouths.

To proclaim Christ.

And yet our actions.

Show that we more easily identify.

With the world.

Than we're adulterers.

And in a state of sin.

Another way to put it.

Since the cross.

has come between the believer and the world, you have to go around the cross to get to the world.

And I don't think any of us want to be that person that has to go around the cross.

Now,

once we profess our faith in jesus christ our salvation is determined so do not misunderstand when i say go around the cross i do not mean losing your salvation i mean i mean bodily saying i know what the cross did for me but i would rather identify with a lost world that's what i mean conformity to this world is sin

Now, you may look at that statement and go, well, of course, Lance, that's a no-brainer.

Look at the world.

You ever sit back and say, boy, I wish it was the good old days.

And there's some truth to that.

I can understand that.

But the real truth is that there were no good old days.

There were no good old days.

There's not a time when you can look at the first part of Romans 12 and say, that don't apply to that time period.

Why?

I don't care if it's 2025 or 1725 or 1125.

When left to our own devices, we choose resistance to God.

That's what Paul means when he says don't be conformed to this world.

That's going to be the prevailing culture, resistance to God.

It doesn't matter what time frame.

Christians

have always, always been called to be counter-cultural, always.

It's true in AD 69 when this was written and it's true today.

Why have we been called to be counter-cultural?

Because we take on the characteristics of what we assimilate to.

The mind makes sure we do.

I didn't think this was done anymore, but if what I read is correct, it actually still is.

They perform surgeries on epileptic patients that have severe epilepsy that have the worst kind of seizures.

And to try to abate those seizures, they actually split the patient's brain.

They separate the right side from the left side.

And from what I understand and what I was able to read, they have success with that.

But because information travels from the right side to the left side, that leaves the patient with limitations.

And naturally, since there's only a few of them out there, scientists want to experiment on these patients.

And so I read a story about a man that they called Joe who had that procedure.

And the interesting thing about him was that in his line of sight, he could read something that was on the right side of his vision plane, and he could not if it was on the left side.

So they, this was back in the early ages of computers, and they had that green computer screen and little dot in the middle, and they would flash a word to the right and say, read that word, read that word.

And so Joe would, table, dog, pen, he would read it.

Then they flashed a word on the left side of the screen and said, read it.

And he said, I don't see anything.

And then they said, okay, well, let's stop that for a moment, and I want to give you a pen right there.

Draw a picture of what's in your mind.

And they gave the pen to Joe, and he drew a frying pan.

I want to tell you that story.

His brain was taking it in, and he didn't even know.

Our brains are taking information in all the time that we don't even know.

That we don't even know.

It gets imprinted in here and it influences us.

Now, he was an interesting case because his brain was split.

But it applies to us as well.

Our brains take in all kinds of information.

And you don't know many times what's coming in here that influences the way that you think.

And what Paul is getting at in just these first few words of this verse is that conforming to the world is just a death loop inside your brain.

the more that you assimilate to it, the more it gets stored up here, and the more it just loops inside there and influences your actions.

It creates a strong link between you and the world.

So play this out.

We're in 2025.

We're all scrolling on Facebook or

Instagram or TikTok or whatever and there's this just incredible amount of information that is being flood into our brains over and over and over again more information than we've ever had available to us in the history of the world doesn't even have to be that you may say well I don't do any of that I bet you stay home at night and watch cable news

Same thing.

All of that bombastic talk and all of that hot take culture and everything, it comes into your brain and it starts to imprint on your brain.

And these 86 billion neurons, they're forming connections with it, and it's literally being printed inside us.

Why is conformity the world's sin?

Because we take on the characteristics of what we assimilate to, whether we know it or not.

The mind makes sure that we do.

Don't be conformed.

And before we move on to the next thought, Paul makes a point to tell us not to be conformed to this world.

There is a world that God wants us to be conformed to.

It's not this one.

The Holy Spirit through Paul here is telling us, don't get too attached down here.

We're not going to be here very long.

We're not going to be here very long, any of us.

It doesn't mean that we're not engaged in

Because we're great commission followers of Jesus Christ.

Amen?

It doesn't mean we're not engaged.

What it does mean is that we're great commission followers of Jesus Christ.

So that takes priority.

And everything else falls in place behind it.

And I mean behind it.

Why is the church not as effective today as it used to be?

Because we've messed that up.

We have placed the Great Commission over here and we have put a bunch of things in front of it.

A bunch of things.

And some of those things are not going our way.

And it gets us all in a tizzy because some of those things are not going our way.

I have experienced seeing more Christians in a tizzy in this day and time than I believe I ever have.

And I think that's why.

Because we placed all these things on the priority list in front of the Great Commission.

So we're in a tizzy and we're not effective on top of it.

So don't be conformed to this world.

Don't be conformed to this world.

Next blank.

The path to spiritual growth is through the mind.

Next part of Romans 12 says, be transformed by the renewal of your mind.

And we tend to categorize things, so the first thing that may have come into your head was, well, really?

What about the spiritual disciplines?

What about prayer?

What about

Scripture reading?

What about fasting?

What about fellowship?

What about accountability?

All of those things affect the mind.

Have a real time.

Have a real time with God in prayer.

And when you do, see if it doesn't affect the mind.

See if you don't come out of that real time with God, with your mind renewed.

Have a fast.

Have a fast and see if at the end of that fast it doesn't rewire some things up here.

It's all connected.

So it does.

It is all connected in the path to spiritual growth is through the mind.

Path to spiritual growth is through the mind.

As I said, the word for mind is nous, N-O-U-S, which in this passage it refers to the intellect, to perception, and moral reasoning.

So yeah, it's about cognitive function, but it's also about discernment and purposefully aligning our thoughts with the will of God.

Okay, path to spiritual growth is through the mind.

How do you do that?

Let me suggest a couple of ways.

Next blank underneath there is declutter.

Declutter.

I have a couple of scripture references there that I'll read in a moment.

You don't need to turn there, but I'll have them.

And this one I put first because it's the hardest for me.

We live in an age of limitless information and I always think I'm missing out on something if I'm not taking in all the time.

This is counterproductive because our brains are taking it all in and it's going somewhere.

It's going somewhere.

You may think you've forgotten it by the next day, but it's in there.

It's in there.

James 1.8 says this, a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.

You can't have two sets of opposing thoughts live in harmony in your mind.

What happens when you have that?

You're off balance.

1 Peter 1.13 says, prepare your minds for action.

Keep sober in spirit.

Set your hope completely open.

On the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Can you say that about yourself?

Can you say that you've set your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ?

So, declutter.

Take some things out.

We've taken information in so many different ways.

You name it.

Books, television, podcasts, social media.

a good first step is to reduce the intake.

Make room for God.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is get in your car on the way to work in the morning.

No radio, unless it's FM 100.1 from 7 a.m.

to 9 a.m.

No radio, nothing.

Just silence.

And I know maybe some of you have kids in the car in the morning and

That's not the best time for you to do that, but I think you get where I'm going.

Reducing the intake.

If you spend your evening scrolling through Instagram or TikTok or watching one cable news show after the other, and I don't care which network, your brain is rotting.

It's rotting.

These things, the social media platforms and the cable news networks, they use the same techniques to keep you watching them as casinos used to keep you gambling.

And before you know it, your mind has changed.

It's literally warped.

And by that I mean...

Take either one, the social media platforms or the cable news.

When the cable news reports these bombastic headlines or you see these two people on both sides yelling at each other, you tell me, doesn't your blood pressure go up?

Doesn't your heart rate go up?

Of course it does.

That's what they want to happen.

And what is happening there as you scroll through these social media platforms, as you see these people arguing on the news, it releases a chemical called dopamine in your brain.

Now, maybe you've heard of that before and you think, oh yeah, dopamine, that's the pleasure chemical.

Well, that's actually not true.

Dopamine is released when you have pleasure, but it's also released when you experience disgust, anger, pain, all of those things.

It is why when a gambler takes a big loss at the card table,

He wants to run right back to the table because this dopamine has flooded his brain and it has clouded his judgment.

And every time you see one of those things and you feel your blood pressure going up and your heart rate going up, dopamine is flooding your brain.

Now, God created us and God created dopamine and we actually function pretty well with the right amount.

in our brain.

We actually function pretty well.

It's there for a reason.

It was never meant to be flooding our brain as much as it is now with all the information that we intake.

We are overdosing every single day in a great amount on dopamine.

And what our brain does when it is flooded with dopamine is it says, too much, too much.

and it will dull the effect of the dopamine in your brain.

And when it does that, you're going to want to experience a little bit something more than you did before to get the same amount of reaction.

That's what creates an addiction.

That's why when you're a drug addict, you start with this much, and it gives you an incredible high,

But then the brain says, no, no, no, that's not right.

And so you have to double your dose the next time and triple it the next time.

That is exactly what is happening with social media, with whatever you're consuming that creates that dopamine and you're gonna have to go after it more and more and more.

And it is warping our brain.

It's warping our brain.

That's what creates an addiction.

So declutter, be careful about what you take in.

Second blank there is minister to your mind.

Minister to your mind.

I have a couple of references there, Colossians 3, 2 and Philippians 4, 8.

And we are going to spend a little bit of time in those.

So if you want to go ahead and turn to the third chapter of Colossians, you can do that.

They won't be up on your screen, but if you have your Bible with you, you can refer to them.

Minister to your mind.

I almost used the word medicate your mind on that blank, but I didn't want anybody to get the wrong idea.

Minister to your mind.

Put information into your mind that will lead to the right kind of transformation.

Colossians 3.2 says, set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.

Another simple question.

Is that what you do?

Can you before God say that describes you?

And just as clear as day here in Colossians, Paul is tying this to what is supposed to identify us as followers of Christ.

Because right before that in verse 1 of Colossians 3, it says, If then...

You have been raised with Christ.

Seek the things that are above.

Where Christ is.

Seated at the right hand of God.

And then the very next thing he says is set your mind.

Set your mind.

Philippians, if you want to go ahead and turn over there, we'll be there for just a second.

You may have heard this verse many times.

Philippians 4, 8 says, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Think about these things.

Take your mind there.

Where is your mind normally?

Be purposeful in taking your mind there.

And again, let's look at the verse before that.

Verse 7 of Philippians 4 says, The peace of God, which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and what?

Your minds in Christ Jesus.

That is an awesome thought.

That the peace of God guards my mind.

The peace of God guards my mind.

minister to it minister to your mind most of what we put in our mind does not lead to the right kind of transformation and the sad part is is that we control most of what enters our mind through our own voluntary actions as we said earlier not everything but most so minister to your mind

God's Word is right here for us.

It's right here.

It's His primary way of speaking to us, and it's never been more accessible than it is today.

Make it your priority to know God through His Word to us.

And when you do that, here's what you'll find.

You'll find the more of God's Word that you put in your mind, the more the Holy Spirit will surface it

When you need it.

Can the Spirit guide you simply just through your conscience?

Well, of course the Spirit can do that.

The Spirit can do anything.

But, but, why would we ignore the greatest tool for navigating through life?

The Word of God.

It's Christian malpractice when we are not familiar with at least the basic tenets of God's Word.

And it is amazing how the Spirit will take the Word of God and manifest it in your mind when you need it.

But if there's nothing inside you to surface, why would the Spirit reward biblical illiteracy?

Why would the Spirit surface that if there's nothing to surface there?

Minister to your mind.

Know God through His Word.

Alexander McLaren said this.

I love this.

The beginning of all transformation is the revolutionized conviction of a mind that has accepted the truths of the gospel.

You need to know what those truths are.

The more of God's word you place in your mind, the more you'll conform to him and not the world.

And you'll find that God's word builds on itself.

It creates inside you a capacity to navigate this world without conforming to it, to get through storms, to know how to minister to other people.

And to get yourself off the throne.

It builds on itself.

We talked about this death loop that gets created in our mind when we put the wrong things in there.

Well, when we put God's word in there, it creates a loop also.

But it is not a death loop.

It is a life loop.

The mind is incredible.

It's just incredible.

Have you ever been to some cities and you think, wow, whoever designed this city really knew what they were doing.

It's pretty much laid out logically.

You've got first, second, third, fourth, fifth street.

First, second, third, fourth, fifth avenue.

Before GPS, you could be in a city like that and you could pretty much get around anywhere if you knew the address.

But have you ever been to any cities and you go, who in the world laid out this city?

They had no idea what they were doing.

London has 25,000 streets within a six and a half mile radius of the city's Charing Cross station where you can catch the bus.

25,000.

Within those six and a half miles, there's thousands of landmarks and tourist attractions.

So before GPS,

You had to have some kind of capacity for memory if you were going to be a cab driver.

You had to have some capacity for memory.

As a matter of fact, if you wanted to be a cab driver in London before GPS, you had to pass a series of grueling exams.

Grueling.

Well, a neuroscientist saw an outstanding opportunity to test a hypothesis.

Her name was Eleanor McGuire, and she decided to study 79 aspiring London cab drivers in the early 2000s.

Seventy-nine.

And she also had a control group, of course, for her scientific experiment, and the hypothesis was simple, and the experiment was pretty simple as well.

When they began to study, the neuroscientist Eleanor McGuire measured their brains, measured them.

I think it was 39, I believe, of the 79 became London cab drivers four years later.

39 of the 79.

And when they became cab drivers after those four years, she measured their brains again.

Those that had retained the information that it took to be a line and cab driver, their brains got bigger.

Their brains got bigger, especially what is known as the hippocampus.

And the hippocampus part of the brain is where you store information.

It's an interesting story, so why am I telling you that?

God created our bodies in a wonderful way.

He created our brains.

He created them to function a certain way.

So as you take in God's word over time, as you memorize it, as you meditate on it, as you determine that you're going to build your life around it, guess what's happening?

Your brain is literally changing inside.

Your brain is literally changing inside and the capacity that you need is the capacity that God will give you.

as you navigate life, as you come to forks in the road, as you come to big decisions, face moral dilemmas, what's going to surface inside your brain?

If you're ministering to it, God's word is going to surface in your brain because God has designed our mind to serve what we put in it.

What did we say earlier?

We take on the characteristics of what we assimilate to, the mind makes sure that we do.

And the people of that day would certainly know this principle.

Because the word of God at that time was passed down in stories.

You had to memorize it.

That's how it got from generation to generation.

Minister to your mind.

Final blank and we'll be done this morning.

A renewed mind passes the test.

Final part of verse 2 says that by testing...

you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

So follow Paul's thought pattern here.

Don't be conformed to this world.

Be transformed by the renewal of your mind.

Why?

That by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good, acceptable, and perfect.

Some translations may say, what is the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God?

Other translations may say, so that you can prove the will of God or discern the will of God.

So much of life is a test, isn't it?

When life squeezes the Christian, and it will, how will the Christian respond to

And the implication here in just this one verse that we've been looking at this morning, the implication here is that the Christian will respond differently than those who are conformed to this world because they've been transformed by the renewal of their mind.

That as we're tested, what we put in our mind gives us discernment to know what is good and acceptable and the perfect will of God.

You know, some people, there is a spiritual gift of discernment.

Some people have it.

Some people have a knack that God has given them.

But I don't ever remember seeing someone that had the spiritual gift of discernment that was biblically illiterate.

They know God's Word.

Nevertheless, whether you had that spiritual gift or not, the good news, the good news is

It's the more your mind approaches the life test and the more of God's word you have in it, the more the Spirit will use that to give you the godly response.

I came across this quote.

I thought it was very good.

Deep roots are not touched by the frost.

And this also comes through life experiences, which are stored in the same place as God's Word.

The Spirit uses it all, and Paul is laying it out here in Romans 12, verse 2.

And we can go on from there, if we'll just look at verse 3 for a second.

In Romans, he continues this thought.

Right after verse 2, he says, For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you, not to think...

of himself more highly than he ought he's just told you that we are transformed by the renewing of your mind and the very next thing he says is don't think more highly of you than you ought in other words if your mind is not transformed by the right things if it's not renewed by the right things if you're not ministering to it guess what you're probably going to think more highly of you than you ought but if you know God's word you know where you are in the pecking order you know where you are

You know where you are.

And here's the principle as we've said before.

The more of God's word that you put in your mind, the more it becomes second nature over time.

And you'll never have enough of it if your only exposure is what you get here on Sunday mornings.

You'll never have enough of it.

I don't care if you're super spiritual and you're here 52 weeks out of the year.

If you wanted to just say that on average, we talk about seven verses on Sunday morning, and we only talked about one this morning.

We mentioned some others, but let's just say on average that we talk about seven verses on Sunday morning.

If that's the only exposure that you get to God's Word, you have experienced 1.6% after a year of God's Word.

1.6% if you're here every Sunday and if we go over seven verses.

1.6%.

That's not enough.

That's not going to renew your mind.

You need to be in God's Word.

Solomon tells us in Proverbs that as a man thinks, so is he.

A.W.

Tozer, and I don't know if this is the exact quote or not, but it's close.

A.W.

Tozer said, the most important thing that you will ever think is what you think about when you think about God.

What is your state of mind?

Let's pray.

Father, thank you for the mind that you have created inside of us.

Thank you that you have given us access, a letter from you to us that will help us know who you are, help us know you better.

May we not ignore it, Father.

May we transform our minds and renew it with who you are through your word.

May we take out the things that don't lead to the right kind of transformation.

We love you.

We pray this in Jesus Christ's name.

Amen.

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