Jesus Changes our Mind
Notes
Transcript
Jesus Changes Everything
Jesus Changes… our Mind
Romans 12:1-2
JCE
Good morning and welcome to worship on this amazing day that the Lord has made. I want you to know that over that past week, your program and pastoral staff have just spent Wednesday to Friday at the New Room Conference, where we spent basically 48 hours in worship and fellowship with other lovers of God. New Room isn’t your typical church conference, and the only way to really understand it is to go – Amen Carl!
All I can say is that we have been filled with the Spirit of God and we are ready to work with you to spread Scriptural holiness throughout the Land.
One way we are doing that is with this church wide series where we are talking about how Jesus changes everything. 2 Corinthians 5:17 reminds us that
2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
Amen, if you give your life to Christ… If you renew your relationship with God… to use language that some of us grew up with, “if you rededicate your life”… you become a new creation… but more significantly, your change, your newness affects the world around you. When Jesus changes you, Jesus changes everything.
Last week we looked at the fact that when we give our lives to Christ, it changes our hearts. Amen.
I know some of us grew up thinking that we make a decision for Christ once in our life and we are done – you know, once saved always saved, right. That’s how I grew up, but that isn’t what I believe now. I believe that God has so much more for me than the one decision I made back in 9th grade at youth camp. God has so much more for you than just the decision you made on that Walk to Emmaus, or that VBS, or that campus ministry. I believe God’s mercies are new every morning. I believe God had something for you yesterday, and God has a fresh anointing for you today, and I believe that God has a special blessing for you tomorrow. We don’t serve a once and done God, we serve a God that is constantly offering grace and peace to us.
I believe every day is a new day where we need to seek out an encounter with God!
What am I trying to say? We are to seek God every day. We are to be made new everyday! We are to be in Christ, every day… and every day, when you wake up and you practice those Means of Grace we shared last week, when you are made new because of the time spent in the Word of God through the resources your church staff shared with you last week… you are making the world new. With each step each day becoming more like Christ… you are a part of bringing God’s heaven to earth.
When you allow Jesus to change you, Jesus changes everything. Now, “everything” is a little vague. I admit that, so last week we looked at how Jesus changes our heart… he changes our core, he changes our inner-most self, the center of our being. I heard someone this week describe their life like, they had put a Coconut shell around their heart – they wanted to protect it from pain and hurt. They wanted to protect it from change. They wanted to protect it from surprise and anything else they didn’t pre-plan… so it was like they put this coconut shell around their heart. But eventually, it didn’t keep the pain out, it didn’t keep the loneliness out, but it kept others out, including the healing work that Jesus wanted to do in his life.
Then, one night, he opened that coconut shell, just a little, just a bit, and let a little bit of Jesus in. and a little healing took place, and then he opened it a little more and a little more… He’s still working on getting rid of the coconut shell, but at least it was a start of opening the shell… and by letting Jesus in to his heart – into the center of his life, he was changed… and that change, that newness spilled over on others, and now everything has changed. Even though he’s a thousand miles away, his story affected me, and now it has affected you… why? Because Jesus changes everything! And, he uses people like you and me to affect that change.
Jesus changes your heart, and through that Jesus changes everything!
This week, we are looking at another area that Scripture tells us that Jesus can change… our mind.
Mind
I don’t mean change your mind like, I thought I wanted Mexican food for lunch, but when I drove by Up-In Smoke, I decided I wanted Bar-B-Q… right, that’s changing your mind. And in that sense, some of us change our mind like we change our underwear – which I hope is often.
But when we talk about Jesus working in our mind, changing our mind, we are talking about something more than the triviality of which restaurant we are going to practice our “after worship gluttony at.”
Today’s testimony comes from Esme Soto and how God changed her mind… And as a result, God changed everything for her.
Turn with me to Romans 12. Now, we looked at this passage a few weeks ago from a different angle. Many scholars believe Paul wrote this letter to explain the faith and encourage the saint of Rome during a very troubling time. Political leadership was split… the economy was questionable… the world powers were losing their grip, which caused war and division across the land… sound familiar? The world we inhabit is remarkably like the world we read about in scripture… so I invite you into that story, which is our story.
I don’t often do this, but today I am going to read this passage to you in three different translations so you can get a real sense of what it means.
We’ll start with the NLT
Romans 12:1-2 (NLT)
And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.
Now for the NIV
Romans 12:1-2 (NIV)
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
And finally, the Message version.
Romans 12:1-2 (MSG)
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
<PRAYER>
John arrived at Princeton with a chip on his shoulder. He and another student had received the coveted Carnegie Scholarship for Mathematics, meaning they were recognized as two of the most talented mathematicians in the world.
Often, John would skip class, not to party like I did when I skipped class in college, but to do math, to work on his own idea, to create and publish his own original idea that would change the world.
Oddly enough, his real breakthrough came when he and some friends were at a bar and they were trying to figure our how to approach a group of women. What he discovered in developing how to approach the ladies led to an economic and mathematic breakthrough of Governing Dynamics. His breakthrough was published and he earned an appointment to MIT, then working with the Department of Defense.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, I am talking about John Nash, the mathematician about whom the movie, “A Beautiful Mind” was about. Dr. Nash dealt with Schizophrenia, seeing people and living out scenarios that were not there. (Spoiler Alert – if you haven’t seen the movie, I’m about to ruin it for you… sorry.)
He is put on medication that causes the hallucinations to cease, but it also limits his mathematical abilities. On the medication he was a shell of the man that he was created to be. Off the medication he was a times a danger to himself, his wife, and his child.
Then, in a breakthrough moment, he realizes something. The visions, the people in his hallucinations never changed. The child never aged. The old roommate never changed. The government agent is always wearing the same dark suit, tie, and hat. With this knowledge, he begins to go without his medicine, never getting rid of the hallucination, but instead learning to differentiate truth from fiction.
His mind had been changed. It was as though he became a new person. Oh, the shadows of the past were always there to tempt him, but he had a new mind, a new way of thinking, a new way of perceiving the world around him.
So, what does it mean that our minds are changed? What does it mean that we are to change our minds, the way we think?
According to the Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, when we see the word mind in Scripture, it is the word nous, and it means mind, thinking, intellect, understanding, attitudes, and opinions. It’s much deeper than changing our mind about the color of pants we are going to wear. That would have had no effect on the life of John Nash – instead, he had to change the way he understood reality… he had to change his thinking about the world around him.
That is what we are talking about when we say that Jesus changes our Mind.
When we truly give our lives to God, Jesus will change the way we think about everything. Our understanding of the world around us is changed… our attitudes are changed… our opinions are changed.
Why? Because Jesus changes everything, and that includes our minds… we are being made new, we are being made like Jesus… and as we become more and more like Jesus, as we develop the mind that is in Christ Jesus as Paul puts it, it changes the way we think about other people.
Do this for me… think of the person you have the most distaste for.
Maybe it’s an ex-significant other – an old boyfriend or girlfriend, an ex-spouse…
Maybe it’s a boss
Maybe it’s a politician
Maybe it’s me, or some other preacher or religious authority.
Who is it that you detest… I mean, you can’t stand to be in the same room with them.
Now, as you hold them in your mind’s eye, I want to ask you. Does or did that person have a mother that loved them?
Is that person a child of God? I’m not talking about the way they act or anything, step back from their actions… I mean it… did Jesus give his life for that person?
Is that person created in the image of God?
I know, this is hard work… This isn’t what you came to church for today… But this is just a little bit of what it means that Jesus changes our mind.
As you think of this person that you detest, that you all but hate… or, maybe hate isn’t too harsh a word for how you feel about this person.
Let me ask you one more question… when was the last time you prayed for them – not that a bus would hit them… I mean, when was the last time you carried them before the Lord and said,
“God, I don’t know what to do with this person… they are driving me nuts. I don’t like the way they look, I don’t like the way they smell, I don’t like the way they treat people around them… BUT, God, I know that they are your child. I know that they need your love. I know that Jesus came and died for them, just like He died for me. So, God pour out your grace on them. Pour out your love on them.”
Ladies and gentlemen, that is what happens when you allow Jesus to change your mind. You begin to think differently. You begin to see the world around you through the eyes of Jesus, not the eyes of our cynicism.
When Jesus changes our minds, it changes how we react to the world around us as well.
You have a lot of stress in your life, and you know that the best way to deal with that stress is to get some exercise, pray, and read scripture… but the easy thing to do is go pour a double shot (or maybe a triple shot) of Knob Creek over a couple of rocks and drink it down. Yes, it will dull the pain for a little while, but it won’t fix the problem.
When we decide to stop treating the symptom of the stress and start dealing with the physicality of the stress by increasing the dopamine levels through exercise you are changing your mind…
when you carry that stress to the Lord in prayer and lay it at His feet, you are dealing with the root causes, not numbing the symptoms, and numbing the symptoms doesn’t change anything…
when we go to God’s Word and read and meditate on it, we are changed from the inside out…
we are made new…
Jesus changes everything, even our mind.
I want to leave you with one more passage… I found dozens of passages in my study this week, but only one more that I will share, and it comes from Ephesians 4, and I’m going to read it from the NIV this time. Paul has been warning about the way the ungodly live and then he says,
Ephesians 4:20-24
That, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. 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.
What did that say, “put off the old self… be made new in the attitude of your minds… put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”
Ladies and gentlemen, how is your thinking? How is your mind? Is it being made new, or are you trying to keep it from changing? It seems like the easiest thing is to hold on to our prejudices. It seems like the easiest thing is to hold on to the bitterness and pain. It seems like the easiest thing is to hold on to the anger and rebellion… It seems easy… it seems like it protects us… it seems like it is the right thing to do, but what it really does is corrupt.
What it really does is pull us into the old self that is far from God.
What it really does is the very opposite of creating us like God in righteousness and holiness.
But, that isn’t the way we were created. That isn’t what we were created for.
We were created for so much more than all that.
You were created for more than heartache
You were created for more than the bitterness
You were created for more than the prejudices you hold onto
You were created for more than the anger and rebellion
You were created for more than the pain and suffering you experience.
Romans 12:1-2 (MSG)
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
Ladies and gentlemen… Jesus changes everything, even your mind.
<PRAYER>