True or False?
True or False? What you think about determines how you feel, what you do, and who you become.
My son is just a few months away from his 16th birthday. So he’s dreaming of getting a car of some kind when he turns 16. Now what he’s dreaming of is most certainly very different than what his reality is going to be.
He’s dreaming of a brand new Jeep Wrangler, or a Ford Mustang, he might as well be dreaming of a Delorian! That’s what I would need to go Back to the Future so I could place a few Super Bowl bets so that I could afford his dream car!
Here’s what’s interesting though… one of the things he enjoys doing, and I do, too, if I’m being honest, is looking at cars online that he might like to have. And I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this… but when you start looking at something and thinking about something, all of a sudden you start seeing that thing, whatever it is, everywhere you look.
So one day he’s sending me text messages of different Jeep Wranglers he’s found online. And then later that day, I pick him up from school, we’re driving around town, and everywhere we look all we see are Jeep Wranglers.
The next day, he’s looking at something else. Maybe it’s Toyota Tacoma… and all we see around town that day are like a 1000 Tacomas. Or maybe it’s that Ford Mustang. And all we see are Ford Mustangs. It’s like they’re everywhere.
RAS
Have you ever experienced that?
It happens with just about anything. If you’re thinking of getting a new iPhone, all of a sudden its like all you see are iPhones everywhere.
Or maybe if you’re like my wife you’re looking at getting a new purse and then you see that kind of purse everywhere you look.
That happens because God designed our brains with what we call the RAS, the Reticular Activating System.
The Reticular Activating System is a bundle of nerves at our brainstem that filters out unnecessary information so the important stuff gets through.
Every day we are bombarded with stimuli and if we had to pay attention to everything we would go crazy. The RAS helps us determine what we notice and what will go unnoticed.
Those iPhones you’re seeing everywhere, they were there all along, you just didn’t notice them before. Same is true for that purse you want, or that car you’re looking at buying.
God designed our brains with this super power, this ability to see clearly and see more often the things we’re thinking about. That super power can be used for our good or… it can also be used for our own demise.
Fixated
How many people do you know, they got fixated on the WRONG thing and it ended in their own self destruction?
All they could think about was buying more and more stuff… and now they’re financially bankrupt, their marriage is on the brink of divorce, they are at the end of their rope all because they fixed their mind on the wrong things.
Or maybe they fell off the deep end, the dark side, of social media. And that led them into a rabbit hole of playing the comparison game, or lust, or conspiracy theories, or hate, or one of the other many traps that are just waiting on people online.
Now their relationships are falling apart, they haven’t been to church in ages, they are living in a very dark place and you’re worried if they will ever be able to recover.
It’s happens in a million different ways. Because more often than not, what we think about determines how we feel, what we do, and who we become.
What do you fix your thoughts on?
In his letter to the Christians living in the ancient city of Rome, Paul writes to remind them of this truth. Paul has never met these people face to face. But he doesn’t have to in order to know that this is true about them just like this is true about us.
Nothing is more important than what we fix our thoughts on.
Listen to what Paul writes in Romans 8.5-11:
Those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things,
How do you know if you are being dominated by the sinful nature?
Here’s the test: What do you think about? What is always on your mind?
Paul says: Think about your thought life.
If you are constantly losing the battle of your mind then chances are, you are being dominated by the sinful nature.
Some of us know this because we are being dominated by greed and the desire for more, more, and more stuff.
When someone asks us, When is enough, enough? The answer is, we don’t know, because we don’t have enough yet! We just want more and we are never satisfied, content, or happy with what we have.
Some of us know this because we are being dominated by lust. It’s all we think about and we sure do wish we wouldn’t talk about it because then we could keep pretending like we don’t struggle with it but the truth is we do struggle with it and every day is a battle and it’s a battle because it’s all we can think about and we’re losing the battle of our mind.
And some of us think, I’m not like that, I don’t struggle with those kinds of things.
But what you struggle with are things like apathy. You have trouble caring about others. You have trouble caring about what God cares about.
Or you struggle with laziness. Or boredom. Or wasting time on things that are not productive, or restful, or life giving in any way.
What you fail to realize is that’s just another way of losing the battle of your mind and being dominated by your sinful nature.
What you think about determines how you feel, what you do, and who you become.
Breaking the Gravitational Pull
Paul continues. He says…
but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit.
What does this look like?
It takes discipline.
The gravitational pull of our lives is toward the sinful nature. You have to know this.
No one had to teach you to be angry. Being selfish, self-centered, greedy, and self indulgent comes naturally. Laziness isn’t hard. Apathy is easy.
It isn’t hard to stare at our screens for hours on end as if we’re in a trance controlled by some invisible force. Maybe we ARE!!!!
To break the trance, to get out from under the dominance of the sinful nature, to break that gravitational pull of the sinful nature… well, we need Rocket Fuel in order to break the gravitational pull!
I always love watching when there’s a Space Shuttle launch or something like that when the rockets fire with enough force to break through the gravitational pull of earth into outer space. It’s incredible to watch!
We have that same kind of power, spiritual rocket fuel, that can propel us through the gravitational pull of the sinful nature into the space of God’s love and grace!
It’s called the Holy Spirit!
Spiritual Disciplines
How do we allow the Holy Spirit to control us?
We have to think about things that please the Spirit. And that takes discipline. Spiritual discipline.
In fact, that’s why we call things like prayer and fasting, worship and contemplation, spiritual disciplines. Because these are things that help us fix our minds on what pleases the Holy Spirit.
There’s a thousand ways to do this and we have 2000 years of Christian history to look to and lean on to learn how to do this.
The good news is that everyone can find a way, a spiritual discipline, a spiritual practice, to help you fix your thoughts on what pleases the Holy Spirit. It may be Scripture and prayer for you. It may be art. Or worship. It may be nature. It may be serving others. Or it may be some combination of those things.
Here’s the thing…
What you think determines how you feel, what you do, and who you become.
So what if you think about things that please the Holy Spirit?
Here’s what Paul says…
So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace. For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God’s laws, and it never will. That’s why those who are still under the control of their sinful nature can never please God.
But you are not controlled by your sinful nature. You are controlled by the Spirit if you have the Spirit of God living in you.
Did you catch that? Letting the Holy Spirit control your mind leads to LIFE + PEACE!
WHY? HOW?
Because, the Holy Spirit is FOR YOU!
The Holy Spirit wants to lead you to what gives you LIFE and what gives you PEACE.
The Holy Spirit is in your corner, fighting for you, leading you, guiding you, helping you all along your journey!
This is who the Holy Spirit is and this is what the Holy Spirit has always done!
Who do you want to become?
From the very beginning of time when Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, the gravitational pull of temptation and sin was away from God.
Their story ended with them being cast out of the Garden and their eventual death. If they had only listened to and trusted the voice of God, the word of God, that told them to stay away from the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they would still be alive in the Garden today.
The voice of God, the word of God, the Spirit of God leads to life and peace. But far too often we turn away from the voice of God and the life He has for us and we give into the temptation before us that leads to our own death and demise.
I guess the question you have to ask and answer is:
Who do you want to become?
Because what you think about determines how you feel, what you do, and WHO YOU BECOME.
The Black Hole
This is a stunning picture of the shadow of the supermassive black hole in the center of Messier 87 (M87), an elliptical galaxy some 55 million light-years from Earth.
This black hole is 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun. This image was captured in 2019 and was a historic achievement thanks to an international network of radio telescopes called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT).
They say that black holes have an incredible gravitational pull and that if anything ever gets caught in the gravitational pull of a black hole, it’s as good as gone!
There are a lot of people who get sucked into the gravitational pull of the black hole of sin. And they never escape.
But what if you could?
Life + Peace
In your baptism, in your confession of Jesus Messiah as Lord and Savior of your life, you invite the Spirit of God to have control over your life. It all begins with your confession and obedience.
The truth is, a lot of us want Jesus to be our Savior but not our Lord. We want to go to Heaven but we don’t want to let go of the control.
But Jesus can’t do that. If you want Him to be your Savior, He has to be your Lord. And if He is your Lord, you can trust that He will Save you! He’s either both or neither, but He cannot be one or the other!
But when we confess Jesus as Lord and Savior of our lives His Spirit lives inside of us.
And when we set our minds on the Spirit of God we experience LIFE and PEACE.
The Holy Spirit is FOR US!
What if you were to rewire your Reticular Activating System on God?
The truth is, it’s the only way to escape the gravitational pull of the Black Hole of SIN!
Paul ends this section with these words. And we need to hear this…
And Christ lives within you, so even though your body will die because of sin, the Spirit gives you life because you have been made right with God. The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you.
The Spirit of the Living God is living inside of us.
The Holy Spirit is FOR US!
Let’s set our MINDS on the the things that PLEASE the SPIRIT and see what happens.
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