Breaking the Shackles

We know the story of how Moses sent 12 spies into the Promised Land. The 12 come back. Let's go to Numbers 13. Numbers 13. If you start in verse 27, they come back and 10 of them say, Oh, it's everything that Moses said it would be. It's an incredible place. There's food, but there's walled cities, and there's armies, and it's beautiful. And there's trees. Now, they've been out in the desert for a long time. And there's water, but there's armies, and these are tough people. There's the Amalekites and the Amorites and all these people there.

And then verse 33 says, Then we saw the giants, the descendants of Enoch came from the giants, and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight. Now, two of the spies gave a totally different viewpoint. But I want you to think about this comment here. We were like grasshoppers in our own sight. In other words, we saw ourselves compared to the enormity of the problem. The problem was going into the Promised Land. Now, remember, these people had already seen God destroy Egypt about a year before. They had already seen God give them water in the desert. They'd eaten manna every day. But every morning when they got up, there was a pillar of fire, or a pillar of cloud there, and every night there was a pillar of fire, and it moved, and they followed it. They had seen God help them defeat other armies. But here we have a problem of a mindset. I call it the Grasshopper mindset. That basically is, we can't do this. Now, the truth is they couldn't. But because we can't do this, the only solution they have to the problem is, let's go back into slavery. This is part of the carnal mindset. That eventually is, I can't do this. This whole Christianity thing is too tough. It's too rough. It's ridiculous. It's just, I don't believe it anyways. And you go back into being a slave. Now, let's look at Numbers 14, Verse 6, and look what Joshua and Caleb said. But Joshua the son of Nun, and Caleb the son of Jephthah, who were among those who had spied out the land, tore their clothes. And they spoke to all the congregation of the children of Israel, saying, The land we pass through which is spied out is an exceedingly good land. If the Lord delights in us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us a land which overflows with milk and honey. While they do not rebel against the Lord, nor fear the people of the land, for they are our bread. I like the way he puts that. We could eat these people up.

We could do this.

Their protection is departed from them, and the Lord is with us. Do not fear them. One group of people say, We're grasshoppers. But they didn't say we're just grasshoppers at their site. Remember what I read? We're grasshoppers at our own site. We see ourselves as this. But here, Joshua and Caleb don't say, Oh, we're tough. We're good soldiers. We go in and beat these people. Look, there's lots of us. There's hundreds of thousands of us. We go in and we'll just take the land. That's not what they said. They said God is bigger than them. I don't care how big these people are. I don't care how tough they are. I don't care how many walled cities they have. God is bigger than them. The grasshopper mindset and the mindset that sees God.

What makes us one or the other? Because in our lives, we'll go back and forth between the grasshopper mindset and this mindset. Well, we'll see God. We'll see what He's doing. We'll have all this faith and all this confidence and all this courage. This can happen very quickly. You could go from having all this faith and confidence and courage in the same day.

By the end of the day, you're a grasshopper. So what helps us? Why were the ten of them stuck here? And why were the two of them able to see this totally different? We're going to look at how God can break these mental and emotional shackles that we have. We are bound by these shackles. We're bound by the way we think, the way we feel, and we believe there's no way out of it. We believe there's no way to find peace.

We believe that there's no way to overcome a problem or a sin. We believe that there's no way to have a good marriage. We believe that there's no way. We come to those conclusions and we say there's no way to do it. I am a grasshopper. I cannot move beyond where I am. And yet, here's a situation where two men saw it totally different. What's interesting is that there were only two men out of that generation that actually lived to actually go into the Promised Land forty years later. Everybody else in that generation died. Even Moses died. But these two men, these two men God actually took into the Promised Land, and Joshua as an old man led his army into conquer much of Canaan.

It was Joshua that got up to the Jordan River and God parted the Jordan River like he parted the Red Sea for them to go through. But that's because they saw it totally, totally different. What we're going to talk about today is in our mindsets, this Carl mindset and spiritual mindset, look at the Scripture and look at how we think and how we change our thinking. In other words, how do we become spiritually minded means mind-mind thinks on spiritual things. We read it in the Romans where Paul said, He who is spiritually minded thinks on spiritually things, on spiritual things.

He who is carly minded thinks on carnal things. So how do we move from one to the other? In this life, you can never totally stop thinking physical. That's not what it means. When you don't feel good, you say, I don't feel good. You don't feel good. You can't. You don't feel good. That's part of what it is to be physical. God never has a day, fortunately for us, where He says, I don't feel good today. He doesn't experience that.

We do. God doesn't say it's wrong to say, I don't feel good today. Or, I'm sad today. Something bad happened in my life today. I'm sad. Even God feels sadness. Even God feels grief and says so in the Bible. But we are something different because we are chemically... We're in this body, so there's all kind of chemical reactions to what we think and what we feel. So we need to start to analyze a little bit how do I move consciously, help move from a carnal mindset to a spiritual mindset. Part of it has to do with how we respond to what happens to us. How we respond to something, what happens to us.

This is a very simplified way of looking at this. I'm not pretending to be a psychologist here. I'm not pretending to be some kind of doctor. This is pretty much accepted as how the brain works in this great macro way. It's so complex nobody can figure it out. What happens inside our brains and actually is affected by our entire bodies is so complex nobody knows exactly why it happens the way it does. Here we have an event.

That event goes through personal filters. So you'll have a different reaction to something. Ever have a song that you really like because you used to dance to it as a teenager? And somebody else looks at you and says, I hate that song! But as a kid I hated that song, right? We all have these filters that we look through things. You were talking about songs in your head when you woke up this morning.

After I woke up this morning, a song popped in my head. I have a song pop in your head and it takes you the hardest getting it out. You'll never believe what pops in my head. I could offer you $100.

Nobody here wouldn't fear it. It was a pop song. I think it was from the 90s or early 2000s. Girls just want to have fun. That's like the 80s. Girls just want to have fun. It's a bad pop song. It wasn't even that good of a pop song. It popped into my head at some point. What caused it, I have no idea. But some event caused that to pop into my head. I can't get it out of there.

It's like being tortured or something. It was Satan coming into my life. I finally got it out of my head. Now I mention it. I'll probably think about it later. But we all have these personal filters by which we filter through things.

I know a person whose dad said you can never trust a man that does a comb-over. Because he's trying to hide something. He didn't have a comb-over. You can't trust a man who does a comb-over. So she believed you couldn't trust anybody with a comb-over. Because her dad told her that. He shaved it off. See, you can be trusted because you shaved it off. He would say you were an honest, genuine man because you shaved it off. He's like, you can't trust somebody that has a comb-over. No, you can't.

He's trying to hide something. He believed it. You couldn't guess what these kids believed. There's these things, these filters we have. Some of them make no sense at all, but we accept them. We all accept them. It's like the old story of a woman who every time she made a meatloaf, she took and sat it down, took it out of the pan, and then cut the quarters off. And someone asked, why do you do that? She said, because my mother always did it. So she went and asked her mother, why do you cut the quarters off the meatloaf?

My mother said, I don't cut any quarters off the meatloaf. Well, what do you mean? She said, well, I'll show you. She got her pan out. Here it was a round pan. And she was using a square pan. So she thought you had to cut the quarters off because that's all she'd ever eaten as a child. You know, we only have some filters, and some of them are pretty wacky. So we have an event happen to us. These things start going through these personal filters.

Actually, I can't tell you what happens in these steps exactly, because nothing in your mind happens in exact steps. It's going all over the place. It's amazing what's happening. So you have the event, personal filters, and then you have an emotional process. What's very interesting is they do know now, which does away with Freudian psychology, but they do know now the emotional process happens before the mental process. And you say, why? You're driving in a car. Someone pulls in front of you. You don't say, hey, that guy's pulling in front of me. He's going to cause an accident because you're already dead.

You have an emotional reaction first. Everything happens so fast. Emotional reaction. And as soon as you pull out of the way, you go, man, that guy almost hit me! You don't say, that guy almost hit me first. I'll give you a perfect example of this. I may have told you this story before. My son and I were hiking in the Big Bend National Park. He's a teenager. We're about 7,000 feet up, and we're coming down, and we're tired.

Even at 7,000 feet, of course it's the desert. We're tired. We took it all day to hike up the mountain. We're hiking down the mountain. I'm walking along with my head down. He's walking behind me with his head down. Just walking like this. And I stopped, and he ran into the back of me. He goes, why did you stop? I looked down because I felt fear. About 2 feet in front of me was a 4-foot rattlesnake, coiled and rattling, because I was about to step on it. Now, what if I would have said, huh, I noticed that rattling.

I know someplace in my life I've heard rattling like that before. Oh, it's a rattlesnake. I wonder if it's a diamondback or the Great Western rattlesnake. I would have been bitten five times? Somewhere in my brain, because I've heard rattlesnakes, guess what was in there?

The sound of a rattlesnake. And guess what happened to me, is I was about to step on it. Absolute fear that made me stop and freeze. I looked down and gave him just enough time to uncoil and run off.

I was about to step right on it. I am glad, and I've come to this conclusion, this is my personal conclusion as a non-expert. We're designed that way to survive. God designed me that way so that I would not step on it. I don't know what would have happened if I had never heard a rattlesnake before. I may have stepped right on it.

I may not have any point of reference. I don't know. But my brain did this and then did this. And I remember saying, oh, look at it. It's green. Because one of the few places there's green-colored rattlesnakes is the Big Bend National Park. And it has a green hue to it. And as soon as the fear stops, look, it's getting away. Oh, look, it's green. And Chris and I are walking along following the thing. A ranger walks up and says, what are you doing? We're looking at that snake. And he goes, oh, man, look at that.

You don't see him that big very often. There's three of us following this snake. And he's trying to get away. And we're following it, which isn't smart. Obviously, we've gone past this. And I don't know where we were. We were over here someplace. But you see what I mean? How many times have you... Here's the problem. This doesn't just happen in terms of danger. It happens every time we have an emotional response. Now, when you're dealing with rattlesnakes, it's good. If you're dealing with your wife, it's bad. Because how many times have you had an event and go through these personal filters?

Have somebody you don't trust. They do something. I don't trust them. I'm going to yell at you. Mental process. Uh-oh. Uh-oh, I misread this. How many times have you started to say something to somebody or do something? And it's like inside your brain, you hear, don't do it! This part's kicking in too late. This part's actually kicking in, but it's kicking in too late.

That's why in emotional situations, you have to give yourself a break between here and here. What's this have to do with the spiritual mindset? So much of what we do in life is in trouble because of this and this, and because we haven't trained this. Then we take an action, which many times creates another event, and we just go round and round.

So this is basically, in a nutshell, non-professional way, how we act a thousand times a day. So we automatically have problems because we're all very subjective, and these personal filters many times make no sense at all. And each one of us are different. Each one of us are different. Where's the screen here? I mean, not screen, but the machine. There we go. So we have the event. So this is the event happens. Now, events happen as a consequence of our personal actions. You commit a sin, and bad things are going to happen.

You get drunk, and you drive 100 miles an hour, and you go into a telephone pole, and you may die. Now, a lot of things that happen to us are outside of our control. They're outside of our control. Someone else who was drunk, driving a car 100 miles an hour, wrecks into us and breaks both of our legs. You had no control over that. You didn't do that. You weren't doing anything wrong.

So events are very messy. We have our personal filters. This is our vision and our mindset, which include genetic traits, our past experiences, preconceived perceptions, our belief system, our self-awareness. I'm going to talk about self-awareness here because you misunderstand what I mean here. This is talking about being in touch with yourself. This is something else. Our emotional process, our mental process, and then our actions. Here's the problem. I don't have much control over events, and I don't have a lot of control over my emotional process.

I can only change my filters, my mental process, and actions. I can choose a different action, and a lot of times your actions, in a Christian way, are different than how you feel. They produce something great afterwards, but at the moment you do something that's the opposite of how you feel. Because you feel something different. You feel anger, envy, or greed, or lust, and you have to do something different than it.

Let's see. I just did that. Okay. I missed a little bit. You did, Abby? You got back another one? That's where we were. That's where we were.

Okay. Let's talk about this a little bit. I just touched on it some, wasn't it?

As I said, we have very little control over events. We have no control over our genetic makeup. You have no control over your past experiences. If you were abused as a child, you have no control over that. You only have control over how you respond to it. If you decide to allow that to control you or not control you. That's the only choice you have.

We can make changes in how we relate to the past, our perceptions, our belief system, and our self-awareness. Emotional changes happen because we make changes in the way we think. This is where the Scripture comes in. It also, though, with a spiritual mindset, all this depends on God's Spirit helping you. Remember when I gave this series of sermons on the fruits of the Spirit? Remember that?

Love, joy, peace. There's an emotional element to every one of those. That's God's Spirit. So you have to understand God has to help us change all of this. You and I, there is no magic pill. There's no drugs you can take. There's no special doctor you can go to that can change all of this. But God can. God can change it. But it's not easy because the truth, our personal filters, has to be the way it is.

Because it's determined my reality all my life, surely you're not telling my realities wrong. Yes, all of our reality is not reality. It's based on this objective way we run things through our brain. And we have to let God come in here and change that.

We do have some control over our mental process. And we're going to talk about how to affect this area. Because when we do that, we learn how to make choices. This all comes down to a mindset that allows us to make choices. But this is always stressful. Now, how many of you came into the church and had to give up Sunday keeping to come into the church? Okay. Let's use that as an example. Each person's experience is going to be slightly different. But let's use how a lot of people go through when they go to church on Sunday. You go to church on Sunday, you believe that the Sabbath is a Jewish observance, and you don't think much about it. It's part of the Old Covenant Jesus didn't weigh with. Someone comes along and there's an event. Someone comes along and challenges you with the Sabbath. Now, if you're like a lot of people, you simply take your preconceived ideas and say, that's wrong. In fact, you might have given angry. You're just trying to be a Jew. You're trying to give up the grace of God, aren't you? I've heard people say, you keep the Sabbath, you don't believe in God's grace. You don't believe in Jesus, do you? And they shut you down. But it's an event. Now, some people have this event that happens. Now, it goes through their personal filters. You like going to church on Sunday. Your friends go to church on Sunday. Besides, I've been taught all my life that it's a Jewish observance, and that it's harsh and it's oppressive. Jesus did away with the old law. And you're really not aware of the Sabbath. I don't know. That's something the Jews do. I don't know if anybody goes to church on Sabbath. Everybody I know goes to church on Sunday. It's my habit. It's what I do. It's what my family does. All my friends go to church on Sunday. And so these are your personal filters. The result is that you have an emotional process which says, this is stressful, because they give you a scripture. And it's a scripture you've never thought of before. Maybe it's Genesis, where the Sabbath is created by God at creation, and it exists before the Ten Commandments. And you read that and think, yeah, well, yeah. But that's not what that means. You have a stressed response. In this stressed response, you may get mad and say, get out of my face. You're some kind of weird heretic. Or you might say, I'm going to prove you wrong, or I'm going to prove you right. Or, you know, you're going to do something now. But it's all in this emotional process that you now move into a mental process and you make a decision. And this decision, which is stressful. Any way you go, it's stressful, is, I'm going to do something. And so you say, okay, I'm going to do something. I'm going to show you wrong. And it's amazing how many people, that's where they start.

Then they start into a Bible study. And they study the Bible, and they study the Bible, and they study the Bible, and they finally come to a conclusion. They have to take an action. They can't live with the cognitive dissonance. They can't live with, I sort of believe in Sunday, and I sort of believe in Saturday, and I sort of believe in Sunday.

You can't live that way. And eventually you choose one or the other, and you make a choice. Now, God's involvement is, but God doesn't make this choice for you. Now, those of you who went from being a serious Sunday keeper to keeping the Sabbath, it wasn't easy. For those who grew up in the church, they have no idea how difficult that process is. It is major. You overhaul your life. All your relationships are affected by it. All your relationships are affected by it.

And this is a serious process this change goes through. And if God helps you through all this, your action down here is, I guess I have to keep the Sabbath. You see how this works? See how complicated it is? I've seen people take years for this to happen. I've seen people, it's one week and it happens. Every person is different. We all have different filters.

And our emotional process is a little different, our mental process is a little different. But it still comes down to, I have to process this event into an action. For many, many people, it never gets past here. And that is, Jesus did away with it, I will talk to you about it. That filter is there, I will not talk about it. We go no farther. But then you work all this through and you're in the scripture and God leads you to something. Now, in this process, something very important happens.

And this is where I want to take us for the last 20 minutes. You know what we do to ourselves in this process? We talk to ourselves. All the time. You and I talk to ourselves all the time. Well, wow! That is what it says. She told me, look, it's what it says. You're actually talking to yourself. I don't mean verbal, although sometimes we even verbalize it. We talk to ourselves all the time. Well, that's so, she can't be right.

That's so stupid. We talk to ourselves all the time. What do you tell yourself? Ten men said, and they would have verbalized it with each other, there's walled cities. De malachites, they fight on camels. How are we going to stop a charging horde of camels? And there's a mox. I mean, those people are big. Those are knock people. They're, you know, like seven feet tall. And they get armor on. But look at us. We can't defeat these people. We can't do that. We are grasshoppers in our own sight. That's talking to yourself. And what did Caleb and Joshua say? God could do this. Let's go watch what God...

We saw what God did to Egypt. These people aren't near as tough as the Egyptians were. Let's go see what God does to these people. They're talking to themselves. And they come to conclusions. And they verbalize those conclusions. What do you talk to yourself about? Romans 12. Romans 12. It's a complicated process. The solution to that is very simple. Do you have to know all this? No. You actually don't. You only have to know how to start thinking with the Bible. The Bible tells us how to think. Look what it says in Romans 12, verse 1.

Paul says, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by what? The renewing of your mind. That you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. You see, you're not mine. You have to think differently. And as you think differently, your mind is renewed. You can prove what is God's will. You can prove what God wants to do in your life. We're spending too much of our lives trying to force our way into God's way. And we're sure our way is right because of the way it feels.

It feels right. I will not be happy doing any other thing than my way. I will not be happy doing this any other way. And so we talk to ourselves. So we decide. We go all kinds of directions in this. Well, it's somebody else's fault. And we have somebody else to blame. Let's look at some of the ways we talk to ourselves.

Let's go to genetic makeup. Some people say, God can't use me because I'm too much like my mother. I just put these down because I've heard all these things a hundred times. Dad was an alcoholic. I'll never going to overcome my alcohol abuse. It's just in my family. We're all genetic alcoholics. So I can't overcome it. I'm a grasshopper. I can't help it. I have a violent temper. I was born this way.

I was born a homosexual and God expects me to be who I am. I've heard that one too. So, I'm genetically made this way. So it's God's will. This is who I am. Ephesians 2. I can't change this way. I'm a man. I can't change this woman. Or this way because I'm a woman. I can't change this way because. And he just fill it in.

I can't change because this is the way my generation was. I can't change this way because this is why my grandmother was. And so genetically I cannot change. People like to use genetic reasons for all kinds of things.

That's why the genetic argument for homosexuality, which I don't entirely agree with, my answer is, okay, so what? So what? You can't stay that way. So you can argue all you want? It does make a difference because here's what the Scripture says. Verse 1 of Ephesians 2. I said, I don't agree with it, but I'm not even arguing with somebody. So what? What does God say about it?

God's response is, yes, and I want to change your nature. So God does not accept any, any excuses that it's my genetic makeup on anything.

Because all of us could say, well, that's just the way I was born. That's the way, you know, my parents were lazy, so I'm lazy.

We are by nature. Every one of us, by nature, Satan corrupted our nature. Every one of us is all messed up. Every one of us by nature has become a sinner.

So you could say whatever sin it is. Well, I, you know, I'm just a liar. I'm my nature a liar. And you know what God's answer is? You sure are a by nature a liar. And I don't accept that. Why am I nature an alcoholic? Yeah, sure, but I don't accept that. Why am I nature a homosexual? Okay, I don't accept that because your nature is not acceptable to me. That's what God says. So everybody wants to create an argument out of something that God says, I really don't care because you know why? I don't accept your nature. I don't care what your genetic makeup is. It has to be changed. This is to be spiritually minded. You and I can't hold on to the flaws of our genetic makeup and say, oh, that excuses me from being like Christ. If you read the rest of this, he talks about how God, all the way down to verse 10, because all through the rest of this he talks about how God has saved us through His grace. But skip down to verse 10. For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. So here's what happens when you use genetics as an excuse and you tell yourself that. Oh, I know I had this temper, but you know, my dad had it, my grandpa had it. We just had this temper. It's part of my Irish traits. How many times have you heard that? Oh, I just have an Irish temper. God says, I really don't care. You can't go around punching people, period. But it's my Irish temper. God says, I don't care if it's your Babylonian temper. I don't care if it's your Ethiopian temper. I don't care where you got it from. You can't go around punching people. It doesn't matter to God. The nature is corrupt. Your nature is corrupt. So every time you want to use your genetic makeup as an excuse, you know what you have to think of? These verses. And there's lots of verses about this. This takes study.

You know really what we're coming down to? I've gone through an hour sermon, an hour Bible study, and you know what I'm going to come down to? Until you fill your mind with the Bible and with prayer, you cannot become spiritually minded. I started with this great big subject that we're getting down to. You can never be spiritually minded without spending time in the scripture and spending time in prayer. Because it is God who brings these to mind. You know, just think of 2 Timothy 1.7. God has not given us the spirit of fear, but a spirit of power, love, and a sound mind. You know, I have to admit there's times in my life I've been in some bad mental state or upset over something or depressed or something, and you know that scripture pops in there. Hey, I didn't give you a spirit of fear. Okay. But a power, love, and a sound mind. It pops in there. It pops in there because it's there. And it's God popping it in there. And once you have a God thought, it changes. Because now suddenly you say, okay, God, then you're going to have to give me some power here because I don't have any. You see what happens? We have to make this book our thoughts. The more we make this book our thoughts, the more spiritually minded we become. How about past experiences? If you knew my background, you would know that God really can't love me. I'm so ugly. And people just don't treat me the way I want to be treated. Therefore, I'm going to quit and you can just fill in anything. My job, my church, my club, my family, you know, whatever. I'm just going to quit because I don't like to be treated this way. How about I've always been controlled by anxiety and I'll always be controlled by anxiety. My family was so smart and I was the stupid one. Here's the problem sometimes we have to realize. We tell children things like you're stupid, you're ugly long enough and they believe you because you're an adult. I mean, I have sat down with people. I had this question one time asked in about a two-week period. A little five-year-old boy came up to me and tugged on my, you know, I forget where I was. He wasn't in the church. I was at a funeral. I'd give it a funeral. And a adult came up and said, he thought you might have an answer to his question. So he wanted you to... and so I got down on my knees and he said, How come...

Little guy. How come I'm so bad that my parents divorced?

About two weeks later, I had a woman say, Can I counsel with you? She was in her 40s. I said, I said, Sure. We sat down. She says, I've been watching you for a year because I want to make sure I can trust you with this. I said, Okay. She said, How come I was so bad that my parents divorced?

In her 40s. You tell a child, as an adult, they believe it. And a lot of you are walking around with all kinds of crap in your head because adults told you. And God doesn't think that way. God's never saying to you, You're so ugly. You're so stupid. Now, I guarantee you there's things you do because I know this. I know I've done things in my life and God has said, Hey, boy, that is stupid.

Okay, there's a difference between saying, That's a stupid action and saying you're a stupid person. Okay, those are two different things. God doesn't say you're worthless because he gives us value. Without God, we are worthless. But he gives us value. He gives it to us. So we live in these past experiences. Philippians 4 verse 6. So we've got to fill our minds with something else. We've got to go to the Scripture. We've got to remember what God says about us.

Do we know what God says? And you say, I'm too small. I'm too little. My past. Okay, let's go to where it says in 1 Corinthians, that God calls the small, the weak, the unimportant, so that his glory can be shown. So be glad you're one of the small, the weak, and the unimportant because that means God could do a work in you.

So it's not so bad to be one of the small, the weak, and unimportant because God chooses people like that to do his work. So you get to be the proof of what God can do. Not a bad way to live life. Not a bad purpose, is it? Yeah. I get to live so God can show what he is. That's who you are.

But you have to know that because the Scripture tells us this. We have to replace those thoughts with things like that. I know why God called me. I'm down on nobody. I'm a nobody.

God says, of course you're a nobody. That's why I called you. Now step aside and look what I can do. That's what God says. Oh yeah. Okay. Remember Caleb and Joshua? Oh no. God's bigger, these people. We're grasshoppers. Oh, so what? God's bigger. It's a different mindset. It's always looking at God and what God can do. We just lose it so easily. Stay focused on God. Maybe the most difficult thing we have to do. Philippians 4 verse 6. Let me get to Philippians. Be anxious for nothing, but everything by prayer and supplication.

With thanksgiving let your requests be known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Finally, brother, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report. If there's any virtue, if there's anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things. He says, this is what you think about. Think about these things. We have to be careful because all we'll think about is the politics of the world. All we'll think about is how everything's bad. Now we need to be aware of it and it's bad. But it's always been bad and it's only going to get worse.

You say, well that's pretty negative. Yeah. But God's going to fix it. God's going to fix it. So you can actually be positive in a negative world. You can actually be positive. Think about these things. I've always found reasons at times not to think about these things because I wanted to think about the things that were not noble, the things that aren't lovely, the things that aren't of a good report. We can always find an excuse to think about these things. He says, meditate, which is deep thinking. Bible study, prayer, and meditation, over and over and over again. We've had sermons and sermonettes and articles that those three things are so important in our lives.

Well, that's how God teaches us how to be spiritually minded. The things, the events that are happening to us all the time, they're going to continue to happen to us all the time. Life's always going to be unruly and messy. And there's always going to be somebody doing something bad to you. And there's always going to be somebody else doing horrible things. And the news is always going to be filled with people with corrupt human nature being driven by Satan.

This is not God's world. You have been called to have a spiritual mind in a carnal world. To have a spiritual mind in a carnal world. So everything around you is going to be, to a certain degree, carnal. And we're just, we're still in that sort of carnal spirit. We're trying to move from one mind to another. Where do the thoughts come from? It comes from here. These are God thoughts. Take God thoughts and put them in there.

So that Scriptures come to mind. Think about, think about Jesus confronting Satan. That's pretty stressful. How did he answer him? Was Scripture. What came to mind? What was there? What was he teaching us in that exercise he was going through? Let God talk to you and let this be what's in your mind. So unless we pray, unless we read this, unless we think about this, it's just more information that's jumbled around inside there.

But God's Spirit will use this, pull this information, and God will talk to us through the Scripture. And you've probably all had situations in life where suddenly a Scripture came to mind. A decision, or something you were confronting, and a Scripture comes to mind. That's right. God through His Spirit took what He wants you to know and brought it to memory. And now that changes the whole event process, doesn't it?

The whole event process we went through changes because a thought comes in and is from God. Preconceived perceptions. God is always angry with me. We've been married too long to change. Everybody's against me and my family. I've heard all the... The minister is coming. I must have done something wrong. Kevin will say, hey, let's go visit the so-and-so. We have never visited them.

Hey, that's a great idea. I'll call them and say, hey, can Kim and I this week combine vigor's you sometime? Well, okay. And we'll go by and they'll be sitting there nervous. What have we done wrong? I actually have had lots of people asking what have we done wrong. It's like, I don't know, all we came hoping that maybe you'd have some tea.

I mean, that was our... And if you don't, that's even okay. We just came to visit you. But we always have these preconceived ideas. I love the one. Everybody's against me and my family. I've heard that one many times. Where'd that come from? But I remember a woman telling me that once and after talking and talking and talking, it came down to, guess who had told her that? Her dad. Ever since she was wee little. You can't trust anybody because everybody's against our family. And here's a grown woman with children of her own. Everybody's against me and my family. What have they done? And she would take totally unrelated things and say, these people were doing it on purpose.

They're doing it. And you'd hear the situations and anybody would know those people aren't doing that on purpose. They're not even thinking about you. But the reason she did that is that filter was what? Everybody's against me and my family. These preconceived ideas that have nothing to do... The more spiritually minded we are, the more we break through these things. The more we go back to Romans 8, which we read earlier in the sermon, let's just go to Romans 8.

The more we become like... Verse 28. And we know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. His purpose, His plan. And we follow that plan and that purpose.

And we remember this. All things work to good. All things work to good. I read something once, and it affected my life. Sometimes it's amazing how you get something to affect your life from... You know, it was a Protestant. At a major theological university. And he was at a table. He was a theologian. And this other theologian was writing about this. He said that the other theologians, and this discussion turned on him and treated him in a way he felt was so unchristian that he himself just couldn't even talk. He said, I watch these men treat this man in a way that was so unchristian. And he said he sat there very patiently, shook his head, gave an occasional answer. And he said, he walked out of the room, and he says, I caught up to him and said, how did you take that? That was the most unchristian thing I've ever seen. And he said, the man looked at me and said, oh, it's okay. I know God. And I thought, that's actually rather profound. It's okay. I know God. I said, wow, I don't have that attitude. It's okay. God's bigger than that, and God sent his son for me. It's okay. And the man would just say how it changed and had his light because he realized, I don't even know God.

And the name of the book was Knowing God. He wrote a whole book on how his journey to try to know God. How do I even know God? And it started with what he had seen at that point. How about our belief system? Doctrine isn't that important as long as we love one another.

It doesn't matter if I go to church as long as I'm spiritual, not religious. I don't need to study the Bible. God will put in my heart what he wants me to do. People say this to themselves all the time.

We forget Jeremiah 17, 9, and 10 that the heart is deceitful above all things. And desperately wicked, not just wicked, desperately wicked. I don't know if we can trust anything that just naturally goes through our minds and hearts. Our filters have to become God's filters. Our filters have to become this. So that certain things that go through your mind, your immediate reaction, and you go ahead and experience, certain things go through your mind or you have a certain emotional reaction. And the first thing in your mind is, you can't think that way.

I just hate her. You can't think that way. Love your enemies. Well, where love your enemies comes from? Because that's not normal. And I guarantee you, you and I didn't make up love your enemies. Okay? Well, you don't make that kind of stuff up. Where did it come from? It came from...it was a God thought in this book that pops into your mind.

I just hate him. Love your enemies. I don't like him. See, all of a sudden things start to change, right? I just...I don't like him a whole lot. Then all of a sudden it comes into your mind to treat kindly those who despitefully use you. I don't want to, but I'm going to be nice to him. And then action happens, and everybody else says, Why were you so nice to him?

How do you explain? God told me to. Where do thoughts come from? They come from here. You and I have to read this. We have to think about this. We have to pray about this. And it changes us. It is the Word of God. And it changes us. Every story in here changes the way we view life. That's why we should know the stories. That's why we teach our children the stories. Now, I'm going to just briefly here just wrap up with self-awareness. Self-awareness doesn't mean being self-absorbed with how you feel. Some people just...they're almost controlled by how they feel. All they can think about is how they feel. Self-awareness...and we're all aware of our emotions.

This can't mean you ignore your emotions. That's not health either. Self-awareness is understanding how you are affecting other people. It's how you're interacting in your environment. One time when this was many, many years ago, Kim said, Gary, when you're with a group of people, you get so wrapped up in the Bible that you seem aggressive. I said, I don't feel aggressive. She said, no, but you appear aggressive. I said, I don't know what you mean. So one day at a church picnic, she took a picture, and she showed it to me. And there's three people sitting around, obviously, you know, being forced to be disciples at the master's feet, because I am really intense.

They're sitting there listening. And I said, oh, do I do that very often? She says, not all the time, but every once in a while. So I try now to be aware of that aggressiveness. Now, I can honestly say there's times I think, I was too aggressive there. Or there's times I think, I'm being too aggressive right now.

And when I think I'm being too aggressive right now, I usually will try to change something I say and watch the other person's reaction. Because a lot of times all you have to do is change something I say, and you see the stress go out, and it's like, oh, okay, he's not mad at me. They think I'm angry with him, and I'm not. That's what I mean by self-awareness. We become self-aware of our interaction around this. And that's not easy. That's especially hard for us guys. It's just not something we tend to be naturally. It's not part of our genetic makeup, okay?

We're just not always aware of our effect on other people. And we're usually surprised when we find out what it is, negative or positive, because we're not really paying much attention. So, self-awareness means we become aware of how we interact with other people.

And you know where you go to understand that? 1 Corinthians 13. Love is not rude. Love is...you know, think of all the things that says it is and it is not. So there's times when we have to...that clips into our minds. I mean, there are times in my life where it just pops into my mind. If you do not love your wife with understanding, your prayers will be hindered. I know exactly what that is. That's God telling me, boy, if you keep treating her this way, don't even come pray to me until you fix it. And I know what it is. It's God telling me. Because that scripture pops in there and it's like... Yeah. Okay, Dad. We're not going to have a good conversation until I go, right? I realize I'm not getting an answer. So you want me to go fix them with her? No answer. Uh...okay. We're not talking until I go do that. He expects it. Every once in a while I hear it. I probably don't hear it as much as I should. Where's the thought come from? Because I didn't make that up! Because that's not how I think! You see what I mean? That's not how I think. So where does that come from? This is how we change. To be spiritually minded means we have to think spiritual things. Spiritual thought. Renewing of your mind. Remember Romans? We read that. Until you do, you'll just be frustrated all the time. You'll be trying to solve every problem in your life with physical applications. Instead of spiritual applications. And in that frustration, life becomes pretty miserable. So we become event-driven. This happens, I respond. This happens, I respond. This happens, I respond. This happens, I respond. We're just event-driven. We have to learn not to be. Only God's Spirit can make these changes we're talking about. It's like we're all standing on the threshold of the Promised Land. We have to decide. God's wanting us to understand. Do we have a grasshopper mindset? Or do we have this spiritual mindset where we see God? And God works in our lives and we submit to it. So anyways, that's the two parts of the Continuing Education class I give. Any final questions or comments? We went through a lot of information to get down to a couple little things that you've heard a hundred times. But this is why you have to do it. This is why you have to do Bible study. This is why you have to do prayer. This is why you have to meditate on it. Because this complicated process is fixed through those things. That's what God uses to fix and renew our mind. So any questions or comments?