Godly Mind Control - Part 2

Last week's sermon, Godly Mind Control Part 1, as we delved into the mind that God has given each and every one of us, every human being. And we looked at the different ways in which we can look at life with that mind, with that brain that He has given us. We have the choice to either look at things, as I have given a sermon here about the glass being half full or the glass half empty. We have the option of even looking at every detail of our life in either a positive mindset or a negative mindset.

We have that choice. We have the opportunity to make that choice. And I am so blessed that God has given us that opportunity. But He has called a people to be positive in a negative world. That's not always easy. Matter of fact, it's very difficult. But Christ didn't say that gate is really wide and that path is just smooth as can be. No. But how do we handle when we have trials, tribulations, problems? Do we look at life?

Do we look at God and say, we know you're there? Last week we finished with the verse in Romans 12 and verse 2. Because we make this choice and Paul is telling the Roman church at the time, Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds. By the renewing of your minds. Our minds control what we do, how we act, how we don't act sometimes. Do we understand as we're coming down to the days of examination and putting sin out of our lives that a lot of us have done that multiple times before?

Some for decades. Courtney, it will be his first time. But for many of us, it will be many times we will be examining ourselves, looking to put sin out of our lives, focusing on that for seven days. And sometimes it can be old hat. Sometimes we can look at it and think this is kind of redundant. But it's not. Because it's part of the perfection process. And sometimes it's like starting a new job.

Your first day and first week at the job, it seems like a lot more work than you thought it would be. But then as you slowly become more and more acquainted with your job, it becomes less so frustrating, less angst. But when it comes to perfecting the saints of God, God has given us instruction for seven days in the spring.

And many of us will clean out the leaven from our homes and our cars, and yet spend less time de-leavening sin out of our minds and out of this body that we have. Which do you think is more important? Yes. Yes. But be transformed by the renewing of your minds. You know, for my mind, when it has to be renewed, and it does, usually daily, it has to be renewed.

I have to go back to the Word of God, my own Bible study, my own meditation and thinking on things. But you know what happens doesn't happen here, it happens here. And I think most of you are like that. Louis said, yep, he deals with that. So that's why to me these messages are so important, because we're talking about a godly mindset. We talked about being the royal priesthood, a chosen generation, a Melchizedek priesthood. As we followed Christ, as he was the first of the first fruits, he was also the first priest of the Melchizedek priesthood.

We have that high calling. It's pretty high. That's why we just can't go through the motions, as sometimes we have had a tendency to do or get so caught up with things in our lives that with this spring holy days, just, oh, they're upon us. Wow, I need to prepare. Tomorrow is Passover.

But it gives us a chance to examine ourselves, as Paul says. What I want to go into today is the mindset, because for us to be perfected, for us to be like Christ, for us to have a godly mind, it all starts with having a positive mindset. Positive. Satan's world is negative. Satan is negative. There's nothing you can find about God or Jesus Christ that is negative. The whole plan, plan of salvation, plan for you, plan for me, plan for this world. They're planned for a million years from now.

It's all great and it's all positive. God and His ways are positive. But if we turn to Romans 8 and read verse 7, Romans 8 and verse 7, it says that the carnal mind is enmity towards God or against God. Another translation says the carnal mind is hostile towards God. It doesn't like God, it doesn't want God, but I like to read it, the carnal mind is negative towards God.

It has to be. If you're hostile, you're negative. So the carnal mind, human nature, everything about this world is negative towards God. So I feel I don't want any church. I don't need any church. I don't need God. I need anything. And a lot of them don't realize why they're that way.

They don't know, they just don't like it. They don't like a Bible. They don't like, even if you're dressed up on a Saturday, it's like, hmm, what's wrong with those people?

This world is Satan, and it is overwhelmingly negative, right? You watch the news, and they might have one good story, one positive uplifting story. As they end their show, they say, and now for the positive story, they might give that to you.

You watch the news, you read internet news, you see movies, books, magazines. We are polluted with negativity. But brethren, we must realize, even us, that many of us were raised with negative programming. We were raised. We grew up around everything that was negative. You heard negative messages over and over and over, day after day, week after week, year after year, all while your brain is developing. You're filling your brain cells with everything around you, and it takes effort to break that negative pattern.

That's why it's called actually coming out of the world, because it's easier to go along.

And it does take something that there is an answer to these questions that most people have.

So we must think on God's plane, because He's positive, and He even gives us His Holy Spirit, part of Him, to help us to become positive, because without it, there's a hard-cold fact. If you have a negative mindset, if it controls you, it may ask you the question, do you think He wants you in His kingdom?

Do you really think? Do you really love being around people who are so negative? Every time you bring something good up, they bring something bad up.

Do you think God wants that? After He's planned this beautiful kingdom of God that's going to be here on earth for a thousand years, and then go into the universe?

God is light, not darkness. He's positive, not negative. I'd like you to go with me to 1 John. 1 John 1. 1 John 1 and verse 5. This is the message we have heard from Him and declare to you that God is negative.

That God is darkness. No. John wants to make sure that we understand that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. It means no negativity. There's nothing dark.

Where there is no vision, my people perish.

That's what He inspired to write. He wants people to see the good that is planned for us right now and for the future and for the entire world. That's why we understand the plan of God. God is light. Satan is dark. And they had the Star Wars movie. You remember they would talk about the dark side. Come look to the dark side. And it was the evil.

A lot to that parallels there.

Research has found that negative thoughts compound faster than positive. But, the good but here is, but positive programming changes your brain to produce creative chemicals that are released then to your brain. You need to solve a problem. You need to have these things. They found the positive mindset when someone's not well and negative. Their brain, these start connecting these cells, connect to other cells, and you can more easily find the solution. It's actual chemicals in your brain. Creative chemicals when you dwell on the positive. Amazing.

So we talked about last week, like having that great day where everything's going together. Everything goes right. Everything seems to... And even if it doesn't, it just bounces right off you.

Hmm. Why? Why is that? Brethren, it's the brain. It's the brain.

It's going towards God's design.

That you have life and live it more abundantly. That's part of it. So why? Christ said He came. But when we are positive, we are matching up with what God intended us to be.

Adam and Eve before the fall of man. Everything was good. There wasn't anything... There was no negativity until the fall of man. Until those negative words were first laid out.

I believe it to be the first negative words ever spoken.

You will not surely die.

God said you would. No, you won't. Hmm.

Ruminate on the positive. Ruminate on positive.

How many of us do that? Well, in case you want to know, I found this interesting. The ruminate is from a Latin word.

And that Latin word actually means chew the cud. Chew the cud.

You ever seen a cow when I went to the prison this week? Jesus, who's never been around cows very much. We came along, there's a field out there, and there were some cows. And He goes, look at that!

And then He looks over and He goes, his mind's like going. And He says, because right across the street is a Chick-fil-A, He said, do they own that? Because He's thanking the TV, commercials, you know? And I said, no, chances are they don't. That's a big field. But He said, what do those cows do all day?

If you, I don't know how many, there may be people here who've never been around cows. Or anybody who never watched a cow chew? You never have. Okay. But the cow, oh yeah, they just take that grass and they'll just chew on you.

They can stand still, they can move, they can run, no matter what.

So that's where this word ruminate comes from, a cow chewing all day long.

With us, when we would happen to meditate, ruminate on being positive, means what? Dwelling on the positive all day long, just like that cow.

You know, many people are negative about the positive. And they don't know why!

Because they don't know Romans 8-7. They are just negative about anything positive. Makes me wonder about the news stories today. I hate to even read the news.

You know, our God designed these incredible minds. And He has instructed through the Word what we should be putting in. As I talked about last week from Proverbs, as a man thinketh or a woman, so are they. So is He. That's what you become as you think.

But it doesn't take much negativity to destroy your day. It doesn't take many negative thoughts. You can be having a great day! And all of a sudden, boom! And then all of a sudden, it just seems like your whole world has changed.

A writer gave that example of milk. He liked drinking milk. And I have this very cold milk. Trader Joe's, 2%, kept it in the cooler over there with the chai. Cooler over there with the cheesecake today. Thought I'd tell you. Cheesecake. See? Now it's positive.

It's positive.

But He loved this milk.

And He wanted to see it. So He drank milk a lot. But He wanted to see that even in a full container, this milk has been sitting out. It's sour. Should be. I'm not going to open it, in case it is, because it smells so bad. But it's got sour milk on it. I wrote it on there. But if He just put a little into His good milk, in a little glass that He's talking about, just a little, and just a little bit, it changed the whole taste. Just the smallest amount, which He then related to negative thoughts, is He was just amazed because that's the parallel He gave, was a negative thought could enter His mind that He didn't know whether it was true or not, but it changed how He was thinking. Just the thought that it might be.

Correct. Or there might be a problem changed His whole day.

And I just thought that was so interesting because milk, it doesn't take much to ruin it.

And you feel empty half of this and empty half of this into it?

You no longer have any good milk, do you?

What about our minds, compared to the positive and negative? And as I said last week, this is not a Tony Robbins meets God seminar, because it's not about that.

It's about our minds going on the God plane, thinking like Christ, because that's where the Scripture was. Let this mind be in you, which was also in you, Christ Jesus. You can't do that. I can't do that if my mind is negative. I have to fight to keep that out. I have to fight to become more like Christ. It's not that easy, is it? At least it isn't for me.

You know, Christ said problems and trials will come. That's why He said, I'm sending you the Helper. The Holy Spirit to help you. Help you through these times. Help you to stay positive. To know there's a positive answer at the end of this question, or equation, or issue. And I'm still here. And I'm still overseeing everything. I still reign supreme.

You know, studies also show many in-depth studies show that our minds solve problems and issues so much faster when we are in a positive state.

And many of us can see that. If we're all upset about something and we're just stressed out, and then we're trying to solve an issue or a problem, what our minds cannot focus as they should. But this is research done by universities that find these things out and why it's so important. And not only is positive attitude important, and godly, if I can put that in there, because Christ was positive. God is positive. Satan is negative. But words are powerful. They have found this out through the studies that what we say or even think like, I can't, well, guess what? You can't. You won't do it. But they can actually run brainwaves. They can actually test your and see how you interact with all these things that come up. And they can actually trace things when you say, I can't do it.

It won't work.

It's always a mess.

We are self-sabotaging our brain by saying we can't. Instead of if we said, well, yeah, I can solve that problem.

How many of us wants to go in a hospital and have these problems and a doctor goes, I don't know, don't know, probably never gonna find out what's wrong with you. How about a nurse? Could I get something for that? I don't know. Don't know if we have anything out there or not.

Would it change?

Would you be saying, boy, I hope she's not my nurse. I hope he's not my doctor. Well, how about us? When people run into us, how do we represent God?

Bad's coming.

Bad's coming.

You wicked people, do you walk down publics? And when you go to the meat aisle and you see the bacon, you start.

Evil!

No, what do we do? I mean, do we personify positive?

Do we personify Jesus Christ? Because that's the mind, it says. Let, not maybe, let this mind be in you. So we have the option.

It's up to us. Let this mind be in you. Which was also in Christ Jesus. What do we choose to do?

I've known people that actually told me, I've never been able to handle money.

Well, guess what? I know why. I know why. Because you say you can't handle money. Never been able to handle money. It's because you don't want to. It's just an excuse.

All right. Known people have said, I'm not that smart.

I had a guy one time, I was working out on a job. He may have been 40 years old. And he was doing something. It was a relatively simple job.

And he kept messing up. It was pretty simple. Till about the third time, I walked over because he'd messed up two other pieces. And I said, here, step back. In two minutes, I fixed it. It was done.

And y'all never forget that day. I will never forget that day. I don't remember anything else about that day. But that I remember because I looked at him, and he put his head down as I was fixing it. And he said, I've never been good at anything.

I seem to screw up everything.

Wow. That's what he'd been told.

Maybe that's why he was... Spent some time in prison. Maybe why he was an alcoholic. There'd be a lot of these things that I wanted to give him a chance on. But I'll never forget that because that really woke me up to where his mind was. He's 40 years old, and he's good at nothing. Good at nothing.

That's sad.

We need to make sure that we remember phrases like, if you can't, you must. Because if you must, you can't. If you can't do something, you must do it. Just say, yes, I'm going to do it. And then if you must do it, if it's a must do, guess what? You can do it. God says it. With God, all things are possible. Right?

How many times? Go back and read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And when Christ was like, look, you decided they can't do anything about my son.

I said, oh, how long?

They could have done it.

Like Ziegler used to say. It's attitude, not aptitude that determines altitude.

Where is our attitude?

Not giving us an incredible mind.

You know, God designed our minds for the positive. Look at that outlet over there. Electrical outlet. You have a negative and a positive. Where's the power come from? Touch it. You'll find it comes from the positive side. Right? Just a parallel.

I want you to think about it. Our thoughts can create all these emotions, but that's not reality. Do we realize that? Our thoughts can create all these emotions, but that's not reality. You may not even be in a bad situation, but if you think you are, you'll respond as if you were.

All of us have experienced that. Worried about something. Maybe even drove away from the house now that Auntie retired this week. Now she's not going to leave the house and go, did I leave the stove on? And then be worried because she can't get a hold of Santos and say, I got to drive home at noon to see if I left the stove on. Right? We've all had things like that.

But we will worry, our minds will worry, and control all the emotions in us.

And most of it is not reality. As I quoted last week, one survey said that actually 75% of everything in our minds are negative. That's how much we've fed our brains with this negativity.

The power of our thoughts. Turn with me to Matthew 6. Matthew 6.

Verse 34, Christ's own words. Therefore, do not worry. Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things, sufficient for the day of its own trouble. He actually said earlier, don't worry. Don't worry. Don't worry. Our Lord and Savior said, don't worry, and yet we worry. Why?

It's our minds. It's our brain. We're telling ourselves, oh, well, what if this happened? And this, and I've known, I knew one woman that could not drive a car. I think she'll work for her one time. And she could not drive a car on the road. Because she had such panic attacks. Because she just knew someone was going to cross that yellow line and hit her head on.

She just knew it. I mean, you could not convince her that it would be safe. You could actually, uh-uh, no.

I said, well, you could actually drive on the side of the road, gravel. Uh-uh. She just had in her mind. Was that a reality? No, that hardly ever happens. One in a million chance that ever happened. But yet, she had in her mind.

And so she's so limited that she couldn't drive. How many people?

Actually, a guy in the church.

That his mind, he would have to actually be baptized at his house. And he can't go to church because he's scared of people.

I haven't met him yet, but he's here in the state of Florida. But I was told about him, and we actually talked about how we were going to do that. He just can't. So I hoped when Brady Veller baptized him that he would actually, hopefully with the Holy Spirit, can overcome those things. I don't know. I'll have to ask Brady. But he had been this way for 25 years, stuck in the house and couldn't go. Couldn't go anywhere where people were at. How sad is that? Now, there are actual mental problems that have happened. There are things to do. But for the majority of us, it's this. It's controlling our minds and letting God control our minds.

You know, when you think a thought, whether you want to or not, it ends up as a specific instruction to your brain.

If you take a pleasant thought, your brain will pick it up and run with it to similar thoughts stored up in a part of your brain. If you pick up a negative, have a negative, depressing thought, it does the very same. It goes to another part of your brain, as I actually, some refer to as vaults. Vaults where things are stored.

The more negative thoughts that are in there, the bigger the vault. The easier it is for that negative thought to go find that vault of negativity, then it is positive. You know, if we keep going back to sinful thoughts, we get more sinful thoughts. That's how we sometimes need to overcome. Overcome these things. Because positive people usually marry positive people, and then create more positive people. Well, so do negative people marry negative people? You're going to get a lot more negative people. And if I'm positive, why would I want to marry somebody negative?

Or why would anybody want to marry me? Why would you want to be around? These are some of the things that we have to do. These are some of the things that we have to look at and face.

You know, they had a TV show. It's been 15, 12, 15 years ago. Saturday Night Live. Had a little section of show back then. And this Rachel Dretch, she didn't really have many parts on the show, but she had this one part that everybody remembered.

And the show and its title was Debbie Downer. Anybody remember Debbie Downer? Okay, if you saw her, and they would actually have this, because no matter where Debbie Downer, and they would do these little skits, no matter what people having a good time, they're at the office and they're just like celebrating this. And Debbie Downer walked up and she goes, yeah, but she tells us horrendous story or something that, wow, we just, all of us just got a raise. Yeah, but I heard they're going to lay some of us off.

Yeah, everything. So the whole show went that way every time, and everybody would just be like, no matter what, she had something to say. Till finally the show, they actually had her find a guy after seven or eight times. And so the guy came on there, and his name was Bob Bummer.

And he was just like her. And so you'd sit there and they try to outdo each other on who's negative.

And you know, this actress that did that, I actually read the story that they said, who came up that character? And she said, I did. She said, when I, my first time abroad, she went to Europe. And she went over there, and when she got off, she met someone there. And they said, oh, where are you from? And she goes, oh, I'm from New York City. Oh, were you there when the towers went down? And that was the start of where that came from, because she realized then that people were thinking about the negative and the down part of it.

Yeah, it's like, yes!

It's a beautiful Sabbath, but yeah, it's going to rain this afternoon. You know, it always rains somewhere in South Florida, you know? Kingdom of God! What a beautiful place! Yeah, but you know, millions of people got to die before it gets here.

Where are we? Where is our mindset?

Are we going to be able to do something?

You know, words matter. You know, our thoughts matter, but also words matter. Yeah, it's amazing. They actually did a study that said our prayer life can even change or be more focused, more direct when we talk to God out loud. Yeah, now I'm walking down the beach and I'm talking to God, so there's people, but you know, this is South Florida, so that's not so weird. So they're not like, wow, who's that? You know? But they've actually found during your prayer, because of your thoughts, that the process in your brain actually changes when you talk out loud to when you are not talking out loud, and because it changes, it's no longer a thought but a statement. Isn't that amazing?

You need some help in your prayer life?

Go with me. Oh, you don't have to go there. I'll read this. Galatians 5. Galatians 5 and verse 16. Galatians 5 and verse 16. I'll read from the New Living Translation, so if you just want to sit and listen, that's fine, too. Galatians 5 and verse 16. So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves. The carnal mind, human nature. The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. That's why God gave us the Holy Spirit. So it would give us something to help fight against that human nature. And the Spirit gives us desires that are opposite of what sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions.

Negativity is trying to stop you. You cannot allow that. You can stop that with your mind and with the Holy Spirit be guided.

The power of positive thinking. The power of a godly mind control. Last week we talked about the 30-day mental diet. Did you try it? Have you tried it yet? Mine was good up until about Tuesday. Man! And then Wednesday it got worse. So now I'm back. Mary got back and that helped a lot.

So what are we going to do? We must change the way we think daily. Bring every thought, not just most, into captivity to the obedience of Christ. Bring it!

And it's not WWJD, what would Jesus do, but what would Jesus think? That's what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to have that mind, the mind of Christ. Brethren, practice makes perfect. Ask any athlete, teacher, doctor, nurse. The days of unleavened bread give us a time to practice and a reminder of putting sin out by that unleavened bread and putting Christ in. Start that 30-day mental diet. Try to get rid of the negativity so that you can have the mind of Christ because unless you do have a positive mind, you cannot have the mind of Christ because darkness, God wants no part of it.

He wants light. He wants a positive mindset.

You know you're going to find out something when you take this 30-day mental diet? You're going to find out that there's a lot more negativity around you than you think and that there are people you can't hang around. There are people you don't need to be around and some of them may be in the church because they're going to sap you and they're going to give you negative thoughts. They're going to pull you to the dark side. You can't do that!

To make the changes God wants us to make, to become like Christ, we must, we must have that positive mindset. There's a word, positivity. Positivity. Do you know what it means? It means to be positive all the time! And it's a big buzzword now because companies and engineering firms are now using this because they have to realize they've realized that, okay, we need positivity! We don't need somebody coming in saying, that won't work.

That's a loser.

As I wrap up today, animals were created with instinct. They have brains. They don't really have what is called a mind. They have instinct. You can train Pavlov's dog. Ring a bell and they'll learn that they can eat. They'll come to the bell. But we weren't created like the animals! We were created after the God kind with an incredible mind. That I said last week, his thoughts are so much higher than our thoughts. We're not even in his realm. But he wants us to be. He wants to elevate us to that. But he can't do that if we limit ourselves. If we limit ourselves by being negative. If we limit ourselves by staying in the dark side.

We need to be positive. Because then, we will have in our minds, in our brains, creative chemicals released. That will allow us to solve the problems we have not been able to solve. And with the Holy Spirit, be able to put out sin that we have yet to conquer in our lives. Attitudes that we've been able to get rid of.

I want to go to Isaiah 26. I'll read from the New Living Translation. Isaiah 26. Verse 3. Isaiah's talking, and he's talking about God here, and he says, You will keep in perfect peace. Isaiah 26, verse 3. You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you. All whose thoughts are fixed on you. Not on the negative things of this world. Not on the things of this earth, but the things from above. What did he say? Set your mind on those things. Why? So you can be like him. So you can be like his son.

That's incredible.

When he says, let this mind be in you, the word instructs us that we can have that mind.

So we can do what? Imitate Jesus Christ.

Could you imitate someone without knowing what was in their mind? How can we act like Christ if we don't know how he thought? And then if we know how he thought, we know how he acted. Because your thoughts lead to your actions.

But sometimes we just have actors. They want to act like Christ and not actually want to be like him.

There's actually, in acting, there's something called method acting. Method acting. Method acting isn't just picking up a script that they give you, and you read it, and then you regurgitate it out in front of the camera. Method acting was actually started almost 60 years ago. Method acting is where they give you the sheet of paper, they tell you about it, and then you become that character. You study about it and you become. As a matter of fact, I read about one, Robert Altman, who's a director, that the people came in and they were used to having their lines, having their lines, hitting the point, doing this, this. He came in and said, no, I'm going to tell you about the character, and then here's roughly a script, you come in and be him tomorrow. And the guy wanted to quit. So he wasn't used to that until he did it. And then he actually became that character, and he knew what that character was all about. We need to know what this character called Jesus Christ is all about. That's why we need to read. And then, if it takes method acting for a while until he becomes part of you, we can imitate Christ because we know why he is what he is.

He gave his life for us. Shouldn't we start living for him?

Very, very important.

So we can have, brethren, the mind of Christ, putting us through God's Holy Spirit. Our part is to make sure we stay positive. We see the good, not the bad. We see the beautiful, not the ugly.

We see God in every step we make this week. And we see him in every step walking right beside us.

And he can only do that if we have the mind of Christ.