Understand Your Mindset and Vision for Life

I have a sermon I want to give today. I actually gave, when I first came here, two and a half years ago, at the Prom, at the regional prom. And there's a second half to it. When I gave it the regional prom, it's the first half of two presentations I give at the Feast of Tabernacles.

They have these continuing education seminars at the Feast, and I do one, and I do these two parts. So I did the first part as a sermon for the young adults, or for the teenagers. It was designed a little bit for teenagers, but it actually is for everybody.

And so what I thought I would do today is I wanted to give the second half, so I'm going to have to give the first half. So what we'll do is I'll give the sermon. So some of you have heard this sermon, a few of you, and then for the Bible study, we'll actually do the second half of what I want to cover here, which is, like I said, part of a continuing education seminar that we do at the Feast of Tabernacles.

I want all of you to do something for a minute. I want you to imagine what you're planning to do tomorrow. Just take a moment and imagine. What are you planning to do tomorrow? Now, if you have some plans, and I'm not going to do anything, I'm just laying around, okay, that's fine too, that's a plan. But what's amazing is, as you thought of that, if you actually thought about what you want to do tomorrow, you had an emotional reaction to it. Some of you felt a little bit of anxiety. Some of you felt a little stress. Some of you were really excited. Some of you may say, oh, I've got to go work tomorrow.

I wish I wouldn't have been thinking about that. Why did he make me think about that? You had an emotional reaction just to the thought of tomorrow. That's called mental—making a mental picture or mental vision. We're going to talk about two things here. Spiritual vision—we're going to talk about what that means. What's our vision for our lives? And then we're going to talk about our mindsets and talk about what that means. Think about how your thoughts create emotional reactions, especially when you think about the future.

If you have a job you hate, and you get up in the morning, and that alarm goes off, and you just want to hit the snooze, you don't want to get out of bed, you hate it. All of us have had something we've had to do. You're going to the dentist. Nobody jumps out of bed and says, yay, I'm going to the dentist today.

It just doesn't work that way. If you have a job you hate or you have something you don't want to do, you know what it's like. You drag around, you don't want to get up, you don't have any energy. Now, the next day you have a day off, and you're going to go with your friends and do something you really want to do, something you've planned. And you're up an hour before the alarm goes off. Now, what's changed? Your vision of what's going to happen the next day is what's changed. That's why sometimes you have a hard time going to sleep at night because you're thinking about the next day.

There's other times you have a hard time sleeping because you're excited about the next day. So we all have visions of the future. Usually they're sort of these short-term visions, and they all create an emotional reaction. What is your emotional reaction to your vision for the rest of your life? What is the rest of your life supposed to look like? Now, as I said, I gave this to teenagers two and a half years ago, but when I give it at the feast, I have people there from the ages of 15 to 75.

And it's the same question, because I don't care how old you are. What are you going to do with the rest of your life? What is your vision of the rest of your life, whether it's one year from now or five years or ten years or 25 years or 50 years? What's that supposed to look like? What does God want for you is the vision of your life? One of the great problems we have as human beings is many times the vision of what we want in our lives actually doesn't fit reality.

We'll talk about that in a minute, too. That's why we get so devastated, because things happen to us to keep us from having it in our lives, achieving it in our lives, the vision that we have, what we think it should be. What is God's vision for your life? Because He has one. We can talk about it in a general sense, but you know that each one of you, every one of you, God has a specific vision for your life.

That's what He sees it will be if you follow Him. Now, He doesn't make you follow His vision. It does make you follow His vision. But He actually has a vision. He says, this is what I want your future to look like. And God has the ability to make your future look like what He wants it to be. You and I find out that we can't always fulfill what we think we want to do in life, but He can make our lives exactly the vision that He has.

I know of a young man who understood that vision. He understood what God wanted for him, and He saw that it was good. You know, the thing is, do we trust God enough to say, your vision for my life is so good that even if I don't understand it, even if I don't really get what's going on, I'm going to follow it because I believe it's better than anything I can come up with. God's vision for your life is better than anything you could make up. This young man believed that. And so he was an excited young man.

He was happy. He had lots of things going for him. He had what seemed like the perfect family to everybody else. They had money. They had some wealth. It was good. And then some family members turned against him, some of his siblings.

He ended up being forced to leave his home as a young man. Then he ended up being arrested and put in jail for a crime he did not commit. How would you respond to God's vision? Wait a minute. I know what you want in my life. And I've had some family members turn against me. I had to leave home. I didn't want to leave home.

And I had to leave home. And now I'm sitting in jail and I didn't even do a crime. I didn't do anything wrong. We're going to go back to that young man in a minute and see how he worked that out. Let's go to God's vision for your life. Mark chapter 10. You find out very early in life that nothing in this life is perfect. Even people with lives that seem to be all so great have problems and issues and pains and sufferings and bad things that happen to them.

Let's look at what Jesus says here as God's vision for your life, what he wants in your life. Mark 10 verse 29. And we have to really look at this to see what he's saying. There's a positive side to it and there's a negative side to it. And Jesus answered and said, Assuredly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands for my sake and the Gospels, who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecutions and in the age to come eternal life.

Boy, that's really exciting. God says, I'm going to give you – we zero in on that – a hundred times more and I'm going to give you eternal life. That's the vision He asks for your life. But I want you to notice something that's easy to miss here.

He starts with, when you give up these things for me, I will give you this. In other words, to receive God's vision in your life, you and I have to give up something.

We have to give up creating our own vision for our lives. Now, there's decisions we have to make in our lives. That's a question that always comes up. How do I decide what career I'm supposed to do? And my answer always is, what are your talents and what are your passions?

See, God gives us talents and passions and then it says, child, see what you can do.

God literally wants to see us do with what He gave to us. But then there's other aspects of our lives that He determines the vision if we follow it. But to follow God's vision costs us something. And He says, and you'll have these things and persecutions, so you're going to lose friends, have bad things happen to you. Wow! What a vision for your life. Well, let me tell you a secret.

Without God in your life, bad things are going to happen to you.

Without God in your life, you're going to lose friends. Things aren't going to work out. You're going to get fired from a job someday. Without God in your life, you're going to get sick sometime, and somebody you know and really love is going to die suddenly and devastate you. That's going to happen to you whether God's in your life or not. So the question here is, the question is, do you want God in your life with His vision as you go through these things or not? Do you want His help in your life or not? Because some bad things are going to happen. And what Jesus said is, but I tell you what, all along the way good things are going to happen.

All along the way good things are going to happen because I'm going to give it to you. I'm going to give you these things. And we have to believe that. And the ultimate goal is, I'm going to give you eternal life. Now, you know, at my age, eternal life is more and more a reality.

At the minute when I was 35 that was as much of a reality.

This is my birthday. I'm 62 today. I'm an old man. People retire at 62. I'm like, why would anybody retire? You know, lead a boring life. I get too much. I don't plan to retire until I'm 80, you know, if I'm still alive. But that's okay. I'd rather die with your boots on. I, you can't stop living life. You've got to keep moving.

I enjoy life as much now as I did when I was 35 or 25. In some ways more because there's certain things that just don't worry about as much as I used to. They're not worth it. But it takes you a while to figure that out. It takes you a while to figure out certain things you start worth worrying about. Certain things aren't worth getting upset over. But you figured that out over time. And you start to see as time goes on where God is giving you things through this life. He's preparing you for something better, but He doesn't abandon us in this. But there's hard times. So He tells us with the vision, here's what I'll do, even though there's hard times. And even though sometimes you will give up things for that vision, you'll give up some kind of immediate gratification or immediate reward in order to have God fulfill what He wants to. Because you have to believe what He wants is bigger than anything you can come up with. You must believe it's better than what you and I can come up with.

And He won't force you into that image. Now, when you start to accept God's vision for your life, and you want to follow His plan, and you can do that, but then sooner or later the bad things happen. And much of the time it's not out of... it's completely out of your control. Completely out of your control. I remember one time with my oldest daughter sitting down, and she was just crying. And this was not usual. She's not a crier. And she was just crying. And I said down, I put my arm around her. She was in college, and what it was, she was working a full-time job. I think she might have two jobs. She was going to school, you know, working her way through school, doing a full load. And she had worked this way for at least two semesters, I think. And she got sick. She wore herself out. And she said to me, as most overachievers do, this isn't the way it was supposed to happen.

I was supposed to get sick. You know, this isn't part of my vision. I said, yeah, but I don't know anybody that can keep up what you're doing. You'd kill them. So you may have to readjust your vision a little bit of what you want to achieve here. And she did. She had to readjust it a bit. Got well, finished college, had a career, married, has kids, and more kids, and more kids.

What happens when someone does die? What happens when the career doesn't work out? What happens when the college you have to get into won't accept you? What happens when you don't have enough money to do what you want to do? What happens when you're waiting for another Christian to come along to be married to? And it just doesn't seem to be one there. And you say, no, God wants me to marry somebody in the same faith, and I'm waiting, and I'm waiting. What happens? Where's the vision? I don't understand. God said, you get a hundred times more, where is it?

And then we forget God's vision is a long-term vision. And we live in this immediate time, and it's hard.

And you know, that's something I forget to tell you. We want to tell you all the good things, the young people, all the good things in life. But we have to tell you sometimes it's hard, too. You're figuring that out. But you think, well, it's hard. There must be something wrong with me. No, welcome to the human race. There's times this is really hard. But that means how do we stay focused on God's vision? God has a vision for you. But how you stay focused on that vision will not be determined by what happens to you. It will be determined by how you deal with what happens to you. It won't be because everything in your life is going to be good. It's going to be because you deal with what happens to you. And how you deal with things that happen to you is called a mindset.

Now what do I mean? A mindset. I'm not pretending. I'm not being a junior psychologist here, okay? A mindset is a term that's used to usually describe two opposite views of something.

And you know, some of you, if you've in your jobs, they'll have you take a little test sometimes. Sometimes they'll figure out your mindsets, whether you're a positive or negative person. Now all of us are in between. And every once in a while, I mean, you meet a totally negative person, you can't stand to be around them. You know, you ever meet a totally positive person? They're hard to be around, too, okay? We're all in the middle between these two extremes, but there's a positive and a negative mindset. And the more negative a person is, the more unhappy they are, for one thing. But there's the mindsets of people that are responsible, what they call responsible mindset and victim mindset. Sometimes employers want to do tests to see if you have an entrepreneurial mindset or an employee mindset. You think, well, entrepreneurial mindset would make a good boss. Not necessarily. Because entrepreneurs want to do everything their way.

You know, and they have their own ideas. They want to run off with them. And they'll actually do tests to see which mindset are they in. Our vision and our mindset works together. The problem is, every human being, you, me, everybody, we have a very flawed vision of life.

And we have a very flawed mindset. Okay, let me give you an example. A man decides, he's decided that, you know, he looks ahead, he says, I want to get married.

And here's my vision. Here's what I see as the woman I marry. First of all, she's absolutely beautiful. And she's a certain height, a certain weight, everything's perfect. Absolutely perfect. And she loves basketball. She's totally submissive. She's going to adore me all the time.

She likes playing video games. And she's going to really be dedicated to taking care of me, my needs, my desires, everything about my life. And in all this, she's going to just let me have total control of the money. And that's his vision. Now, what's his mindset? His attitudes, his thoughts towards women. Well, his vision alone tells you something, doesn't it? But see, this mindset's going to be that she's got to meet all his expectations, regardless of what he does. So he doesn't understand, yes, I have a dead-end job. And yes, I spend all my spare time playing video games and playing basketball with my friends. But what's your problem? You're the problem.

I have my vision, and I have my mindset. Now, I want to ask you, because if any guy says, oh, that's me, don't raise your hand. But let me ask you this. Is there any woman girl here that wants to marry that guy? Raise your hand. Look around, guys. Not one.

Okay? The guy's got to have a miserable life and pity the woman who marries him.

Because his vision has got to change into reality, and his mindset has to change. You see how the two work together? He has to change both of those things, or he'll never love a woman. She'll just be there to somehow be his servant.

We all have flawed mindsets. We all have flawed visions. And we have to go to God to get this fixed. We have to go to God to get this fixed. This afternoon for the Bible study, we're going to get into very detailed how you change a mindset. How we change how we think scripturally. I'm going to go through the scriptures. I'm going to show you what the Bible says about it. The transforming of your mind, Paul says.

We have to go through a massive change of vision and mindset for God to do what he wants us to do in our lives. You know, I talked about the young man earlier.

His vision was based on what God wanted, and he understood what God wanted. He had a good family. It was a wealthy family. Everything was going for him.

Lots of prospects for the future. He knew it wasn't going to be long before he would be married. His siblings turned against him. He was forced to move away. He ended up in jail for a crime he didn't commit. Anybody know who I'm talking about? Joseph. Let's go to Genesis 37.

How clear was God's vision to him? You know, our vision is a little different. We go to this book, and this book tells us what God wants to do in our lives. Well, Joseph didn't have a book.

So God had to give it to him, and he gave it to him in a dream that even his parents knew it was from God. I'm glad none of my dreams have been from God, because most of my dreams are really weird. And bad things happen to me in my dreams. But he receives a dream that everybody knows comes from God. And look at verse 3 of chapter 37. He's 17 years old at this time.

Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age. He made him a tunic of many colors, but when his brother saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him, and they could not speak peaceably to him. Now Joseph had a dream, and he told it to his brothers, and they hated him even more. And he said to them, Please hear this dream which I have dreamed. There we were, binding sheaves in the field, and behold, my sheaf arose and stood upright, and indeed your sheaves stood all around and bowed down to my sheaf. And his brother said to him, Shall you indeed reign over us, or shall you indeed have dominion over us? So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words. Then he dreamed another dream, and told it to his brothers, and said, Look, I have dreamed another dream, and this time the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars bowed down to me. So he told it to his father and his brothers. And his father rebuked him, saying, What is this dream you have dreamed? Shall your mother and I and your brothers indeed come to bow down to you, to the earth before you? And his brothers envied him. And his father kept the matter in his mind. Maybe, maybe this is from God. He looked at him and said, Well, I'm the sun, and his mother's the moon, and there's eleven brothers. And they all bow down to him. And his brothers say, That snotty little, you know, the one, he's the baby of the family. He's the one that mom and dad give all the privileges to. He gets away with everything. I'm a firstborn, I understand. You would never let me get away with what you're letting up. Yeah, I remember saying that. How come the baby gets away with everything?

I used to get spanked for that. I know the firstborn's out there because you're shaking your head, yes. How come? But he's going to love the brothers that feel that way. And you know what happened. You know the story.

In this story, which is true, I mean, this is a reality that happened to him, he had to decide whether to hold on to God's vision for his life or to give it up.

And when you suddenly are sold into slavery, and you find yourself taken to a country that is so strange, and you talk about it's like it would be like in a sci-fi movie. They take you to another planet. The difference between Canaan at that time and Egypt is unbelievable.

You go from living in tents to palaces and pyramids. The shock is amazing.

And suddenly, all your chances of marriage and having children disappear. You're 17 years old, and you have no chance for a future. You have no money. You have nothing. And you are eventually convicted of a crime you didn't commit, and you go to jail. And this goes on for years. This doesn't go on for three weeks or four weeks or a year or two. This goes on for many, many years.

And what's amazing, and we'll get this towards the end, we'll find out what drove his mindset.

He never gave up on God's vision. He never gave up on God's vision for his life. He held on to that. Sitting in prison, he held on to that. Going across the Sinai with a bunch of Ishmael lights to be sold as a slave, he held on to that. All the things he went through, he held on to this vision that God said, this is what I'm going to do with your life, and for everything you give up for me, I'll pay you back. I'll give you more. And he believed it. When he lost his youth, he lost that what we would call the young adult stage of his life. He lost it entirely. He lost the entire young adult stage of his life. What would seem like to someone who doesn't understand what's going on. If you understand what's going on, he didn't lose it. It was part of the vision.

It was part of what God was doing because he had a future for him beyond anything he can imagine.

That future required him to go through these things. He could never do what he did in the future unless he went through what he went through as a young person. He couldn't. It was the preparation for the future. He held on to that in a very remarkable way.

So what do we mean by mindset when we talk about Christianity?

You know the Bible talks about two mindsets? Specifically about two mindsets. There are two opposites. I have a couple of slides I want to show you. This first one will explain the concept of mindsets. We start here at the upper left-hand corner. Your mindset is comprised of your emotions, your motivations, your thoughts, and your actions. Now that's a lot. This is a very complex subject. That's what's so hard about this.

I want to use this in biblical terms. There's even a certain science that explains some of this, but I just want to use this in biblical terms. So our mindset starts here. It's our emotions.

It's our motivations. Why do we do what we do? It's our thoughts. And those things produce actions. If you go to the right-up-hand corner, you'll see that part of our mindset is based on the source of knowledge and authority in our lives. Think about someone who spends their whole lives believing the Koran is the source and authority of knowledge. They have a viewpoint of life that very few of us here would even understand. Very difficult to understand.

They find it hard for us to understand us.

Think about someone who goes through a secular education and believes that the source of authority and knowledge is simply science. They're going to have a totally different viewpoint of life.

Your mindset is all these things put together. To keep the vision God has for your life, this mindset has to match the vision. They have to come together to match each other.

Let me go down to the bottom right-hand side. Our value system, decision-making, and our decision-making process. What is it we value in life?

Now, we talk about values. Everybody talks about values.

You know, it's amazing. If you're pro-abortion, it's because you have the values of freedom and rights of women. You value those things. So what they say is those who don't believe in abortion or accept abortion don't value freedom and they don't value women.

Now, people who are against abortion say we value life.

And the life of that unborn child. The other side says it's not a child.

It's not born yet. It's just a mass of cells. And they go back and forth and back and forth.

It's your values. What do you value here? And how do you determine what you value?

And then over here on the bottom left-hand side, it's our relationships.

All these things come together. That's what your mindset is.

Remember the man, the young man I talked about, with his vision of the perfect woman and how he was going to act? You know, his thoughts, emotions, and actions, and his source of knowledge, his value system was going to produce a really bad relationship. Well, no, hopefully, no relationship because nobody would marry him.

Now, this is just a simple concept of the mindsets in the concept of what we're going to talk about biblically. Now let's go to Romans 8.

Let's go to verse 6.

One simple verse. For to be carnally-minded is death, but to be spiritually-minded is life and peace. So for Paul, there are two mindsets. There are only two ones that really matter. One is what he calls carnal, and one which means just flesh. One is sort of the human natural mindset, and the other is the godly mindset.

Now, all of us, you know, I don't think anybody in here is purely in the carnal mindset, because if you are, you're probably a criminal. And I know that none of us are in the carnal or in the purely spiritual mindset yet. We're all in between these two points.

And our decisions and how we live life will determine which mindset controls us.

So you're in the process. Here's what we're doing as Christians. You're in the process of going from one mindset to another. And one thing you'll find when you study how people have to go through a change of mindset, say to be successful, you know, a positive person has to change into a negative person has to change to a positive person.

It's hard. Any change of mindset, your brain rejects. It doesn't want to do it. It's programmed. It doesn't want to, you know, it's lazy. Change of mindset is excruciating, difficult, and it's the older you get, the worse it is.

The older you get, the worse it is. So changing your mindset.

So someone's saying, well, I don't know. This Christianity seems so hard. Yeah.

Because at the core of who you are, it's going to be changed by God to fit his vision. And he keeps saying, don't you understand what I'm offering you is better than what you can come up with. And we keep saying, but it's too hard. And so we resist it. And here's the two mindsets.

And they're based on this. Remember what I said before. It's not the external events that happen to us that determines whether we hold on to God's vision or not. I've seen people that go through trials that I go to God and say, God, that would destroy me. And I see them holding on to God. And I've seen people who... life's almost so easy, they let go of God. The external things that happen to us, doesn't make the determination of what we do. It's the mindset that does. So we have to understand what a spiritual mindset is.

This is more than just keeping the Ten Commandments. We have to keep the Ten Commandments.

The mindset includes that, but it's more than that. This is about being converted into a different mindset. Because here's what happens, folks. Let's just face it.

If we come to church, we do the right things, we keep the holy days, we take out leavening, we do those things because we're command and deuce, they were supposed to.

But we don't live a lifestyle every day that is a Christian lifestyle.

So basically what we are is Sabbath Christians. Then you know what we are? We're Christian agnostics.

An agnostic person believes in God, but really doesn't know what He is.

You can be a Christian agnostic. You believe in God, you start to do the Christian stuff, but every day is not a reflection of that because your mindset is still in the carnal side and not in the spiritual side.

We'll lose that vision if we stay there.

If we live in that Christian agnostic lifestyle, we will eventually lose the vision that God is giving to us. So let's go back now to Romans 8 and look at the qualities of the spiritual mindset.

Qualities of the spiritual mindset. Romans 8. Let's go to verse 17. Let's show the next slide here to set this up.

Here's the carnal mindset.

The carnal mindset has a lot of negative emotions and negative motivations. It's putting other people down. It's looking at the bad in everybody else.

Everything is negative. Everything is fearful. A lot of hatred. A lot of selfish thoughts.

Actions are based on what I want right now. Immediate gratification of whatever it is. A source of knowledge and authority can be a lot of different places, but it's not God.

They may believe in God. The carnal mindset says it's not that they deny God exists, but God is not involved in the day-to-day decisions of life. God is something outside maybe you go to when you're in trouble, but you have a viewpoint of God that He's not in your life every day. The value system is real important. The carnal mindset is unable to discern good from evil, truth from error, and wisdom from foolishness. So the good and evil is very difficult to process for them to determine which is which. They also have a hard time determining truth and error, but they also make a lot of unwise decisions all the time.

Every one of us make unwise decisions. We're all halfway in between carnal and spiritual mindset, but the more we are on the carnal mindset, the more we can't discern what's good and evil.

We make decisions that are constantly against what God tells us to do. We also can't tell truth from error. We have a hard time determining what's truth. We have a hard time determining what's biblically correct, doctrinally. And we just make unwise decisions constantly, constantly, constantly. Because wisdom is learned through the Scriptures.

All these things, by the way, are learned through the Scriptures.

Also, relationships are usually based on what is it in for me. In other words, the approach to all relationships is what I receive out of the relationship. Now, all of us want something in relationships. You go into every relationship needing and wanting something out of the relationship. But the more carnal the mindset, the more every relationship is based on what I get, what I need. And what the other person needs is totally secondary. What the other person wants is totally secondary. What you want need is number one. And this is the carnal mindset.

Now let's look at Romans 8. Let's start at verse 7. Let me get to Romans 8 here.

We're taking a very complex concept, though, and bringing it down into something fairly simple. And in Romans 8, Paul tries to make this very simple. Okay, there's two mindsets. There's to be spiritually minded and to be carnally minded. And let's break these down to what it is.

Verse 7. He says, For to be carnally minded is death, and to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Now, verse 7. Because the carnal mind is enmity, in other words, the enemy against God, the more we have this mind...or let's go back to the other...for a minute, back to the...that's okay, the carnal. The more we have this carnal mindset, the more we find God to be inconvenient.

We find God to be an imposition on our lives. He isn't doing what we want him to do. Now, I want to ask you to raise your hand. I can raise mine. There's been times I've been upset with God because he's not doing what I want to do. Okay? God, I would like something different in my life. Right? Can I stay 35 for like 50 years? And it's my birthday. Didn't happen. So, we find ourselves in the carnally-minded state. He says, you're amity against God. In other words, you're fighting God. You're resisting God. God, that's not what I want in my life.

So, you're resisting God. He says, "...or to be carnally-minded is death, but to be spiritually-minded is life and peace." I'm sorry, next verse. "...For he is not subject to the law of God, or indeed can be, so that those who are in the flesh cannot please God." When we are in a carnal mindset, we can't please God. God isn't looking at you and saying, wow, I'm really pleased with you.

God's looking at you and saying, boy, you're a mess.

Because we hate His ways. We hate His laws. We hate...he's always so restrictive.

Why would God say not to...I don't think God...that's not what God wants. And we see God as somehow holding us back from happiness. God is holding us back from what we really need. Or if you have the vision of your life, only He knows what really will make you happy, and only He knows what you really need. This takes a real surrender to God. Verse 9, But you are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if indeed the spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, he is not his.

If Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness. But the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you. He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you. Verse 12, Therefore, brethren, we are debtors not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.

In other words, we are debtors not to live to this mindset. He's not saying your flesh is bad. People have taken, well, Christians should sleep on a bed of nails and drink nothing but water and bread and live as celibates in a monastery. That's not what He's saying here. He's not saying your body is evil. He's talking about mindset. Remember? He's talking about mind. He says, your carly mind and your spirits are the mind. He says, the stay in this carnal mindset is not good.

For if living according to the flesh, you will die. But by the Spirit you put the death, the deeds of the body that you will live. And as many are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. God says, my vision for you is you're my children. That's an eternal relationship. I want you to be my children forever. But I have to get you there. And this is the process you're going to go by to get there. But that's the end vision. That's why He says here in verse 15, For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption, by which we cry, Abba, Father, we are the children of God. Now we're the children of God. We can be the eternal children of God. This is the vision. This is the vision. But it's not easy. Look at verse 17. And if children then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, we may also be glorified together. Now he tacks on. Here's the vision. But it takes some suffering to get there. It takes some work to get there. Everything in life that's worth having takes work. A good job takes work. A good car takes work. A good relationship takes work. Everything takes work. And what God says, this is going to take some work, and it's going to take some suffering. But I will get you there. I will get you there. And there's going to be suffering involved. And He says, when it all ends up, I'll give you back anything you lost, now and then. Remember? A hundredfold now, plus eternal life. Now that doesn't mean if you lose a job, you know, because of the Sabbath making $30,000 a year, you know, what's a hundred times $30,000? Is that $3 million? What is that? It's a lot of money.

That doesn't mean that's what He... I'll tell you what, He'll give you a hundred times more happiness than if you would have kept that job. He'll give you a hundred times more meaning to life.

He says, I'll give you better than what you lost. That's what He wants us to know. You know, we have to believe that, though. Nobody can make you believe that, except you and God. You have to believe it and say, God, you actually care, and you want to give me this. You have a vision, a plan for me, me, your name, your actual name. Yeah, yeah, you, your name. I have this... you're my child. I have this vision for you. You have no idea how it's going to end up, any more than Joseph did. But I'm going to get you there. People will come into the church at age 55 and say, oh, if God would have just called me younger, I wouldn't have made so many mistakes. And I always say, no, that's how many mistakes you had to go through before you'd listen. God knows what He's doing. So younger people say, oh, if God would have called me now, I could have more fun. Older people say, oh, if God would have called me now, I wouldn't have had so much, you know, bad times. It's just human nature. The guy says, no, I know what I'm doing. I call you and I call you because it's best for you. And it's what I want to do. And our mindset has to be zeroed in on that. So now we've got to think about what is the spiritual mindset. Let's go to the spiritual mindset. The more spiritually mindset, more spiritual mindset we have, the more positive our emotions. No human being has nothing but positive emotions. The reason why is we're still human beings, right? You get tired, you get sick, bad things happen, and you have some negative emotions. You're going to have them. That doesn't mean you're carnal or don't have God's Spirit. And by the way, for those of you here that don't have God's Spirit in you, God's Spirit is with you or you wouldn't be here. You say, well, I don't have God's Spirit. So Romans 8 doesn't apply to me. No, you're here because God's Spirit is leading you or you wouldn't be here. So this is what He wants in your life, too. Positive emotions, thoughts based in biblical teachings. This is where we're failing so much in the time in our Christianity. We don't know the Scripture enough that the Scripture answers what we're going through. And that's what we're going to talk about in the Bible study. Scriptures are... we have to use Scriptures to think.

And we'll show what that means. Our mindset has to be based in the Scriptures.

If our mindsets are based on what we think, aren't you glad that, like, there's some neon sign here above your forehead and that everyone of your thoughts is going across so everybody can read it? You know, aren't you glad that doesn't happen?

But we have to go through and change this mess. It's always going to be a little messy, but God can change the mindset. Our actions are based on a desire to do good and to love. If your actions are based on a desire to do good, sometimes you will make decisions that will bring suffering into your life because you did the right thing and somebody else didn't. God didn't say, you only do good if everybody else does good. Well, God says, good is good. It's my good. It's the future good. It's the future I have for you. Do good. And you do the good, and everybody around you does bad, and you suffer. But if we have a spiritual mindset, we do what is good because, well, this is what God wants. Our source of knowledge is God. It's the Bible.

Our value system, a spiritually-minded person, the more spiritually-minded we are, we are able to discern good from evil. Now, we're also struggling with that. I struggle with that. You struggle with it, but we're learning it. And the more spiritually-minded we are, the less of a struggle this is. We can discern truth from error and wisdom from foolishness. We make more and more wise decisions. We still make some real stupid ones once in a while, but they're less and less. Our relationships are based on loving and serving others. It doesn't mean you don't have needs. Every friend that you have is because there's a bond between you and you need that friend. Parents need children. Children need parents. Husbands and wives need each other. Friends need each other. We all receive something from the relationship. We don't have relationships so that we can just give. You know, God doesn't have relationships just because He just gives. What does God want from you? Jesus said, the greatest commandment is what?

Love God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul. God says, I'm doing this relationship with you. I would like something back.

Now fortunately, He doesn't need what we give back or we'd be in real trouble.

If you ever love somebody and they don't give it back, boy, that's hard.

We don't love God a lot. He's still God. It doesn't change who He is, which is fortunate for us. But He wants something back. So to have a need or desire or need somebody else to help you or comfort you or be with... Okay, that's not wrong. But your mindset is, I'm here to help you.

And sometimes you're here to help me. If everybody's mindset is, I'm here to help, and sometimes I'm going to need you to help me, it changes everything. If your mindset is, I'm here to get, or you're here to help me, period, that relationship's going to be period, that relationship's going to fail. That there's no giving on the other side.

Spiritual relationships are based on loving and serving others.

And sometimes that means going against how you feel. And we'll talk about that this afternoon also. It's based on going against what you feel. Our biggest problem of life is our emotions.

It's our biggest problem.

It keeps us from obeying God. It keeps us from trusting God. It keeps us from having good relationships. It drives us into all kinds of negativity. And it makes us miserable.

If we just go with the flow with our emotions, we can't do that.

It's not a spiritual mindset that is a physical mindset.

But boy, changing your emotions is very complicated. But the Bible tells us about it. It actually tells us how to do it. But it's not easy because changing any mindset is stressful.

It's painful because basically we're lazy.

So let's now go back and conclude by looking back at Joseph's story. I mean, it's sort of the ultimate riches to rags to riches story, right?

Riches, the being a slave, being in jail, back to riches.

You know what happened? Joseph was there many years. He ends up becoming the second most powerful man in the greatest empire of the day because that was God's vision. There was no way for him 10, 15 years ago, to know that vision. There's no way for him to know that vision. In fact, everything seemed to be destroying that vision. But he had a certain mindset.

And he went through all those things. And every one of the things he went through taught him something. And every one of those terrible times taught him something. And he stayed a certain way he didn't become...what's amazing, all those things drove him to become more and more spiritual in his mindset and less and less carnal. It's the opposite of what you would think would happen.

And then there's a famine in the land. And they bring, you know, all of Joseph's brothers come into Egypt because it's the only place where there's food. And the reason there's food is because Joseph created or used their agricultural system to save enough food to save the known world.

The whole Fertile Crescent...not China because they didn't know it was there. But the whole Fertile Crescent is in a famine. And the world is being saved because God used Joseph to do it. Now when Joseph was 17 and running around, you know, helping take care of the sheep, asking Mom and Dad, when are you going to pick a wife for me? Because they arranged wives.

You know, I think also and so over here, she'd make a good wife, right? And he's run around doing that. And now he's lost his entire young adult life, seemingly. He didn't say it that way. And here he is saving the world from famine. None of us are going to save the world from famine.

It's just amazing. It's a true story here. This is what God did.

And so his brothers come before him, and let's go to Genesis 45. Genesis 45.

His brothers are before him. They had no idea who he is. They probably thought he died.

They told their father that he died, or he's some slave someplace.

They were helping build some Egyptian monuments. And here he is. They're bowing before him, just like God's vision said he would. And this gives Joseph the perfect opportunity to say, brothers, let me tell you who I am, and you're all going to jail for just as long as I did. Now, I'm going to put you at slavery first for a while. You are going to pay the price for committing your sins against me. They had sinned against him. What they did to him was sin.

And he could have been a bitter, angry man. Who could have?

I'm sure the Egyptians are saying, oh, is he going to do something bad to them?

And what he does is amazing, but why he does it? He says, Joseph could not restrain himself before all those who stood before him. And he cried out, make everyone go out from me.

So no one stood with him while Joseph made himself known to his brothers, and he wept aloud, and the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh heard him.

He's crying so hard everybody could hear it in the other rooms.

Then Joseph said to his brothers, I am Joseph. Does my father still live?

Remarkable question. I am Joseph. Is dad still alive? He didn't know. He did not know if his father was still alive.

He was fulfilling God's vision for him, and it had cost him a relationship with his dad for many, many years.

That's quite a price to pay.

But his brothers could not answer him, and they were dismayed at his presence. I bet you they were. And Joseph said to his brothers, please come near me. So they came near, and he said, I am Joseph, your brother, whom you sold into Egypt.

But now, do not therefore be grieved or angry with yourselves.

Think about a spiritual mindset here.

I know what the carnal mindset would be saying. You guys better... You're probably pretty sick of what you did to me, aren't you? Yes, you know what I could do to you? How dare you come here and ask for food? Think of all the responses he could have had.

But his actions, because of his positive emotions, his thoughts are based on God's promises to him, his actions that he doesn't have. His actions that he does something good.

God is his source of knowledge. His value system here, he discerns everything what he should do. And his concern is, first of all, okay, guys, don't be afraid.

Don't be angry with yourselves. Let's do away with the guilt here.

Why would he say that?

Why would he tell them? I would be telling him, you're going to feel guilty for a long time.

We're going to make a public spectacle of this. We're going to go outside now and get in front of the entire Egyptian army and say, these guys, they're the guys who sold me in slavery.

And when they all want to kill you, I'm going to say, no, no.

Let's let them suffer for a while.

He says, do not be grieved or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here. For God sent me before you to preserve life.

Don't you remember the dream, guys?

This was God's purpose all along.

This was God's vision.

This was God's dream.

Someday I'll tell you the stories of what I suffered, but He doesn't tell them to him. He doesn't say, look at all the bad things that happened to me. He doesn't say that at all.

He doesn't say, you can't imagine what it was like.

I thought Potiphar was going to kill me. You can imagine what it was like when the Ishmaelites beat me. And I thought, I'm so far away from home.

For the first time I saw Egypt with all its idols and thought, oh God, where am I? Why did you do this to me? There's nobody here that worships you.

Or when I was in prison thinking, well, I guess I'll die here.

He didn't talk about that at all.

Because His mindset was this.

This is what our mindset is to become.

The result is, all He said was basically, He was a great vision, no?

God's vision was a great vision. It's a great thing He sees for me. And He made it happen. Who would have guessed?

Who would have guessed that the reason for this is so that I would save your lives?

So don't feel bad. This is the way it's supposed to be.

That's quite a mindset. That's quite a mindset.

What did He sacrifice?

His entire young adulthood.

That's what He sacrificed.

His family.

His hopes and dreams. Now He has more power, more money. Now, you and I are going to become, you know, the second greatest person in the Empire.

I hate to tell you this, but nobody's going to come ask you to be the Vice President of the United States.

And if they do, turn it down.

God has, though, a vision for your life. Every one of us. And it doesn't matter what our age is. It doesn't matter how long He's been doing this.

This has all been us following God's vision for us.

Each of us, personally.

And He still has work to do with every one of us. And the vision in the end is greater than what Joseph received in his physical life. The vision God has for you in the end is more than we can imagine. And He tells us that all the time.

This is better than you can imagine.

Just hold on to it.

Our mindset, and we have to set our minds on letting this happen.