Thought Control

Transcript

Alright thank you very much, and hello again dear radio friends. How in the world are you? Doing Alright today? Oh, I trust everything is going well at your house. If you’ve struck a rough day, look up and say, “Lord Jesus, see me through this one”, and He will. Keyword is “through” as I’ve told you so often, “When thou passest through the waters, they shall not overflow”. God sees you through, yes He does. So, you trust Him today.

Well, let’s finish up our thought here on this matter of goodness and he said, “Be transformed”, verses Romans 12:2, “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is good”. Now you prove something about God, not by what you do for Him, but what He does in and through you.

The devil’s ancient lie, first told in the Garden of Eden was you can do better for yourself without God. That, my friend is the essence of what we call secular humanism today. It’s taught from kindergarten straight through university and most of our culture and in many other parts of the world. You can do better for yourself without God. If you need God as a crutch, well you have to have him, but if you don’t need a crutch, you can do better for yourself without Him.

That’s the devil’s lie, he told it in the Garden of Eden. “Ye shall not surely die for God doth know that in the day, ye eat thereof he shall be as gods, knowing good and evil”. God is keeping this gorgeous secret from you, that you could be like Him and get along without Him and so He’s been repressive towards you, that’s what the devil was saying. Oh, your heart aches for the blindness and the malice, frankly, of many writers right straight up through today’s popular writers and novelists, who in their writing and in their storytelling make the point that people who are religious are either fakers, hypocrites or misguided and not having both oars in the water. You just get angry about it, don’t you? Because the truth is, that you’re never more normal, never more able, never more completely put together shall we say, then when you’ve completely yielded to the Lord Jesus Christ. He makes you a normal, perfect, hundred percent, human being.

But oh, the devil’s lie is being told in so many ways, so many places. Humanism, you can do better for yourself without God. Well, that is the lie that needs to be disproved. How is it to be disproved? He says, “Be transformed”, transformed, not conformed to the world, not jammed into the world’s mold-you don’t have to join the group, you don’t have to be a groupie or a preppy or anything else, you can be yourself, full of the Spirit of God. Not conformed to the world, but transformed by the renewing of your mind, put your mind under the control of the Spirit of God by getting into His Word, His written Word, obeying what He tells you and sharing it with other people, thus riveting it into your own memory.

Then he says, “When that happens you’ll prove something, that you may prove what is good and what is acceptable and what is perfect, namely the will of God”. I wish everybody knew how important it is to have a life that’s full of the Spirit, so that other people can see something about God. See we’re so naïvely self-centered, for the most part, aren’t we? We think of our Christian life as something we achieve, whether by faith or by effort or whatever it may be, in your thought about it, we think of our Christian life and testimony as something that we achieve, which does something for us and then which thus classifies us as being “good Christians”.

Now, this is the naïve, narcissistic, self-centered view of humanity that most folk have. You ask anybody just offhand, “Are you good Christian?” “Well, I guess I am. I go to church”, something you do. “We have family worship”, something you do. “We don’t drink”, something you don’t do. “We don’t smoke or gamble or carouse”, some of the other things that you don’t do. “We try to help our neighbors”, something you do. See, and you’ve got it all catalogued in terms of something you do, so as to be classified as being a good Christian.

Well, of course good works are important. “We are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works”, says Paul in Ephesians 2:10, “which God hath before ordained that we should live every day in them”, and Paul says to the folk in Titus, “Let our people be careful to maintain good works”, and another passage it says, “Ready to every good work”. Oh, of course, “That ye always having all sufficiency in all things, may be supplied for every good work”. Of course works are important, so I’m not talking against good things that one does. What I’m saying is the real proof of whether or not God is real, is what He does through your life. The unspoken shine of a life that is given over to God’s will, the power there is in the words that are spoken, not just when one is making a speech.

Oh, what God does, “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove”. How do you prove that God is good? Let Him work in your mind, so that people as they observe the way you think, know that God is operating your mental machinery.

That’s quite a concept, isn’t it? And it jars you because from the very beginning we are self-centered people and we think in terms of what we may do to be acceptable with others. A little child learns that in a hurry, doesn’t he? Little baby learns that when he or she is cute and happy and everybody replies the same way. Haven’t you sometimes chuckled at the effort of a very small child, to be cute, so that folk will laugh? Well, we learn early, we learn early to adapt our behavior for the approval and the classification of others.

The real proof of God in your life is what He’s doing through you. So, let’s work on that, you and I, shall we? Let’s let Him cleanse our hearts and minds and consciences, let’s let Him work in our thoughts, let’s fill our minds with the Word of God, so that He can through the Holy Spirit remind us of His will and let’s specialize in being obedient when God speaks to us, let’s obey. “That you may prove”.

And now then he says, “That the will of God is good”, and that means good in essence and good in intent and good in result. The will of God is good in essence, there isn’t anything flawed about the will of God. Have you made up your mind that that is so?

I look back across my life and I have to say that every time I have taken a step of obedience after prayer seeking God until I felt in my own heart that God was leading me, and then I took that step of obedience, every time I’ve taken a step of obedience after prayer and seeking the will of God, it has turned out in a manner concerning which I had no regrets. Now, I’ve made some quick decisions that I do regret. I guess all of us have to admit to that, do we not? I’ve made some quick decisions through the years that I do regret, but anything that I’ve done after seeking God’s face, and after praying for His guidance and receiving some indication that I was in the will of God, those things have produced no regrets.

The will of God is absolutely perfect, it is not flawed in any detail. That’s why it’s so important to wait on God until you know His will. Let the will of God be the referee in your life, the peace of God be the referee concerning His will. It’s so important to wait on God until you know for sure what His will is. Wait on the Lord, be of good courage and He shall strengthen thine heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord. For when you do know what His will is, then get going. The Lord said to Moses, “Why are you lying here praying? Get up! Tell the children of Israel to go forward”. There’s a time to pray and there’s a time to act, and when you’ve prayed and God’s spoken to your heart, then get going.

Well, the will of God is good. That means in essence, it is absolutely not flawed in any way. Second, it’s good in intent. Paul was a great proponent of God’s perfect will and he always was referring to the will of God, “An apostle by the will of God”, said he concerning himself.

One is reminded of the prophets quotation where he spoke for God saying, “I know the thoughts that I think toward you, thoughts of good not of evil, to give you a desired end”. The intent that God has for us is good. Now again here, the devil’s lie is told that to the idea that God doesn’t really want the best for you, He’s just repressing you. That’s what the devil told Eve and Adam in the Garden, “Ye shall not surely die, for God doth know them in the day there be shall be as God knowing good and evil”. He’s not really after your best good, He’s just trying to keep you from getting something you could get otherwise.

That’s the devil’s lie and people still fall for it. Someone’s going to trouble and says, “I guess God must be mad at me, He doesn’t want me to have any fun”. Well of course He does. “In Thy presence”, the Bible says, “is fullness of joy”, Jesus said, “these things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you and that your joy might be full. And when you’re going through trials don’t get mad at God and blame Him and assert that He doesn’t really want your best destiny to be worked out, oh yes He does. Yes, He does!

The will of God is good, it’s good in its intent, He wants the best for you. It’s good in its essence, it’s not flawed in any detail, it’s good in its intent and it’s also good in its result. Now, some of us are able to look back and see where things about which we bitterly complained at the time, turned out to be part of God’s perfect provision. Can any of you remember something like that? I certainly can, I can remember complaining bitterly about some things that happened to me a good many years ago, and yet looking back now I can see it was part of God’s perfect plan. Well, you don’t get to see those things right away, but by faith you can receive them and that’s what makes walking with the Lord so delightful and such a pleasure and such a joy. You can by faith, take the will of God and know that His will is good in the results that it’s going to produce in your life.

Now, how do you prove that all this is true? How do you prove to an unbelieving world that God’s will is good in essence and good in its intent and good in its result? You do it by letting Him transform your mind, because as you think so you are, and the Holy Spirit of God controlling your think process, is going to bring forth from your whole life as a result, something that says in effect, “See God is right.” You think about that, will you? Put it to work.

Dear Father today, may our thoughts be controlled by Thee. May the shine of our life tell others that God is in control. I ask in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!