You’ve heard it said…
I read one more article last night about a pastor who had a “moral failure”. Let’s just say it, a pastor who had sex with someone besides his wife. Sad as this is, it was the advice of the author that made me much more sad. He gave advice to others to help prevent such failures in the future. He suggested four steps, implying that they would help men and women “win the spiritual battle.” Amazingly, it is the same four steps that have been offered for decades. This fallen pastor, and several who have gone on before, probably taught these steps to the men in his congregation. I fear that our propensity to offer these steps to men and women is one of the most significant things we must address in this cultural shift which is the modern church culture.
Jesus had a phrase He used to uproot faulty religious thinking. “You have heard it said do not commit adultery, but I say to you don’t even look on a woman with lust. When you look at another with lust in your heart, you have committed adultery already.” This pattern was used throughout His sermon on the mount to help the people of His day think differently. Many heard this and only thought different, not differently. Jesus was not making a new and harder set of laws, He was trying to shift the understanding of His audience as to where the actual problems resided. The problems were not simply outward behaviors which must be managed, by changing behavior, they were conditions of the heart which desperately needed transformation.
I would like to address these four fallacies; “solutions” we hand each other regularly as if they will really work.
1. You have heard it said memorize more scripture but I say to you learn to let the living and active word of God renew your mind. The first implies that if you somehow exert more memory power, and retain more scriptural data you will be able to act differently. This actually seemed to backfire for the Pharisees, who had the entire Bible memorized but were the number one enemy of the Abundant Life that Jesus offered.
Renewing our mind does not mean replacing wrong data with right data. Paul tells us that the problem with law is that it does not have the power to transform us. Memorizing scripture alone can simply become law, and still leaves the power of transformation in human hands.
When God speaks He is creating. Engage the Voice not just the letter. Don’t just learn the data of scripture, learn to think and see like the Author. Let the words on the pages connect you to the Person of the Kingdom. Allow Him to point out core lies, deception in the deep places of your heart. Deception about Him and deception about you, and about the nature of reality. More important allow Him to tell you truth. Even identifying lies is not sufficient to change our behavior without the corresponding truth coming in to replace the lies.
2. You have heard it said have more consistent time alone with God but I say to you when you are alone with Him practice internal surrender. What happens during your time with God matters more than how much time you spend. Jesus compared two guys, both of whom were praying. One was telling God how glad he was that he was not a bad guy, and sharing his moral resume. Certain that God was impressed, he prayed and spent time with God. The other stood before God, and languished in his need. He unashamedly told God he deserved nothing, and knew that his spritual resume was a declaration of his need for help. Both were spending time with God.
Jesus came to set the captives free, not to advise us about His moral preferences. The restoration of our hearts, not the disciplnes of our flesh, will transform our outward experience. Let Him heal the wounds of our lives, let Him exchange our heart of stone for His heart of flesh. Let Him do His work, instead of telling Him how well you have done yours.
3. You have heard it said practice accountability but I say to you the Holy Spirit comes to convict us of sin and righteousness and judgment, let Him do His job in you. While it is true that Jesus tells us that in God’s economy the opposite of evil is truth not good, (John 3: 20-21) truth sometimes eludes us in our limited sight. Even when we are trying to be ruthlessly accountable we cannot confess to another the things hidden deeply in our hearts that we ourselves have yet to see.
Simply being able to tell another when we mess up is not sufficient to stop us from messing up. And even if it prevents us from behaving badly, it is unlikely to transform the processes of our heart. Fear or respect of another’s probing eyes may hold the beast at bay, but it does not have the power to crucify it. When the Holy Spirit brings to light darkness in us, and shows us that this darkness is no longer compatible with our new nature the darkness is put to death, and the Holy Spirit ignites the righteousness of Christ in me.
4. You have heard it said maintain your integrity but I say to you learn how to take dominion, and practice your authority as a son or daughter of the Living God. Somehow in our recomendations to one another we leave out one of the most siginificant aspects of Jesus framework of thought. He clearly recognized and engaged a whole realm of reality that I will call “the invisible world”. This is part of the creation that Adam was tasked with taking dominion over. This is still our assignement to this day.
I remind us again Jesus came to set captives free. If a man or woman is under the influence of another kingdom and has no idea what Jesus has done to grant us authority in this life, and how to practice this authority we remain under the influence.
In Jesus teachings on the sermon on the mount He was not discarding the first part of the “you have heard it said” statements, He was trying to reveal the hidden traps behind the statements. I am in no way suggesting that we throw out Bible study, time with God, accountability and integrity. I am, however strongly urging us that salvation and freedom are the acts of God in our lives, not the result of us arm-wrestling our behavior, thoughts and emotions into submission. Behavior management has never been the objective, transformation of the inner man, and the restoration of God’s created design in our souls is the objective. To offer the four solutions mentioned above as if they are sufficient for living the life we are called to, is like urging a man to swing on a trapeze, telling him the nets below will catch him if he falls, but neglecting to tell him that the nets are not anchored to their support and therefore will not hold his weight.
God did not send His Son to command us to behave like someone we are not, He sent Him to restore our factory settings so we might behave and think and feel like who He is in us.
Ways to think – contact lenses and sausage machines
Ways to think… processes… how things get into our mind and what we do with them once they get in. Most of the time we don’t even think about… well… how we think. Yet nothing could affect us more than those two processes. We so often want change in our lives, but generally consider only changing the content of our thoughts. How did those thoughts get there? How did they get to have such a powerful effect on us?
Ways to think #1: Contact Lenses: How things get in.
Contact Lenses sit right in front of our eyes. Anything that comes in must pass through the lenses, and the lenses affect what comes in. After a while we don’t even realize these lenses are present. When this happens the effect they have simply becomes our new reality. Below are two examples of Cognitive Contact Lenses.
Belief and doubt. Have you ever noticed how easy it is to doubt the truth? Why is it so difficult to doubt lies? Belief and doubt are filters that either let things into our minds or keep things out of our minds. Someone makes a statement, or describes for us how they perceive us. If we already believe the thoughts they’ve shared; they gain instant entrance; the thoughts enter in and join up with similar thoughts we have already harbored. If their opinions don’t match our own, they bounce off our mind, as if the door is locked… no entrance. Many life changing truths remain locked outside our mind because we are pre-disposed to doubt. For one day, try doubting something besides true stuff.
Exception vs. Rule: All of us have a filter I call the exception or the rule. Because we are convinced that certain experiences are normal and certain experiences may happen occasionally our mind automatically categorizes experiences. When people say they like us, we are sure that is the exception. When we screw something up, surely that is the rule. Again, we give no credit to anything we consider the “exception” When we picture ourselves as fearful, any courageous behavior is immediately discounted. What if we have our wires crossed? What if we are wrong about the exceptions and rules of our lives? We lose valuable credit when we act in accordance with our nature, if we are wrong about our true nature. Often we are.
Ways to Think #2: Sausage Machines: What happens to thoughts once they get in.
A sausage machine makes sausage. That’s what it always does. Put in beef, it makes beef sausage. Put in venison, it makes deer sausage. The processes of a sausage machine simply make the same thing out of anything that you put into it. Put in aluminum foil, it will make aluminum sausage. The machine does exactly the same thing with any input. Our mind processes data: if we want things to change we must learn to do new things with the data that comes into our minds. Here are a few examples of ways our minds process stuff.
Meditation: It sounds so spiritual to meditate. Meditate simply means to hold something constantly in your thoughts. We use the term “dwell on”, to describe meditating. Interesting phrase. Dwell means to inhabit or reside. So to meditate means to inhabit a particular thought. Bill Johnson, a teacher I admire, says if you know how to worry you know how to meditate. Decide on purpose what you will meditate on.
Passivity: We often assume that our minds run on auto pilot. We simply allow pictures, imaginations etc. to run around loose in our minds as if we cannot give orders to them. Try for one day to tell the thoughts in your mind what to do. It is a little like parenting. If we are going to be hands off, we should expect the thoughts to misbehave.
Focus: I have heard it said that if you have difficulty remembering the names of people you meet, the problem is not your memory, it is your focus. When someone introduces themselves, if you are thinking several things at the same time, their name will not stick. Not because of memory but because of focus. Focus, as a cognitive process, is harder than ever in the days we live in. Texting, email, cell phones, iPods… our current methods of communication lend us to unfocused communication, because we increasingly communicate on multiple channels simultaneously. Focus and choose wisely what you focus on. You may have to let a few things go.
Surrender: This word can mean many things. For the purpose of this conversation, I mean that you can surrender your thoughts to someone else. There are many ways we can give our thoughts away and give other people control or at least strong influence of our thoughts. Jealousy, or wishing we were someone else, gives away a few acres of our minds. Fantasy, in many forms, allows others to hold deeds to plots in our minds. Resentment, or unresolved bitterness also allows people to hold territory in our minds.
It is difficult to recognize your own lenses. Let God and others gently show you the ways you may have filtered input. You will be amazed that as you take control of the processes of your thinking, how quickly you will find yourself thinking differently.
Can the devil read our mind or hear our thoughts?
Does the devil know our thoughts? Does he know what we think about? Can he know the secrets of our heart?
I don’t believe the enemy can read our mind for a couple reasons.
First, the Bible says that God knows the secrets of our heart (Psalms 44:22), and that he searches our heart (Psalms 139:23). Nowhere in scripture does it say that the enemy searches our heart or knows the secrets of our heart. Only God can do that.
Secondly, only God is omniscient, or all-knowing. Satan is not all knowing. He does not know everything. And, neither do angels. Only God knows everything.
Does that mean the devil doesn’t know what we are thinking? We have to be careful here, because Genesis 3:1 says that the serpent was more cunning and crafty than all the other beasts of the field. He is quite the strategist. He is very subtle and devious in his ways. He has become a master at reading us through our behaviors, actions and micro expressions.
Micro expressions? One of my favorite television shows is “Lie to me”, about this specialist in neuroscience and neuropsychology who has become a master of reading people through slight expressions in the facial muscles or certain movements with their hands or shoulders, what he calls “micro expressions”.
Another show that is similar in concept is “The Mentalist”, about a guy who once used this ability to pretend to be a psychic, but now works for investigators to help solve crimes by reading people.
These are great examples of how I believe the enemy reads us. While he can’t read our thoughts, he can read our behaviors and body language. He knows when we are afraid or concerned or stressed. He often knows what we are thinking about by the way we are responding or acting. Watch somebody long enough, and you’ll be able to read them as well.
Can the devil read our mind or hear our thoughts? No, I don’t believe so. But, does he know what we are thinking at times? Yeah, I believe he is a master of reading our body language and micro expressions.
Renewing your mind and changing your thoughts
I was having lunch the other day with a friend of mine who has recently been struggling through some issues with his oldest child. The teenager had become quite rebellious, even to the point of having run-ins with the law.
I asked my friend what he’s been doing to try to get his son back on track. He said something that has been stuck in my head for days now. He said, “It’s not about just changing behavior, although that can help. And, it’s not about changing the environment, which can also help. Rather, it’s about changing the heart. Changing behavior and environment may last for a season, but a heart change is what he needs.”
The next morning in my quiet time, I started to dissect this concept a bit more. I’ve been struggling through some personal issues in my own life that have plagued me for years. These patterns of behavior have been so hard to break. So, my friend’s words hit me pretty hard. I’ve spent most of my Christian life fighting, wrestling and struggling to change certain behaviors, but with only slight improvement. I’m weary of the cyclic reemergence of these destructive patterns. It’s been terribly frustrating.
As I was thinking through this, I started to dig a bit deeper into the heart. I know that as we come to know Christ, we are given a new heart with new desires and new motivations.
- “I will give you a new heart with new and right desires, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony heart of sin and give you a new, obedient heart” (Ezekiel 36:26).
- “What this means is that those who become Christians become new persons. They are not the same anymore, for the old life is gone. A new life has begun!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
As I was talking to God about this, he started to clarify this more:
Son, your heart has been changed. If it hadn’t, you wouldn’t be able to hear me so clearly. So, know that your heart is right. Your heart is good.
It’s your flesh and mind that need renewing. You’ve settled into your old routines, and the way your flesh is wired is that it’s an easy escape. It’s not your heart. If it was your heart, son, you wouldn’t care. But, you do.
Ahh, now that makes sense. My heart was changed when I received Christ. My desires and motivations are towards God. If my heart had not been changed, I wouldn’t care about doing right and fixing some of these issues in my life. But, I do care. I do want this. Then, I remembered a couple scriptures:
“Since you have heard all about him and have learned the truth that is in Jesus, throw off your old evil nature and your former way of life, which is rotten through and through, full of lust and deception. Instead, there must be a spiritual renewal of your thoughts and attitudes. You must display a new nature because you are a new person, created in God’s likeness–righteous, holy, and true.” Ephesians 4:21-24.
“Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is.” Romans 12:2.
This last one from Romans 12:2 really hit me. It gave very specific instructions on how to be transformed. Did you catch it? It’s not hard. You simply “Let God…”
That’s it. That’s all the work you need to do. Just let God. It’s not your responsibility to change the way you think and behave. That can be hard for those caught into the grasp of addictions. Your part of the deal is to simply let God transform the way you think.
What are some behaviors you’d like to change:
- I want to stop smoking.
- I want to lose weight.
- I want to be a better father/mother/husband/wife.
- I want to stop drinking or drugs.
- I want to exercise more.
- I want to read my Bible more.
- I want to spend more time with God.
- I want to go back to school.
How hard have you tried to change your behavior? How successful have you been with that? If you’re anything like me, it’s been quite a failed experience.
My prayers this week have simply been this, “Lord, I let you into my heart and into my mind. I let you into my thoughts, my patterns of thinking, my mind and let you have full access to transform my mind, and to renew my thinking. I let you in to change me, to transform me.”
Renewal of the Mind
I’ve really been thinking a lot about this concept of renewing our minds. You hear it quite a bit in churches, sermons and Christian teachings, but I want to know what that looks like. What does it mean to renew your mind and thoughts?
Here are two scriptures that stand out the most:
Ephesians 4:21-24
Since you have heard about Jesus and have learned the truth that comes from him, throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy.
Romans 12:1-2
And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice–the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.
Both of them talk about renewing our thoughts and mind, but I just realized something interesting about those two scriptures. In both of them, Paul encourages us, pleads with us, to throw off our sinful ways and surrender our bodies to God before the renewing can happen. We must rid ourselves of this carnality and give our bodies (our mind, our soul, our emotions, our decisions) to God.
Right now in my life, I am so desperate for a spiritual renewal. I can’t really describe it in detail, but it comes down this–I’ve been a Christian since 1991, about 17 years now. Early in my faith walk, I was on fire for God. I was passionate, zealous, hungry to learn as much as I could. I devoured the Word, I prayed with passion, I sought God with all my heart.
Today, I don’t. I don’t pray with passion as I did. I don’t devour the Word as I did. I don’t pursue God as much as I did in the past. And, that bothers me. I really want to chase him with even more passion than before, but something in me is just complacent in my walk with God.
A lot of that may have to do with my current financial and familial position–they are phenomenal! We are out of debt, and my business is thriving! My family is awesome. My marriage is strong, my teenage son is a joy to be with and I love spending time with my family. All is well. And I know that’s a gift from God. I know it is. It just seems so easy to get complacent, lazy and spiritually lethargic when all is going well.
My deepest pursuits of God have always been in the darkest times of my life. And now, this lack of passion, this lack of enthusiasm, this lack of self control is driving me into this spiritually dark season in my life, and I don’t like it.
I want to passionately pursue God with all my heart.
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