Làm Thế Nào Để Thay Đổi – Phần 3: Chúa Của Mọi Lĩnh Vực

Let me read from Ephesians 4:22–24. It’s on how to change. Let’s look at it. That’s where we’re concentrating on, and that’s where we’re going to look at one more time, at least, tonight.

22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

That ends the reading of God’s Word

Put on, be made new, put off. We’re looking at this subject, and I want to finish up on what it means to put off the old self, start talking about and deal with being renewed in the spirit of your mind, or the attitude of your mind, and maybe push into what it means to put on the new self.

Let’s not overlook the basic premise of these three verses … put off, be renewed, and put on. We mentioned it each week. I’ll start right out again by saying it means that one of the great sensational things the Christian message says is you can change. Over the years, Kathy and I have tried to figure out what it is we most admire about people. The people who we really admire, who we tremendously respect, who we try to stay in touch with, who we look up to … who are the people who we like the most?

They aren’t necessarily the smartest people. They aren’t necessarily the people who have things most together. They’re not necessarily the people with the most pristine moral record. We realized over the years that the highest compliment we could possibly pay somebody is to say, “Do you know that person? Do you know him? Do you know her? He can change.” That’s the best thing you can say about somebody. He can change. She can change, and the change sticks.

Underneath these three verses is this sensational truth. You can put off and you can be made new and you can put on, because if you’re a Christian you can change. Or, it means for a Christian change is always possible … always. There’s a verse you should always read in connection with these three. I mentioned it before. Let me just remind you of it again. Some of you know this is a key verse.

Some of you may have never heard this, in which case, this is a radioactive verse, and you need to open it up and let it do a light treatment on your tumors. It’ll shrink them out. First Corinthians 10:13: “No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.”

Now that is an assumption. That principle is assumed under these three verses. First of all, it says, “No [trial] has overtaken you but such as is common to man …” That’s a very key biblical point. What’s “common to man” mean? It means whatever your problem is, it has two features. One is, at the top level, your problem is unique. No one has ever had it before. Do you know why? Because no one has ever been you before, and it’s never been December 2, 1990, before, and it’s never been this place before, so your problem is always unique.

It’s never been seen before, at one level, but at the deepest level, there is no problem you have been involved with, there’s no problem you have that isn’t basic to every other human being who has ever lived. Why do you think Paul is able to talk to the Corinthians who lived in a secular urban Greek city and continually make reference to the Old Testament people of God, the Israelites, who were nomadic wanderers who wandered centuries before the Corinthians lived, and he could constantly say, “Be like that. Be like that?”

Very small tangent. An awful lot of people say, “Well, the Bible is very interesting, but times have changed. Paul said this and this and this, but people don’t feel like that anymore. Times have changed. How can you take the Bible so seriously when you consider that?” The point is Paul was talking to the Corinthians. The Old Testament was as far removed from those people as the New Testament is removed from us, and yet Paul never said, “Well, times have changed. These were nomads. They lived in a rural area. They lived centuries ago. You’re modern, you’re urban, you’re sophisticated, and therefore, obviously there are going to be differences.”

No, Paul says essentially everything that every human being has ever faced, every human being has ever faced. Most of our problems are essentially the same. Our problems are common. There are other people who have faced the same thing. Other people have done that. When it says, “No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man …” it’s a way of saying, “Do not ever say your problem is utterly unique.” It’s partially unique, but not basically unique. Then it goes on. The verse says, “God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able …”

“God is faithful.” That is an amazing statement. God is saying, “I stake my integrity on this, that there is no problem that has overtaken any redeemed son or daughter of mine that cannot be handled if you do it my way, using my resources. Hear that? He says, “God is faithful.” What does that mean? God says, “I stake my integrity on it!” There is no problem you’re facing now that is either unique or “un-handleable” provided you do it in my way, using my resources.” That’s a blanket statement. When somebody comes to me and says, “I want your counseling,” I’ll say, “Well, I’ll try my best, but I give no guarantees I can help you.” God never says that.

God says, “I stake my integrity on it. There is nothing unique about this. You can be out.” Then it says, “God is faithful, and he won’t be tempting you beyond your ability.” Very interesting. If there were such a thing as the perfect gym coach, the perfect gym coach would be somebody who would look at you and say, “In order to get you into shape, I will give you exactly, exactly, exactly the kinds of exercises and the kinds of regimen that is perfectly matched to your ability. Not one push-up, not one stroke, not one lap too much, and not one lap too little.”

That would be the perfect gym coach. Why? One stroke too much and you’d be injured, and one stroke too little and you will not get all the benefit out of the exercise, because the exercise has to push you to your limits or else it won’t push your limits ahead. It won’t push forward your horizons. In other words, the exercises can’t injure you or leave you flabby. If they’re too easy, you don’t grow; if they’re too hard, they injure you. If only there was such a perfect gym coach. A lot of us have maybe been under coaches who weren’t exactly perfect, but they were mighty good.

Do you know how they felt? You know how they felt. It always felt like he was killing you. It always felt like he was killing you. It always felt that he was giving you more than your ability, and yet when you actually did it … in some cases you quit … but when you actually followed through and listened to him, you found, incredibly enough, as hard as it was, you made it and it pushed back the horizons of what you thought you could accomplish. It wasn’t one stroke too much or one stroke too little. It didn’t injure you or leave you flabby. Whenever you find a really great coach, it feels like it’s killing you, but when you follow through, you can do it.

The Bible says God is that perfect gym coach, and that means the troubles and the trials and the problems you are facing that you say, “I can’t do it. I can’t change. I can’t adapt. I can’t face it,” the answer to that is of course that’s how you’ll feel if you have the perfect gym coach … the perfect spiritual gym coach. Of course it will feel that way. Anybody who has had a really good human physical gym coach knows that that’s how it feels. God says however, “It is not one stroke too much. If you give up, if you leave the regimen behind, I can’t answer for the consequences. If you stick with me, I’ll bring you through it. I can bring you through it. I will.”

Then in the final part of that wonderful verse, 1 Corinthians 10:13, that you have to read Ephesians 4:22–24 in tandem with, he says, “Along with the trial I will send a way of escape that you may be able to endure it.” Now if you look carefully … You have to read that very carefully. Here you have this promise that says, “I will never put you in a situation you cannot handle.” You can’t say can’t.

A Christian never can say, “I can’t do it.” If it’s there, if it’s a responsibility, if it’s something you have to do in order to be obedient, if it’s something you have to do, you can do it. You can’t say can’t. “I will never take it beyond your ability. I won’t do that.” Then look. It says, “… the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.” There are two ways God will enable you to handle your problem. One is to escape it and one is to endure it. Now some of us are saying, “I was afraid of that. I was hoping it was just escape.”

Some of you have heard me use this illustration to you when I’ve talked to you one-on-one. If you’re going along in a boat in a rushing river, like the Colorado River, and you’re in a narrow gorge so there’s no bank basically, and you’re rushing along, and suddenly you see there’s a great big rock sticking five feet up out of the water, and there’s no way around it, you will be smashed to smithereens on it.

So you pray, even if you never have before. What do you say? You say, “I need a miracle, Lord! You have to remove the rock.” Well, now there’s really more than one way God can do it. God could remove the rock or he could raise the level of the water six feet, right? In other words, he either could help you escape the rock or else he could actually not leave the rock but enable you, enable the level of the water to go up over the rock. That means when you have a problem and you say, “I can’t handle it, but I’m going to rely on this promise,” God says, “Okay.” You rely on this promise.

You decide, “I’m going to use your resources. I’m going to handle it your way. I’m going to use God’s Word and I’m going to obey.” Then God will do one of two things. He will either take it out of your life (it’ll be the way of escape), or he will change you so that thing that looked like it would crush you, that thing that said, “My patience is too thin; it’s going to break through. My anxiety is too thin; it’s going to break through. My ability to forgive that person is too thin; it’s going to break through,” instead God says, “No, I’m going to strengthen that ice. I’m going to strengthen that faith. I’m going to strengthen that patience. I’m going to strengthen that ability to forgive.”

He could take it away, or else he could strengthen it. He could remove the rock or he could raise the level of your patience over it. He could raise the level of your endurance over it. Somebody says, “Well, that’s what I was afraid of.” In the short run, escape feels great, but it doesn’t bring change. In the long run, endurance … if he would actually raise the level of your water … as hard as it is and it always takes a lot longer, endurance is the way you can actually become somebody like Jesus.

Now I don’t think you necessarily have to tell God what he should do. You have to be very careful about saying, “I want escape, and I want it now. I want her to change her behavior because I can’t forgive her if she keeps talking and acting like this. I can’t. If she doesn’t change her behavior, I’m just going to claw her eyes out.” Of course, God could remove the rock and the next day she could come and get down on her knees and say, “I don’t know why I was such an idiot. What can I do for you? Can I kiss your toes? Can I serve you day and night for years?”

You say, “Well now, this is going to be a big help. It’ll be much easier now to forgive you and put away my anger.” That’s removing the rock. Is he going to do that? What if he says, “No, no, no, no, no?” Paul said, “I have a thorn in my flesh.” We don’t know what it is. “Please get rid of the thorn.” God says, “No, I think I’ll raise the level of your grace in your life so the thorn is covered.” He can go either way.

For example, it’s astonishing when you read the Joni Eareckson books. Joni Eareckson is really one of my favorite authors, and many of you know who she is, a Christian woman was paralyzed in an accident when she was 18. She’s a quadriplegic, but she has developed a tremendous depth she didn’t have before, tremendous wisdom. The suffering has turned her into a great heart. She has a marvelous ministry to handicapped people.

She actually has the audacity to say in one of her books, “I realize that from one perspective it’s an awful thing to say, but the fact of the matter is I’m glad it happened.” She says, “Of course, I couldn’t have said that five years ago. I probably couldn’t have said that eight years ago. I certainly couldn’t have said it for a long time after it happened, but now I see.” What happened was she prayed to be healed, and there’s one whole book on why she wasn’t healed. “Why wasn’t I healed?”

The fact is you cannot say God will always answer prayers for healing. If that’s true, nobody would die. Nobody dies of old age, you know that. People die of something. The older you get, something breaks down. If it was really true that God could always heal in relationship to prayer, people wouldn’t die. The fact is God doesn’t always heal. Why? He doesn’t always heal. He has to raise the level of the water. He doesn’t always escape; he often can make you able to endure it. If he leaves the rock there, that’s how he gets you to change, and that’s how you become like Christ.

Now last week, we talked about putting off the old, and there are just a couple of mop-up things we need to say about it, but it’s pretty important. Look at verse 22. “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self …” Now last week I gave you a lot of illustrations. Just let me summarize, but there are a couple of quickies. Let me just review basically. Sometimes the best way to learn is to hear me review the week afterwards because I’m a lot more concise when I’m reviewing than when I’m explaining.

First of all, “put off” means, as we said before, to reorient every part of your life. Putting off the old self is a radical statement. It means everything you do has to be changed. There’s a place in 2 Corinthians 5, where it says, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a …” What? “… new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.”

A lot of people say, “What does that mean? I was a musician before. Does that mean now I’m going to be an engineer? I enjoyed watching football before. Now does it mean I’m going to enjoy watching basketball? What does that mean everything has become new? That’s silly. I guess a few things have become new, but not everything. I think I tried to say last week, and I’ll say again, yes everything,” because nothing you do is the same.

I don’t want to be trivial. Do you like fishing? You’re going to fish differently when you become a Christian. “How could that be?” Well, first of all, your motive. What does fishing accomplish in your life? Does it relax you? Fine. Does it un-tense you? Does it restore your energy? Now as a Christian you look around for ways to restore your batteries, to relax yourself, not simply because you like the feel.

Now you say, “I have a lot to do before I die. I have a lot to do for Christ. There’s not that much time … 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 years … and I’ll be at the judgment seat of Christ. It won’t take long at all. I no longer am a leisure-oriented person, and yet now I have to be involved with leisure because I know it’s one of the ways in which I restore my batteries so I can have the longest and most fruitful life, so my mind can be clear when I am working and doing my best for him.” You’re actually fishing for a different reason.

Not only that, when you’re out in nature and you’re enjoying nature, instead of just letting nature hit you, you meditate and you say, “What a glorious place,” or as John Bradford used to say, “If this beautiful universe and this beautiful nature and this great creation with all of its infinities and immensities, if this is the kind of universe God gives to his enemies, what kind of universe is he going to give to his friends?” You meditate on that. You think about that, right?

Not only that, even in fishing you say, “I want to now not break the rules, but I’m careful about conservation. I’m careful about it. I realize there are some places I should fish and there are some places I shouldn’t fish, because I’m a steward of nature. God has made me a steward. He said I have to have dominion. I am a caretaker. I’m a gardener of everything in this earth, and therefore, I’m much more careful about what I do when I’m fishing.”

You don’t even fish the same way. Everything is reoriented, and that means the Christian life is an examined life, and the non-Christian is an unexamined life. Can I explain this here? I tried to say this again last week, but the more I thought about it, the more I said, “I’d better put it in another perspective.” Before you become a Christian, you do things because that’s the way your group does it. You say, “I’m Irish. I’m Italian. I’m Greek. I’m born and raised on Park Avenue. Therefore, we do things in this way. That’s why we do things. That’s the way our group does them. That’s the way we do them, and that’s it.”

A Christian never again can act like that because when you become a Christian you’re picked up to a certain degree out of every group. You no longer are really there. The Bible says you’re a new ethnic. It says that in 1 Peter 2:9. It says you’re a new ethnos, a new ethnic. In a sense, you’re a new people. What that means is you say, “I have a King, and he has given me his Word, and I have to examine every single area of my life to say, ‘Is this what my Lord wants me to do?’ ” There’s nothing you do unconsciously anymore.

Before you become a Christian, there are all kinds of stuff you do because you say, “Well, that’s just the way we are. That’s how we do it.” That creates problems. It creates a lot of problems, because you have to think. A Christian is not somebody who checks his brain at the door; a Christian is somebody who thinks in a far more analytical and thorough-going way than anybody else. Frankly, if you can just get people to think, you have them. Christianity has always said, “If you can just get people to think …”

People who disbelieve in Christianity generally don’t disbelieve because they’re thinking; they disbelieve in Christianity because they’re reacting. If you can think, you have them. If you can think, Jesus has you. Now it doesn’t matter. You say, “Well, I’m Irish. I’m Italian. I’m Jewish. I’m Park Avenue. I’m from this side of the tracks. I’m from that side of the tracks. That’s how we do things.” Oh no. Now you look at things.

A good friend of mine was a New York City policeman for 10 years. He told me a lot of stories I’ll have to start telling you just because they’re so instructive. One of the things he told me about being a New York City cop was lots and lots of money gets thrown at you. Lots of bribes, to everybody. But he says it was very clear. As soon as he got into the police culture, he realized you always take bribes from pimps. You take bribes from people who are trying to keep you away from what the police called “victimless crimes,” but you would never take money from drug dealers because those are crimes that hurt people.

That makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it? There’s a certain common sense about this. “I can’t pick up every prostitute in New York City.” The pimp says, “Here’s $50. Just stay away from the corner of so-and-so and so-and-so a place.” My friend used to say they would go into a place. They’d come on out to their squad car. There’d be envelopes (this is a normal thing every day) of money in their squad car with a note from a certain person saying, “Please tonight on your beat just stay away from this corner. Here’s how much money. Please, I’m working this corner tonight.” Ordinarily, you just took it.

Suddenly, this guy becomes a Christian, and he says, “Is this right? Is this a victimless crime?” He begins to think. He gets into a lot of trouble with the other guy in the squad car … a whole lot of trouble. He can’t react. He’s not just a policeman anymore. He’s not just Russian. He’s not just Italian. He’s not just black or he’s not just white. He’s not just a lawyer. He’s not just a doctor. He is a Christian first, and he has an examined life now … an examined life.

Every area of your life, you’re looking and you’re saying, “Will I be willing to obey God anything he tells me here? Will I be willing to trust God and accept anything he sends me here?” When you can answer yes to both those questions in any area of life, then you have begun to practice the lordship of Christ and you lead an examined life.

Then you put off the old self. You’re looking at every area, and whenever you see a place you have to change, you put off the old self. You say, “I am no longer that. That’s not me anymore. I have nothing to do with that kind of life. Yes, of course it’s easy for me to go into it again, it’s easy for me to act like that, but that’s not me. I won’t have anything to do with it.” That’s what it means to put off the old self.

Now examine your life, reorient even the things you used to do before you will continue to do, and begin to put off the old self, and then you have to turn to the positive. That positive is “be renewed in the spirit of your mind.” Now that’s the only other thing we’ll talk about tonight. What does that mean? If you see, the New International Version I read goes, “… to be made new in the attitude of your minds …”

What does that mean? First of all, do you see this? This is something that is not a middle step between put off and put on. It says put off, and then it says be made new, and then it says put on. Don’t think this is a middle step. It doesn’t mean you put off and then God does this and then you put on. The tenses are all wrong for that. “Put off” ’ and “put on” are single past tenses, but the “be made new” is a continuous present. I’ve mentioned that before.

What it means is as you are putting off and as you are putting on, God is doing this. This is the key. If you put off and put on and yet God is not renewing you in the spirit of your mind, then all you’re putting off and all you’re putting on is futile. This is the secret. If there’s a secret to change that sticks, this is it. The reason you’ve tried to put things off and put things on and it hasn’t worked (if that’s true in your case) is because this hasn’t happened. That’s a nice categorical statement I can make.

If you say, “Hey, I’ve tried to put this off. I’ve tried to put this on. It hasn’t worked,” it’s because you have missed this. This happens inside. It happens during. It happens within. You’re putting off and putting on … God is making you new in the spirit of your mind. This is something you can quench. It’s actively passive. “Be made new” is an actively passive statement. You can’t make yourself new, right? God alone can make you new, and yet you have to be made new. You have to live in a condition of holy availability. Now listen, don’t ask me, “Well, what does that mean?” I’m not totally sure either.

One of the greatnesses, one of the adventures of Christianity is that Christianity is not just a nice little rule book that tells you exactly what buttons to push which time. It’s saying here that on the one hand only God can make you new in the spirit of your mind, but on the other hand you have to be made new. That means you have to make yourself available. You can quench it. You can stop it, and we have, regularly. It’s something we have to do and yet it’s something we can’t do. We have to make ourselves available for it.

Then what is it? The NIV talks about the attitude of your mind. Some of you have an older version, and it talks about the spirit of your mind. It’s a tough phrase to translate. What does it mean? Without going into all of the details, I’ll tell you what I think it means. It doesn’t mean the Holy Spirit, because you never talk about the Holy Spirit as our Spirit, the Spirit of our minds. No. It doesn’t just mean the general spirit of your heart.

There are places where the words mind and heart and spirit are all used interchangeably for your soul, same thing, but it couldn’t mean that because we’re talking about the spirit of the mind. The word spirit originally means breath or life or power. The life of the mind. The power of the mind. It’s a very, very deep concept and a very important phrase. It’s not just saying be renewed in your thinking. It’s not just talking about that. It’s talking about something behind the thinking. It’s talking about the spirit of your mind, the governing principle, an interior principle that captures and leads your mind.

It talks about it in Genesis 6 when it says, “… every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” That means behind your thoughts is something called the imagination. Now the trouble with the word imagination is to you it means creativity, but in the Bible it means something different. It is the faculty of the soul that assigns value. It’s the faculty of appreciation. For example, here are two people, Mr. A and Mr. B, and they both eat a mouthful of lamb. They’re eating the same piece of meat.

One of them says, “Yuck! I hate lamb,” and the other one says, “I love lamb.” Hopefully that second guy is Greek and the first guy is not. What happened? What’s the difference? It’s the same stuff. The difference is taste. What the taste bud is to the body, the imagination of the spirit of the mind is to the soul and to the heart. Now to give you an example of how it works and how this is the key to all change, it’s not enough just to put off and put on, you actually have to be renewed in the spirit of your mind.

Let me read you an amazing story out of the Old Testament. It’s in the book of Joshua. In Joshua 7, there was a man named Achan, a very important guy. When the Israelites were asked to go and capture a city, the city of Jericho, God said to everyone, “If you see any money, if you see any plunder, you do not take it for your own. What you must do is you bring it into the tabernacle and it becomes part of the tabernacle. It becomes part of the money that supports the tabernacle and the priesthood and the sacrificial system and so on.”

Achan, however, when he was in the battle, he found (as we’ll see) some things and he took them and hid them and stole them. Then Joshua finds them and brings them out and he tells him to confess. This is what Achan says down in Joshua 7:20. Listen carefully. “It is true! I have sinned against the LORD, the God of Israel. This is what I have done: When I saw in the plunder a beautiful robe from Babylonia, two hundred shekels of silver and a wedge of gold weighing fifty shekels, I coveted them and took them. They are hidden in the ground inside my tent, with the silver underneath.”

Now would you see very carefully this chain? This can make all the difference in the world to your own lives. There’s a chain. First step: “I saw them.” Then the second step is he saw they were beautiful. The third step was, “I coveted them.” That’s where his thinking came in. He began to say, I want them. Then fourthly, he took them, and fifthly, he hid them. Where is the key? Where’s the crucial link? It’s the second link.

Do you notice it says he saw them? But what did he see? He saw a beautiful robe. Not just a robe, a beautiful robe. Look at this. He also saw 200 shekels of silver. How did he know how many shekels there were? He looks at this. Here’s a pot, here’s a case, here’s a cache of shekels. How does he know there are 200 in there? He counted them.

Then a wedge of gold weighing 50 shekels. How does he know how much it weighs? I suppose it could’ve been stamped in some way. It’s very unlikely from what we know. He weighs the gold, he counts the shekels, and he lets the robe look beautiful in his eyes. Here’s what he’s doing: He has taken these things, and he’s turning over the beauty of them on the pallet of his soul.

Before he even thinks, “I want them,” first of all he begins to fill his mind. This is what we call the imagination, because the imagination is that which makes things vivid, that which creates pictures, that which assigns beauty and value and appreciation. He sees them. Then he lets the spirit of his mind be captured by them. Then he begins to think, “I want them.”

What could he have done at this point? I suppose at the thought level he could’ve started to argue with himself, which is where most of us try to capture. We try to stop our behavior. We get to the thought level and at the thought level we say … Your thoughts are going, “I want that,” and you start to say, “That’s wrong. That’s bad. You’ll get in trouble. Oh yes.”

You can start to argue at the thought level, but you should’ve gone back and renewed yourself at the spirit of the mind, or at least made it available for God to do it. Here’s what you do: Instead of turning over on the pallet of his heart, on the pallet of his soul, instead of turning it over and saying, “Look how beautiful that is. Hey, look at the number. Look, there are 200 here! Fifty! Fifty shekels this thing weighs. Look at that.”

If instead of doing that he had weighed in his heart and turned over on the pallet of his soul what God had been doing for him, if he had been saying, “I was a slave. I was nothing more than a slave. I was living the life of a dog in Egypt, and God in his infinite mercy led us all out, and instead of a dog now, I’m a man. Instead of a slave, I have my family. I have a clan. We’re on our way to the Promised Land. He has taken us out again and again and again of one peril after another in spite of the fact we have bellyached and grumbled all the way. What a great God he is,” what is that doing?

He’s being renewed in the spirit of his mind. As he thinks about the truth, as he turns it over on the pallet of his heart, the Spirit of God then burns those thoughts into his heart and changes his heart so the actual conscious thoughts that come out would not have been covetous thoughts. Do you see? “I saw. My imagination was captured. Then I coveted them. Then I took them. Then I hid them.”

Now there are all sorts of ways in which you can look and see how this is operating in your own life. For example, this is a way oversimplification, a big oversimplification. Every time you brought your report card home for your dad it had all A’s on it and one B+. What did your dad do? He’d get it out and he’d say, “What’s this?” Every time, right? Nothing about the A’s … the B+.

So what sinks down, what captures the spirit of your imagination? “You’d better be good. You’d better not fail. You’d better be perfect. No slipups.” What happens as you get older? How can you be renewed in the spirit of your mind? Well, what you have to do is you have to say, “Lord, yeah, I do fail, just like everybody else, even the people who look successful, but I know who I am in Christ. I realize Jesus is my Savior, Jesus is my Advocate. Right now, Jesus Christ stands before the Father, and he’s my High Priest.

We’re told all the names of the children of Israel, the names of the children of God are on his ephod, on his breastplate. They are engraved on precious stones over his heart. When God looks at Jesus Christ (this is what the gospel tells me), he sees me, and when he looks at me, he sees Jesus. He regards me through Jesus. When I received him as Savior, that means all of his righteousness is imputed to me. Look at Jesus Christ. Look at his perfect humanity. Look at his pristine moral beauty. Never an unseasonable word. Total compassion. Great courage. Complete humility. Steadfast love. What a record!”

That’s your record. God regards you as if you’d done everything Jesus has done and suffered everything Jesus has suffered. Do you know what you’re doing? You’re not hearing me; you’re overhearing me. This is how you have to talk to yourself. To be renewed in the spirit of your mind is to preach to yourself until your imagination is captured. You go study in the Bible, you go read in Christian books, and you look for radioactive truths. Do you know what I mean by that?

Some years ago, especially when I started going around … When you preach to the same place every week, after awhile you start to get pretty relaxed in a sense. You say, “Well, I know these people, and they know me, and I know what I’m doing.” When you travel around a lot and you’re always up in front of a different group of people, you really begin to deal with stage fright.

One day I was reading the Letters of John Newton, a great Anglican minister who lived a couple of hundred years ago. John Newton at one point says, “I find that to keep my eye simply on Christ, as my peace and my life, is by far the hardest part of my calling.” The day I read that, I felt it just go right on into my imagination, right into the spirit of my mind. I started to do something I might have told you about before. I started to get up in front of audiences and quietly (not out loud) under my breath, looking at them, I would say, “You are not my peace. What you think of me, how you react to me, whether you receive me well, you are not my peace. Christ is my peace.” It freed me.

Now what happens is you spend your time studying the Scripture, you spend your time talking to friends, you spend your time listening to the Word of God preached, you spend your time reading Christian literature looking for those radioactive nuggets, which means you take the truth and you just roll it over on the pallet of your mind trying to get the sweetness out of it until very often you’ll find the Holy Spirit himself will come and take one of these nuggets, like “You are not my peace,” and just burn it on in there.

At that point, the spirit of your mind begins to change. It begins to get captured. As a result, you can deal with temptation. As a result, you can make the changes. You’re having trouble forgiving somebody? Are you really? What are you going to do about it? Well, at the thought level you can say, “I’m not going to keep thinking all those bitter thoughts about him. I’m not going to do it.” You can try, and that sometimes works. My little diagram showed that sometimes you can move from the putting off to the putting on by not going all the way down the level of the spirit of the mind.

You might do it at the behavioral level. Some of you have good self-control. “I am not going to think those nasty thoughts about him anymore.” But it’s more likely this. You’re having bitterness problems because the spirit of your mind is captured by all the things he or she has done to you. You’re thinking about them. More than that, it’s captured your mind. It’s vivid. It’s on video in your heart.

You know on audio you have a little voice that says, “You ought to forgive her. God says forgive her,” but on video are all the things she has done to you. That spirit of your mind has captured you, and as a result you are not able to change. What should you do? You have to put onto video what Jesus has done for you. Look at what he has forgiven you of. Look at what he has put up with. Look at all he has done for you and yet look at what you have done for him. Look at the ingratitude.

Considering how he constantly forgives you, considering how he always forgives you, considering your debt is infinitely greater than her debt to you, what are you doing holding it over her head? You think about that. You preach to yourself. The spirit of your mind is captured and you can make the change. Then you can put off and you can put on.

Are any of you shy people? Right now are you afraid to do something because you’re afraid of the reaction you might get? How do you put off fear and put on courage? You talk to yourself. I’ll never forget the day I heard one preacher say, “Who cares about the approval of the serfs when you have the honor of the King?” I’ve never forgotten that. I said, “Good night, that’s it! What am I afraid of? Who needs the approval of the serfs when I have the honor of the King?” What happened at that point? The spirit of the mind was renewed.

Now maybe the things I’m telling you are not doing it. The thoughts, the truths the Spirit has used in my own heart to just push them on in and deal with stage fright, push them on in and deal with bitterness, push them on in, you have to go get your own. Be made new! You can’t be passive. You can’t sit back and say, “Okay, I’m waiting. I’m waiting.” You have to study. You have to give all diligence. You have to think. You have to pray. You have to meditate. You have to reflect. That’s what you have to do.

In Hebrews 12, it talks about the fact we’re surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses egging us on as we’re running the race. Who is the great cloud of witnesses? I think all the dead saints. There’s Moses cheering you on. There’s Peter. Sure. There’s Jonah. You look up and say, “There’s Thomas.” A doubter became a man of faith. “There’s Moses.” A coward became a great leader. “There’s Peter.” A coward became a great leader. Who knows what you could be if you simply would be made new in the spirit of your mind. You can change.

Are you in a box? I remember reading a book long ago that ended like this. Do you feel even though you’re a Christian that you’re in a box and there’s absolutely no way out? Paul and Silas were in prison, and they prayed. They were renewed in the spirit of their mind. They weren’t afraid. They knew God was the King, and the earth shook and all the prison doors burst open.

There is a way of escape even though it may be the way of endurance. God can change you. You can be changed. Maybe the great change you may have to make is to first of all and above all put off the old man for the first time by repentance and put on the new man for the first time by giving yourself to him. All these promises, every single promise I’m making to you tonight and I’m saying God is making to you, are contingent on that you belong to him, that you’re his, that you’ve received him, believed on his name, and he has given you authority to become his children. Friends, you can’t say can’t. Let’s close