Our minds are like the Susquehanna River where I usually fish. More than 200 tributaries feed it. Its water volume and quality are the sum of them all.
Despite hundreds of influences, a relatively few strong childhood forces shaped the channel of the river of our thoughts. Our parents or significant others in our young lives were most influential.
My father shaped how I think most by his teaching and modeling. For example, it is relatively easy for me to trust God because my father almost always kept his promises, and I expect my heavenly Father to do the same. My father didn’t turn molehill problems into mountains. Neither do I.
Nevertheless, neither my father nor his thinking was perfect. It is important to recognize the weaknesses of our human models because our thinking shapes our lives like a potter does a bowl. I need a better example than my father to think better. As a Christian, I have one—Jesus Himself. Christians have the mind of Christ. What does that mean?
To complicate things, our sinful human nature pushes our thoughts predictably and repeatedly toward “a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions” (1 John 2:16). Jesus says none of these things will satisfy. He pursues none of them, and neither should we.
To be spiritually fruitful followers of Jesus, we must turn from the world-system-dominated thinking that 1 John 2:16 describes and think as He does. His values must be ours. That happens progressively as our minds absorb His word and reprogram how we think, feel, and act based on it. It is a life-long process.
Philippians 4:8 guides how we must think. “And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise” (NLT). That is how Jesus thinks.
Because we have the mind of Christ, we understand what God is doing on planet Earth. He is bringing Himself glory, restoring creation to paradise, and saving sinners all along the way. With the mind of Christ, we join Him by giving God glory and seeking and saving lost people (Luke 19:10). We speak the truth in love. We believe God’s word is the final authority, and like Jesus, we say, “It is written” (Matthew 4). What matters to God matters to us more than world system values.
We adopt Jesus’ attitudes of humility, obedience to the Father (Philippians 2:5–8), compassion for the lost and hurting (Matthew 9:36), dependence on the Father (Luke 5:16), being full of grace and truth (John 1:14), and patiently loving others self-sacrificially.
In 1 Corinthians 2, The mind of Christ is not man’s wisdom (verses 5–6), but God-given divine discernment (v. 15) through the Holy Spirit (7, 10–12) and otherwise unknowable (v. 14). We must yield to the Holy Spirit’s leading (Ephesians 4:30) and permit Him to renew our thinking through the word of God (Romans 12:1–2) so we can evaluate all things (1 Corinthians 2:15).1
As Christ’s mind becomes increasingly ours, we become more like Him until the day we see Him face-to-face and complete the transformation in the blink of an eye. “We will be like him, for we will see him as he really is” (1 John 3:2 NLT). See additional free spiritual growth resources for Christians. #freediscipleshipresources #freeevangelismresources #freechristianleadershipresources
See free spiritual growth resources for Christians at https://www.christiangrowthresources.com.
God has empowered me to write “His Power for Your Weakness—260 Steps Toward Spiritual Strength.” It’s a free evangelistic, devotional, and discipleship eBook. Pastors have used it in Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia to lead more than 3,150 people to Christ and teach the basics of Christianity to 8,661 people. I invite you to check it out.
Comments