SPEAKER_01: You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_00: It's possible to be saved and going to heaven and coming to church and be entirely out of God's will.
SPEAKER_00: It is possible for us to be enjoying worship, enjoying a good sermon.
SPEAKER_00: Out of 168 hours in a week, we can spend 90 minutes at church, and our kids are in Sunday school, and even if there's vacation Bible school, they go to that.
SPEAKER_00: You might even be a part of a women's study.
SPEAKER_00: You might even be a part of morning fire and be entirely out of God's will.
SPEAKER_01: At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: For more information on The Road, visit theroad.org.
SPEAKER_01: We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_00: So we're in part three, guys.
SPEAKER_00: We're looking at loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbors ourself.
SPEAKER_00: And my thesis has been that to be a wholehearted disciple, that's where it all begins.
SPEAKER_00: It's learning to love God with all of your heart, learning to love God with all of your soul, learning to love God with all of your mind, with all of your strength, your neighbors yourself.
SPEAKER_00: And so Mark 12 covers that, and Matthew 22 covers that.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said it at least on two occasions, this emphasis that all of the law, all of the scriptures, Old and New Testament, is summed up and is fulfilled when we love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbors ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: And so rather than what had happened in Judaism at the time, such a focus on the legalistic aspects of the Mosaic Law and the Pentateuch and the Ten Commandments, Jesus said, You want to sum it all up?
SPEAKER_00: You want to understand how to live the law perfectly?
SPEAKER_00: Love God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbors yourself.
SPEAKER_00: So we've been in this series on being a whole heart disciple as a part of Outlier University, which we just started about eight weeks ago.
SPEAKER_00: Many of you are in classes at Outlier University.
SPEAKER_00: But on this emphasis that Jesus had on loving God with all of your mind, I've done three parts.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the third part of that because I feel like we have lost so much within the evangelical church of loving God with our mind, of the beauty of the wisdom and knowledge of God that comes through loving God not just with our emotions, not just with our identity, and we have already covered that, how important that is, but also with our intellect and with our reasoning.
SPEAKER_00: And so, as I've said before, faith is not a leap into the darkness, it's a leap out of the darkness.
SPEAKER_00: That when we start to have faith and with our reasoning powers that God has given us, we're leaping out of the dark ages.
SPEAKER_00: We're leaping out of the darkness in our lives into new light.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why we can rejoice with a faith through Christianity that celebrates science.
SPEAKER_00: Because God's the creator of all.
SPEAKER_00: So we celebrate science.
SPEAKER_00: We celebrate biology.
SPEAKER_00: We celebrate chemistry.
SPEAKER_00: All truth is God's truth wherever it comes from.
SPEAKER_00: Now, not all truth that is presented as truth is truth.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why you have to have discernment.
SPEAKER_00: That's why you have to have the ability to understand what the Bible teaches, what the reasoning powers that God has given in our minds through the Word of God enables us to walk by faith.
SPEAKER_00: But again, men and women, it's faith with reason, as Augustine said.
SPEAKER_00: We celebrate psychology.
SPEAKER_00: Psychology is the study of psychosis, it's the study of our intellect, it's the study of how our brain works, it's the study of personalities.
SPEAKER_00: God gave us all that.
SPEAKER_00: We rejoice, and I'll talk about it today, the whole neuropsychology that's out there today.
SPEAKER_00: That's just discovering what this book says.
SPEAKER_00: Now they don't use these terms, but as believers, we can celebrate so much of what's happening that we discover because God has given us the mental capacity to dive in and work hard and discover things mentally.
SPEAKER_00: And it's the hardest thing to get people to do.
SPEAKER_00: Think.
SPEAKER_00: It's the hardest thing to get your children to do.
SPEAKER_00: Think.
SPEAKER_00: To actually use their mind and actually deduct and deduce and rationally think through issues.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's part of parenting.
SPEAKER_00: That's a whole nother issue, but that's part of parenting.
SPEAKER_00: That's part of pastoring.
SPEAKER_00: Is enabling each of you to be a clear thinker and to walk by faith.
SPEAKER_00: So here's what we've covered in the last few weeks.
SPEAKER_00: Why must we love God with all our minds?
SPEAKER_00: Our first reason, a couple weeks ago, was because we're in a spiritual war for the hearts and minds of people.
SPEAKER_00: And we look at three worldviews, three major worldviews that are happening today, and how the supernatural, biblical, Christian worldview wins.
SPEAKER_00: It always wins, but you gotta know it.
SPEAKER_00: And so we can engage the culture, even a socio-Marxist culture, with the clear claims of Christ and a biblical worldview.
SPEAKER_00: Second reason, last week, because we have been given the mind of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So we talked about from 1 Corinthians, we talked about this idea that each of you have been given the mind of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And we looked at this one verse I has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love him.
SPEAKER_00: And from that we talked about three aspects of knowledge that God has given each one of you, because if you're a born-again believer, you now have the mind of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And the first was perceptional knowledge, that you can perceive stuff that you could not perceive before.
SPEAKER_00: And I have three labs, three dogs that I hunt with, three labs.
SPEAKER_00: And labs, like any dog, I actually think it's true of cats too, but I'm not going to go there with that.
SPEAKER_00: But that but that we talk about this sixth sense of animals, this sixth sense of a dog, and we see it all the time.
SPEAKER_00: I swear there have been so many situations where we were in the house, it's midnight, lights are out, and my dog starts growling.
SPEAKER_00: And something that dog is at the door, ready to go.
SPEAKER_00: I have not a clue what that dog is growling about.
SPEAKER_00: But we let the dog out and she just rips out and she just takes off into the woods.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the deal: you have now a sixth sense.
SPEAKER_00: Because of the Holy Spirit, you have a sixth sense.
SPEAKER_00: You can sense darkness and light.
SPEAKER_00: If you will train your perceptional abilities, you'll start to sense things.
SPEAKER_00: In many cases, it was already there because you're creating the image of God, but now with the Holy Spirit, through being born again, we can sense things.
SPEAKER_00: And I've sensed the demonic at times, and we can we can sense the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: Haven't you felt it at times?
SPEAKER_00: The presence of God in worship, the presence of God in prayer.
SPEAKER_00: We've had prayer gatherings in this room.
SPEAKER_00: I can remember a circle of about 25 of us in here where the Holy Spirit fell.
SPEAKER_00: And nobody could pray because the presence of God was there and there was nothing to pray.
SPEAKER_00: We were just experiencing the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: At the Whole Heart Advance, on Friday night when Mark Tetter was leading worship, the Holy Spirit fell.
SPEAKER_00: We all felt it.
SPEAKER_00: And the men began to just pray spontaneously all over the room.
SPEAKER_00: None of it was planned.
SPEAKER_00: That's perceptional knowledge.
SPEAKER_00: That's that sixth sense, not just your five senses, but a sixth sense.
SPEAKER_00: Then we talked about last week conceptual knowledge.
SPEAKER_00: The idea that you can now put concepts together that you could not put together before.
SPEAKER_00: It made no sense.
SPEAKER_00: It was foolishness to you before.
SPEAKER_00: This book, the day before I got saved in college, was foolishness to me.
SPEAKER_00: And the next day, it was God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Now I wouldn't have said it that way because I didn't even know the term God's word.
SPEAKER_00: I just knew Bible.
SPEAKER_00: But soon, within days reading it, it came alive because my new knowledge from the Holy Spirit of conceptual knowledge had been transformed by the Spirit of God.
SPEAKER_00: And then thirdly, spiritual knowledge.
SPEAKER_00: We've been given spiritual knowledge.
SPEAKER_00: We can now have intimacy with Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We could not have intimacy before.
SPEAKER_00: We can now have intimacy with Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The veil has been ripped away, and we can now enter into the holy place.
SPEAKER_00: We can now enter into the Holy of Holies.
SPEAKER_00: We can now enter into a personal, vital, dynamic, growing relationship with Jesus Christ through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: By him saving us, he opens up our mind to a new understanding of intimacy and a love relationship with him.
SPEAKER_00: Now turn in your Bibles to Romans 11.
SPEAKER_00: And you that are new, we also have an app.
SPEAKER_00: You can download the app with all my notes on there.
SPEAKER_00: In Romans 11, pretty interesting because in Romans 11, Paul has been talking about the nation of Israel and the rejection of Israel toward the Messiah, but that a day is coming when Israel, all of Israel, will be saved.
SPEAKER_00: And I mean, this is mind-boggling with the current situation in Israel as Paul writes this.
SPEAKER_00: Everywhere Paul goes, he's persecuted by the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: But he's saying, there's a day coming when there's going to be this worldwide revival, and there's going to be a revival in Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And many women, that's why we're pro-Israel.
SPEAKER_00: So we love Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't mean Israel's perfect.
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, it's not a Christian nation.
SPEAKER_00: They do a lot of bad things.
SPEAKER_00: Well, so do we, and so do you.
SPEAKER_00: But we hold to the scriptures that there's a day coming when this beautiful part, this branch of the branch of the Messiah, is going to be saved.
SPEAKER_00: And so he's explaining all that.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's the context when, I mean, the Jews in Rome reading this, the Gentiles in Rome reading this letter, would have said, Man, Paul, you are nuts.
SPEAKER_00: There's no way that's going to happen.
SPEAKER_00: And so then he concludes chapter 11 at verse 33 with these words, which prepares us for chapter 12.
SPEAKER_00: He says, This, O the depth of the riches, you ought to underline that or highlight that, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God.
SPEAKER_00: How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out.
SPEAKER_00: For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has become his counselor?
SPEAKER_00: Or who has first given to him and it shall be repaid to him?
SPEAKER_00: For all of him and through of him and to him are all things.
SPEAKER_00: To him be glory.
SPEAKER_00: Forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Here's my third point.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to come to this in just a moment.
SPEAKER_00: My third reason why we love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, is because our lives can be transformed by the renewing of our minds.
SPEAKER_00: This is preemptive to this renewing of the mind that he's about to enter into.
SPEAKER_00: So we've just read in 1 Corinthians 2 7 last week, we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory.
SPEAKER_00: So he says here, there is a depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, that's unsearchable.
SPEAKER_00: Pretty interesting looking at the Greek word for unsearchable.
SPEAKER_00: You know what that word is?
SPEAKER_00: It means paw.
SPEAKER_00: It means foot.
SPEAKER_00: It's the idea of an animal or a hunter tracking another animal, seeing the paw prints and going after that, or another, or another predator encroaching on another animal and searching out.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying it's unsearchable.
SPEAKER_00: You can't search out all that God has for you in his riches and glory.
SPEAKER_00: And so you may think that you understand God.
SPEAKER_00: You can't, and he just told us about Israel.
SPEAKER_00: That's just unbelievable that there's a revival coming in the last days that will save a nation, the nation of Israel, where all the promises, where we got our the word of God came from the prophets of the nation of Israel, and the law was given.
SPEAKER_00: And so, in the same way, this wisdom of God is unsearchable, but he says, and he calls it the depth of the riches.
SPEAKER_00: And in 1 Corinthians 2, we looked at last week, he said there, who can know the mind of Christ?
SPEAKER_00: And it's a rhetorical question.
SPEAKER_00: He says, we can because of the Spirit of God.
SPEAKER_00: So, men and women, we can know stuff that we shouldn't know.
SPEAKER_00: That nobody else understands.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever shared your faith with someone who's an avowed agnostic or an avoid atheist or they're very anti-Christian?
SPEAKER_00: They just think you're a fool.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, if you haven't been called a fool a few times, you need to get out more often.
SPEAKER_00: Because the stuff we believe is foolishness to the world.
SPEAKER_00: It is foolishness that we give our money to help others, that we give our lives to help others, that we love people, that we love this ancient book.
SPEAKER_00: This ancient book full of the wisdom and knowledge of God that you could say to someone, man, I was reading the Bible the other day and God spoke to me.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, go back a few steps.
SPEAKER_00: You remember before you were saved and someone said that to you?
SPEAKER_00: That is super weird.
SPEAKER_00: I was reading this ancient, old, dusty, old book.
SPEAKER_00: This is the way it's being interpreted here.
SPEAKER_00: You're reading the nobody reads the Bible anymore.
SPEAKER_00: And then I mean, like, what did Jesus come in the room?
SPEAKER_00: Did he just start talking to you?
SPEAKER_00: What do you mean God spoke to you?
SPEAKER_00: Are you a nut?
SPEAKER_00: And you go, yes, I'm a nut.
SPEAKER_00: Because God's given us the mind of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We have the ability now to hear from God.
SPEAKER_00: And his ways are so unsearchable, his depth of the riches of the glory of God are so phenomenal, so awesome, that listen, church, if you don't spend time in the Word, you will miss it.
SPEAKER_00: It's possible to be saved and going to heaven and coming to church and be entirely out of God's will.
SPEAKER_00: It is possible for us to be enjoying worship, enjoying a good sermon.
SPEAKER_00: Out of 168 hours in a week, we can spend 90 minutes at church, and our kids are in Sunday school, and even if there's vacation Bible school, they go to that.
SPEAKER_00: You might even be a part of a women's study.
SPEAKER_00: You might even be a part of morning fire and be entirely out of God's will.
SPEAKER_00: Because you're not hearing from God.
SPEAKER_00: That's actually one of the great reformation miracles that came out of what Martin Luther did on October 31st, 1517.
SPEAKER_00: It's called the priesthood of all believers.
SPEAKER_00: And the idea behind that is that you and I can hear from God outside of a priest, outside of a pastor.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to come to confessional with me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not telling you how to live your life.
SPEAKER_00: You have to hear it from God.
SPEAKER_00: And so you are absolutely free when you're wholeheartedly in love with Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And when we become free, we have freedom now to hear from God, and He becomes our counselor.
SPEAKER_00: He becomes.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't need counsel.
SPEAKER_00: We need counsel.
SPEAKER_00: That's the point of these verses.
SPEAKER_00: We need counsel.
SPEAKER_00: We need the depth of his riches, of his wisdom, and his knowledge.
SPEAKER_00: His ways and judgments are unsearchable.
SPEAKER_00: Ours are not.
SPEAKER_00: Ours are searchable.
SPEAKER_00: So what we do, listen, everybody, listen, don't miss this.
SPEAKER_00: We let God search our minds and hearts.
SPEAKER_00: When we come before the Lord with the book open, like I did this morning in my study, I flipped on my fireplace, and I got my feet there.
SPEAKER_00: I got comfortable in my couch, in my study, at home, with the word open.
SPEAKER_00: God searched my heart.
SPEAKER_00: God will search your heart.
SPEAKER_00: He will give you counsel.
SPEAKER_00: Y'all seen that commercial?
SPEAKER_00: I've been watching the World Series.
SPEAKER_00: I haven't watched so much baseball in about five years.
SPEAKER_00: But I've been watching the World Series almost every inning.
SPEAKER_00: So I have to watch the commercials in between.
SPEAKER_00: And it's one of those commercials where it's uh Geico.
SPEAKER_00: Geico's got great commercials.
SPEAKER_00: But it's talking about, it shows the guy who says, you know, he he loves bashing his head on the rafter.
SPEAKER_00: You remember that one?
SPEAKER_00: Have you seen it?
SPEAKER_00: Raise your hand if you've seen it.
SPEAKER_00: So I okay, I'm good.
SPEAKER_00: That's the way most of believers live.
SPEAKER_00: That's how that's the way most believers live.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's great job security for me.
SPEAKER_00: But most believers, you tell them, you know, don't do that.
SPEAKER_00: It's not good.
SPEAKER_00: You know, bam.
SPEAKER_00: You shouldn't do that.
SPEAKER_00: BAM! I you know, yeah, I you that's really not healthy.
SPEAKER_00: BAM! So there's a one-knock method, the two-knock method, and the infinitum knock method.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason I can relate is because that's like me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like that.
SPEAKER_00: Now I'm not the guy who sticks his hand in the in the vending machine and thinks that's funny, and I don't drink sour milk.
SPEAKER_00: But I could relate to that guy.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going, yep.
SPEAKER_00: The sad part is he's laughing about it.
SPEAKER_00: Because he doesn't get it.
SPEAKER_00: So how do we get it?
SPEAKER_00: How do we start to get it with our minds?
SPEAKER_00: How do we start to love God with our minds?
SPEAKER_00: Because he wants to be our counselor.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us in verse 36 to know him, to realize that life is through him and it's of him and it's to him and his glory forever.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us living that way.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't want you knocking your head constantly against that stupid mistake you keep making with your money, that dumb mistake you keep making in your relationships, that dumb thing you keep saying to your spouse.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to grow up before we grow old.
SPEAKER_00: So this is what he says.
SPEAKER_00: Now look at chapter 12, because this is what he's leading up to.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I beseech you therefore.
SPEAKER_00: Whenever you see therefore, it means it's therefore something.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasoned, it says reasonable, it could be your reasoned service.
SPEAKER_00: So here's the first thing.
SPEAKER_00: The first thing is we surrender our life to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So he's using temple sacrifices and temple worship at that time where you took a pure and a beautiful and unblemished animal and you slayed it and then you laid it on the altar.
SPEAKER_00: He said, instead of bringing something dead, bring something alive, and that's you.
SPEAKER_00: Because life is in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Death is always in the sacrificial system.
SPEAKER_00: Another reformation truth.
SPEAKER_00: When Martin Luther came, he said justification, he gave us what is classically now called justification by faith.
SPEAKER_00: But he discovered in Romans 1 7.
SPEAKER_00: So the just shall live by faith.
SPEAKER_00: And what he discovered was John 10 10, juxtaposed to John to Romans 1.17, and that is that Christ came to give us life.
SPEAKER_00: And life that is abundant.
SPEAKER_00: So the first thing in renewing our minds actually is to give our lives to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We give our life to Christ as a holy sacrifice, mind, body, spirit.
SPEAKER_00: We give it all to Him.
SPEAKER_00: Same as loving God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
SPEAKER_00: We give ourselves fully to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: There's actual physical healing in giving ourselves fully to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And so we start with that, that he says, just like the priest at the temple in Jerusalem would bring an animal and sacrifice it, now would you bring your living life, your living body, and sacrifice it to me.
SPEAKER_00: Give it all to me.
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, it's your reasonable service, mean using your reasoning, and some have translated this to mean that reasoning is your service.
SPEAKER_00: Reasoning is your service unto God.
SPEAKER_00: Reasoning is giving yourself as a living and holy sacrifice to God.
SPEAKER_00: Using your mind, using your reasoning, whenever you reason something through by faith, that is giving yourself as a living and holy sacrifice to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: He's not saying to me or to any of us anywhere that faith has anything to do with some kind of a mental lobotomy.
SPEAKER_00: It is actually accentuating your mind into a new reasoning power.
SPEAKER_00: What we just talked about, perceptional knowledge, conceptual knowledge, and spiritual knowledge that God gives you, your mind, listen, your mind is awakened when you give yourself to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's why the smartest people in the world are not the ones with the greatest IQ, but the ones with the greatest JQ.
SPEAKER_00: Those who start to have a Jesus quotient of hearing from God, start to understand things and do things that are supernatural.
SPEAKER_00: You want to figure out your finances, give yourself fully to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You want to figure out your marriage, give yourself fully to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You want to be the best musician you can possibly be, give yourself fully to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You want to be the best athlete that you can be, give yourself fully to Christ because He's your creator, and when He starts to take over, He starts to give you thoughts, vision, and wisdom that is unnatural, it's supernatural, and you start to have thoughts that mind has not conceived, ear has not heard, eye has not seen all that God has planned for you.
SPEAKER_00: But listen, on the other hand, if you just want to be comfortable and live your limited little life where you, you know, you go to work, make a few bucks, come home, sit in your couch and be a couch potato and watch TV all day, don't give yourself to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Because if you give yourself to Christ, he just might invade your world and start setting you free.
SPEAKER_00: And then it gets really uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_00: Because you start taking risk because of the power of God that you never thought you could possibly take that risk, because now there's faith working in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: There's trust, and you know you're not alone anymore.
SPEAKER_00: I see.
SPEAKER_00: I'm convinced a lot of people do not want to be set free from their fears.
SPEAKER_00: They love their fears, they dig their fears, they like being in their fears.
SPEAKER_00: Their fears are really comfortable.
SPEAKER_00: And I just say stay there.
SPEAKER_00: That's fine.
SPEAKER_00: It's no skin off my bra, I can promise you that.
SPEAKER_00: I got enough problems having family that I got.
SPEAKER_00: I got enough problems with just being a pastor and trying to keep myself straight with God.
SPEAKER_00: But I'll tell you this: if you'd rather walk by faith in the freedom and the power that comes from God and be set free from your fears, then give yourself to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Surrender to him.
SPEAKER_00: So he says, first of all, he says, the way to renewing your mind is in a reasoned service to the Lord is to give yourself as a living and holy sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: Then he says this in verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: He ties it all together this way.
SPEAKER_00: Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
SPEAKER_00: Hello, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
SPEAKER_00: So when I read this, I always think about a river.
SPEAKER_00: And I think about standing by a river and jumping in and being swept down the river.
SPEAKER_00: Or jumping in and swimming against it.
SPEAKER_00: To me, that's the best metaphor I can think of of conformed or transformed.
SPEAKER_00: So if you want to be conformed to the will of this world, just jump in the river and float with it and enjoy it.
SPEAKER_00: Just move on down.
SPEAKER_00: Just be a part of this world.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to be transformed, you're gonna have to work.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna jump in the river of this culture and you're gonna have to swim against it.
SPEAKER_00: Because this culture is enamored with the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: This culture is enamored with lust and sex.
SPEAKER_00: This world is enamored with greed and jealousy and backbiting and uh and gossip.
SPEAKER_00: But if you want to be different, if you want to know not just the good, not just the reasonable, but the perfect will of God, you'll have to renew your minds.
SPEAKER_00: And that's jumping in the river of the culture.
SPEAKER_00: We've got to swim against it.
SPEAKER_00: We've got to ask the hard questions, we've got to dig in, we've got to be a thinking people.
SPEAKER_00: You have to learn how to think.
SPEAKER_00: And if you want to be a disciple that loves God with all of your mind, you will become a thinker.
SPEAKER_00: If you keep hanging around here.
SPEAKER_00: Because to become a thinker is to become one who can control his actions, control his future, control his destiny.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we just studied 50 messages in Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: 50 messages in Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: 50.
SPEAKER_00: You guys know more about the book of Revelation and the end times than most professors in most seminaries.
SPEAKER_00: Not because I'm so smart, but because we took our time, we worked our way through, many of you did it on your own too.
SPEAKER_00: You dug in, and you know the book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: That's this is a thinking faith that we have in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Martin Luther spent years studying and doing exactly what church canon law told him was the way to righteousness, and he found out 16 years that it amounted to nothing.
SPEAKER_00: And then, because of his mentor, he started studying the Bible, which, by the way, even monks and priests didn't study the Bible in the Middle Ages.
SPEAKER_00: And he began to study, and he comes to Romans 1, preparing for a message, and Romans 1, 17 comes alive.
SPEAKER_00: The just, the righteous, another way to say it, the righteous shall live by faith.
SPEAKER_00: He discovered it because he was studying it.
SPEAKER_00: And so, men and women, there's so much more that God has for each of you with the gifts and talents, but if you're not in his word renewing your mind, you could be missing it.
SPEAKER_00: You could be settling for what does he say here?
SPEAKER_00: The good will of God.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's good.
SPEAKER_00: Better than bad.
SPEAKER_00: The good will of God or the acceptable will of God.
SPEAKER_00: How about how many of you here would like to know the perfect will of God?
SPEAKER_00: So the perfect will of God comes from those who renew their minds.
SPEAKER_00: We renew our minds, we love God with our minds.
SPEAKER_00: Renew in Greek means to renovate, restore.
SPEAKER_00: Now listen to this.
SPEAKER_00: This is an awesome definition.
SPEAKER_00: Transformation to the freshness of the original state.
SPEAKER_00: That's what renew means.
SPEAKER_00: Let me say it again.
SPEAKER_00: So renovate, we're going to say renovation, restoration, transformation to the freshness of the original state.
SPEAKER_00: So renew, renew, is going back to the original state in the Garden of Eden to get the mind of Adam, to get the mind of God, when at that time God's mind and Adam's mind were one and the same.
SPEAKER_00: There was no sin to block what God could say to him.
SPEAKER_00: So when you're renewing your mind, you are renewing.
SPEAKER_00: You are going back and restoring the original state of what you and I were created to be.
SPEAKER_00: Man.
SPEAKER_00: That's exciting, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: And so that renewing of mind is loving God with all of our minds.
SPEAKER_00: So let me give you four things.
SPEAKER_00: Four quick things that I think help us renew our minds.
SPEAKER_00: It's pretty interesting right now what is being studied about the brain.
SPEAKER_00: There's not enough time to go into it by any means.
SPEAKER_00: Dr.
SPEAKER_00: Alex Dronowski and Dr.
SPEAKER_00: Sean Accor have written extensively on this.
SPEAKER_00: Research has shown that the brain has the ability to form new neural connections throughout a person's life, regardless of age.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to that, regardless of age.
SPEAKER_00: This capacity called neuroplasticity.
SPEAKER_00: It's called neuroplasticity, has wide-ranging implications for everything from intellectual growth to recovering from brain damage.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what they're discovering.
SPEAKER_00: They're discovering that the brain is like a muscle.
SPEAKER_00: So the more you use it, the stronger it becomes.
SPEAKER_00: So my mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's like eight years ago.
SPEAKER_00: I could be wrong there, but I think it's about eight years ago.
SPEAKER_00: And what dad did is he began to just dedicate his time and energy to puzzles, to uh games, to intellectual stimulation for my mom, and the doctors were shocked how long she lasted before she kind of drifted into where she doesn't know who she is.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it lasted like five years.
SPEAKER_00: And their only explanation was it's because your dad just keeps stimulating the mind of your mom.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, what we see most of the time is that when you get into any kind of um brain therapy where someone's losing their memory or they're moving into Alzheimer's type symptoms, that the spouse usually starts condemning them because they can't remember things.
SPEAKER_00: And they lose patience with them.
SPEAKER_00: And I asked Dad years ago, I said, Dad, how do you do it?
SPEAKER_00: And he said, here's what really helped me was when God told me she has nothing to do with this.
SPEAKER_00: This is happening to her.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna love her however she comes.
SPEAKER_00: She followed me from one pastor to the next pastor to planting churches and all those things.
SPEAKER_00: Your mom was so supportive of me, it's the least I can do.
SPEAKER_00: But love her and support her with her Alzheimer's.
SPEAKER_00: And so he did.
SPEAKER_00: And so every time you go home, and we come home, there's all the little puzzles and stuff, and they were sophisticated thousand, thousand-piece puzzles, and now it's down to like five.
SPEAKER_00: Mom is more joyful than she was before she got it.
SPEAKER_00: She is.
SPEAKER_00: But I would use that now.
SPEAKER_00: Because of dad's love for my mom.
SPEAKER_00: Because what we're talking about here is neuroplasticity.
SPEAKER_00: Her mind actually being stimulated has held off the disease.
SPEAKER_00: Ralph Waldo Emerson said this: sow a thought, you reap an action.
SPEAKER_00: Sow an action and you reap a habit.
SPEAKER_00: Sow a habit and you reap a character.
SPEAKER_00: Sow a character and you reap a destiny.
SPEAKER_00: So, how do we renew our minds?
SPEAKER_00: I want to give you four thoughts on that.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, transformational living.
SPEAKER_00: Renewing our mind is number one through meditation.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is based on the latest brain, this is it, all four of these points comes from the latest neurology on how to strengthen the muscle of your brain.
SPEAKER_00: And first one is meditation.
SPEAKER_00: We believe in the meditation that comes from God's Word.
SPEAKER_00: So spending time in God's Word.
SPEAKER_00: We call it here P B and J, Prayer, Bible, and Journal.
SPEAKER_00: And you can pick up our bookmark out at the welcome desk.
SPEAKER_00: So spending time in God's Word.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 4.12.
SPEAKER_00: That the word of God is like a living, it's like a living and active.
SPEAKER_00: It's like a sword, and it pierces soul and spirit, uh, bone and marrow, and it actually is a discerner of your heart and mind.
SPEAKER_00: So it's not that you read God's word, God's word reads you.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that we read God's word, God's word reads us.
SPEAKER_00: So we spend time in his word every day that we can.
SPEAKER_00: Number two, renewing our mind comes through deep personal relationships.
SPEAKER_00: Developing deep, meaningful personal relationships.
SPEAKER_00: I'm speaking to the men here.
SPEAKER_00: We call it bloodstained allies.
SPEAKER_00: That's why you need to be at the morning fire if you can.
SPEAKER_00: If your job will allow you to be there for one hour, we start at six, we end at seven.
SPEAKER_00: Now, a lot of the guys hang out with coffee and stuff afterwards, but the actual time together is six to seven because we want to honor your time.
SPEAKER_00: And so when you come, the idea is not only to worship the Lord, not only to pray, not only to hear a good message, but then it's also that you be developing blood-stained allies, other men that can be transformational in your own development.
SPEAKER_00: Positive feelings increase the number of things a person can process.
SPEAKER_00: According to the broaden and build theory, positive emotions trigger the release of the brain chemicals serotonin and dopamine, which play a significant role in motivation, motor control, and executive functions like memory, solving problems, paying attention, and simultaneously thinking about multiple concepts.
SPEAKER_00: That's straight from one of the manuals on the latest research.
SPEAKER_00: See how important relationships are.
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, renewing our mind is thirdly through our actions.
SPEAKER_00: I like this.
SPEAKER_00: Random acts of kindness also trains the brain.
SPEAKER_00: According to research from Harvard, writing a short email to different people each day, praising them for something specific, makes the sender happier and boosts their social connection scores in the top percentile.
SPEAKER_00: Social connectedness is the greatest indicator and predictor of happiness and can result in health benefits that are capable of even helping someone stop smoking.
SPEAKER_00: What are they talking about?
SPEAKER_00: They're saying personal relationships can actually have transformative impact on habits that have been struggles for us.
SPEAKER_00: Yoni Asher, who studies neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder, says this the joy of being connected to other people is really fundamental to who we are as humans.
SPEAKER_00: And the brain is powerfully organized around supporting those connections.
SPEAKER_00: Being connected to each other is the major source of well-being, physical health, mental health, and positive emotion.
SPEAKER_00: And then, fourthly and lastly, renewing our mind comes through journaling.
SPEAKER_00: I kid you not, we've been talking about journaling, what, since the beginning of the road at Chapel Hills, that that's so important, and that's one of the key things that they keep bringing up, is the importance of journaling.
SPEAKER_00: And here's their latest research.
SPEAKER_00: One method of positive journaling is to write three new things for which you are grateful for every day for 21 days.
SPEAKER_00: This trains the brain to constantly be on the lookout for something to appreciate.
SPEAKER_00: Martin Seligman, who considers the father of positive psychology, found that gratitude raises levels of optimism, happiness, and feelings of life satisfaction.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that exciting?
SPEAKER_00: So you ought to have a journal.
SPEAKER_00: I think almost everybody in this room has a journal, but keep that journal, write three things down for 21 days at your thankful park.
SPEAKER_00: See what God will do in your life.
SPEAKER_01: You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_01: We hope you have been blessed by today's message.
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SPEAKER_01: Thanks again for tuning in today.
SPEAKER_01: And be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.