10-26-23-ENG.

"Be renewed in the spirit of your mind. "

Ephesians 4:23 
NEW SOFTWARE
 
Read It: Romans 8:5-7; 12:1-2 God gave you a brain. Use it." How many times have you heard that? Well, it's about half right. God is concerned that you use your mind. But He's even more concerned about how you use your mind. He wants you to think from a divine frame of reference: a Christ-centered, Bible-centered way of thinking about every facet of life. God wants to make sure that when you log onto the computer of your mind, the software you use is drawn from His Word. Paul calls it having the mind of Christ. For this week and next, we want to talk about how to develop and use a thoroughly Christian-that is, Christlike-mind. Now, theologically speaking, we have an immediate problem, because the human mind in its natural state is as far from this ideal as the east is from the west. We learned in our last segment that these earthly bodies, our flesh, are destined for worm food because they are so contaminated by sin that God is going to discard them and give us new ones. Well, our minds are part of that old makeup. They are corrupted by sin, but since we have to use them between now and the grave, God has undertaken a reclamation project for our thinking processes.

As redeemed people, we are to renew our minds after the mind of Christ and not after the pattern of this world. The reason Christianity is in such weak condition today is that the minds of Christians have become obsessed with a way of thinking foreign to the kingdom of God. Romans 12 makes it clear that we need renewed minds. But they only come by the presentation of our bodies as living sacrifices to God and by a determination not to conform to this world. If we are going to think Christianly, we've got some work to do. A recent awarding-winning book goes by the title The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. It laments the lack of critical thinking among God's people and the lack of the will to do the work of thinking. Are you thinking like Christ today? Are you using the mind He gave you? Think About It If you are thinking worldly thoughts, don't be surprised that you begin living a worldly life.