The Mind of Christianity
From the Series: Primal
Speaker: Mark Batterson
Date: January 17, 2010
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Transcript
Welcome to everyone at each of our locations this weekend. Thanks so much for making NCC part of your weekend as we continue our ‘Primal’ series. 2,000 years ago, Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all of your soul, all of your mind and all of your strength.” We call it the Great Commandment and this series is really all about being great at the Great Commandment. We’ve talked about the heart and the soul, and this weekend we are going to get a little cognitive. We are going to talk about loving God with all of our minds.
I am neither a neurologist nor the son of a neurologist, but I have lots of books on neurology on my bookshelf. I am fascinated by the human mind, and I think it is the magnum opus of God’s creativity. On a grand scale, you know that the brain consists of two hemispheres. You have your logical, linear, left brain, your more intuitive, creative right brain, and those two hemispheres are connected by about 300 million nerve fibers called the corpus callosum. In case you care, ladies, you have 40% more connections between those two hemispheres than the men. Guys I don’t want you to feel left out, you have 20% more bone density. This is a gross simplification of something that is so divinely complex, but neurologists have mapped regions and sub-regions of the brain that are responsible for a variety of neurological functions. The auditory cortex, for example, processes sound waves that hit the eardrum and translates them into intelligible language. The amygdala helps us process hundreds of different emotions. Your motor cortex choreographs muscle movement. Then you’ve got your medial prefrontal cortex, one of my favorite parts of the brain, which according to neurologists is the seat of humor. Now, what does all of that have to do with the Great Commandment? Well, if we interpret the Great Commandment literally, and we should, then the answer is – everything. It is not good enough to love God with half of our mind. You can’t just be left brain logical or right brain creative, God wants us to love Him with our whole minds. It is not good enough to be half-minded, that’s no better than half-hearted. God wants to sanctify every part of your mind. It is a gift from Him, He wants to sanctify your logic, sanctify your imagination, He even wants to sanctify your sense of humor, which is going to take a little bit of work for some of you.
The word ‘all’ is all-inclusive. Love the Lord your God with all your mind. Here’s what I want to do this weekend. We are going to zoom in on one little dimension of what it means to love God with our minds. If you have a Bible, turn over to II Corinthians Chapter 10, and we’ll put it on the screens for you so you can follow along there. Typically, we try to unpack several verses or a passage of Scripture each weekend, but this weekend, we are going to focus on one sentence, one verse because it is such a dense truth, but let’s start in verse 1 because I want to help put it in context. II Corinthians 10:1
1By the meekness and gentleness of Christ, I appeal to you—I, Paul, who am "timid" when face to face with you, but "bold" when away! 2I beg you that when I come I may not have to be as bold as I expect to be toward some people who think that we live by the standards of this world. 3For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, [and here’s the phrase we want to zoom in on] and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
It is no coincidence that this last statement is in a passage of Scripture that is dealing with spiritual warfare. We are not going to talk about all the different ways that we wage war spiritually speaking. But I do know this, the battle is won or lost in the mind, and that really is, I think, what the apostle Paul is writing about here. Take every thought captive, make it obedient to Christ.
Let me make an observation, and I think it will make intuitive sense but it is something we don’t really stop to think about that often. Write it down if you’re taking notes. Every thing was once a thought. Every thing was once a thought. Before becoming a physical reality, it was an electro-chemical signal that fired across synapses deep within your cerebral cortex. Now, maybe I should give you an example of what I’m talking about. You are going to have to think this weekend, it is going to take some concentration but I think it is going to be worth it.
The layout of the city where we live existed in the mind of a French architect named Pierre Charles Longfont long before it became a physical reality. The symmetry of the streets, the location of government buildings, they were first conceived in his mind. Those ideas were then transferred to a 20 ounce piece of paper which now sits enshrined in a 108 pound plexi-glass case breathing pressurized argon gas just a few blocks from here. It is one of five such documents on life support at the Library of Congress. Those written plans eventually became the cityscape of Washington DC. It took decades of manual labor and it took millions of dollars and tons of physical material, but here’s the deal, when we are driving down Constitution Avenue or we’re going around Dupont Circle, the streets that we are driving on once only existed in the mind of Pierre Charles Longfont. My physical reality, your physical reality, in a sense, was once nothing more than an idea in the mind of Pierre Charles Longfont.
Every thing was once a thought. So what? Lots of us want to change our physical reality, don’t we? There is something physical, our circumstances or something that we want to change, and many of us focus on changing those things in physical ways, but I would suggest that the deepest and truest kind of change, the most biblical kind of change is change that starts in the mind. Let me just throw this out there to get you thinking. Did you know that the word ‘repentance’ comes from the Greek word ‘metanoia’? Meta means change and noia means mind. To repent means to experience some kind of change in the way our synapses are wired. There is something mental that happens within us. So, this is dangerous to say, but you don’t just have a drinking problem, you have a thinking problem. It is not just an addiction that you are struggling with, listen to me, it is what Paul called a stronghold. There is a mental stronghold that takes place in your mind, that unless you learn to wage war against that mental stronghold, then physically you are going to struggle with that addiction forever.
I just think on every level, this is so true. Some of you came into the New Year and your resolution was that you were going on that New Year diet. You heard about my no soda thing, two thumbs up, by the way, I’m still going for it. Some NCCer was so kind this week and sent me a no sugar raspberry green tea in a bottle as a way that maybe it’s not soda but here’s something to drink. Thank you. So I’m still doing pretty good, but here’s the deal, here’s what’s going to happen, when you go on a diet, what do you think about? All the food you love that you can’t have. So mentally, what are you going to do with those thoughts? That’s painfully practical but I believe that our physical reality is an extension of what’s happening in this amazing mind that God has given to us.
There are a lot of strongholds, depression, addictions, fear, doubt, anxiety, anger, lust, those are mental strongholds. The way you break them down is you have to wage war against them. How do you do that? By taking every thought captive and making it obedient to Christ. That’s a little daunting isn’t it? I did a little bit of research and there is a huge range but the average person, this is interesting to me and it probably depends on how you define the word ‘thought’ but the average person has about 70,000 thoughts per day. Some of you think a lot less than that, some of you think more than that, but that’s a lot of thought. Take them captive and make them obedient to Christ. Just so we are all on the same page, some of those are positive, godly, good thoughts, and that’s primarily what I write about in Primal. I talk about this idea that there are words, thoughts, ideas and impressions that the Spirit of God will put in your mind and we have got to be a good steward of those things. We need to take those things captive and make them obedient to Christ. So there is a positive side to this equation and it would be a lot more fun for me to preach on that, but I write primarily about that side of the equation so I’m not even going to go there.
Now, there are also neutral thoughts. Some of you are experiencing a lot of neutral thoughts. Like, I like the color green. There is nothing wrong with that, nothing necessarily right with that, it’s not going to have a huge impact on your spiritual life. We have a lot of neutral thoughts that are just there, but one way or the other they don’t make a big difference.
But what I want to focus on are those sinful thoughts. If we don’t take them captive, we will never win this spiritual battle that we are in. So, I better say this, this is one of my favorite things, I’d rather have one God idea than a thousand good ideas. I love the idea that God can speak spirit to spirit, mind to mind, and He can put a God idea in your mind and you need to take it captive and make it obedient to Christ. I can tell you story after story of how we’ve done that corporately as a church. And even in my life, the things I’m so grateful for, you take those dreams captives, those ideas, those impressions and you act on them and they become reality. But we are going to focus on that place where I think the battle is won or lost.
How do you take a thought captive and make it obedient to Christ? How do you do that? I mean, if there are 70,000 thoughts floating around, and I don’t know what percentage is for the ones you need to take captive and get out of your mind, but how do you do that? Well, we are going to get pretty basic here, but in a way that I think is going to help you think about these things in a way that you’ve never thought about them before.
Here’s the first key. I think the first key is reading the Bible. I know, it seems like every message, you’re talking about reading the Bible. Yes! Because that’s a really good idea! I’m going to shoot straight with you, we don’t want to be a church that is producing spiritual codependents. I’m going to study the Word and preach to the best of my ability and as soon as I’m omniscient, I will let you know! You need to study the Word for yourself. We are going to pray for you, and we’ve got wonderful children’s ministries and youth ministries and we are going to help disciple your kids, but let me shoot straight, it’s not my responsibility. It is your responsibility to be studying the Word and to be in prayer. Thank God for our children’s ministries that tag team with us as parents but it is not their responsibility to disciple my kids. It is my responsibility to disciple my children. So we need to take ownership of that.
We will launch into our reading plan, reading through the Bible together corporately and preaching through it together as a church at the beginning of Lent, I’m so excited about that. But let me talk about this maybe in a way that you haven’t thought about it before.
Dr. A. B. Carney and Dr. Leslie Ungerleider, National Institute of Mental Health, did a study a few years ago and it was simply subjects performing a very simple motor task, it was a finger-tapping exercise. As subjects tapped, the doctors conducted an MRI brain scan to identify what part of the brain was being activated. The subjects then were asked to practice that finger-tapping exercise daily for four weeks. At the end of the four-week period, the brain scan was repeated, and in every instance, it revealed that the area of the brain, that motor cortex, the area of the brain involved in the task had expanded. That simple task, a finger-tapping exercise, literally recruited new nerve cells and rerouted neuronal connections. Huh! Here’s the thing, the simple thing began to change the mind, the configuration of the mind. The reason I cite that study is because I think that’s the simplest thing in the world, a finger-tapping exercise, now juxtapose that with Romans 12: Do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Here’s what happens when we begin to read Scripture. As we are reading it, it has this amazing neurological effect on us. As we read God’s truth, it begins to recruit new nerve cells and rewire neuronal connections and your mind begins to change shape. And here’s ultimately the objective, I love this because this is a beautiful picture, in the New Testament, it says let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. The ultimate goal is for us to have the mind of Christ, to think the way He thought. For all of the regions and sub-regions, every part of our brain to begin to fire like the One that we follow and for our brain to begin to take that shape. How does that happen? As we begin to read Scripture, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God, as we read the Word, our minds are literally rewired until they become the mind of Christ.
Let me give you one more picture. When you read the Bible, I would like for you to be thinking, ok, I’m not punching the time card, like here’s five minutes, do your religious duty and good to go, forget what you read and keep doing what you’ve done. No. The goal here is not even the accumulation of knowledge. The truth is that all of us are educated way beyond the level of our obedience already. So on one level, it is not a knowledge thing that we need. What we need is the mind of Christ, formed in us so we begin to think the way that He thinks.
During his career as a neurosurgeon, Dr. Wilder Penfield performed 1,132 open brain surgeries. Most of his patients suffered from epilepsy and he wanted to know why, so what he did was they would go into the operating room, the skull would be removed but the patient would remain awake with the use of a local anesthetic so that the patient could actually converse with Dr. Penfield as he performed this open brain surgery. Some of you are giving me that look like you don’t want to hear this, but I’m going to tell you. During one such operating, Dr. Penfield made a discovery. Using a very mild electrical current to stimulate a part of the brain, he found that his patient would experience flashbacks, vivid memories from the past replayed in their mind’s eye. One patient recalled every note from a symphony she had heard at a concert years before. 30 times, he stimulated that same part of the brain and 30 times she recalled every note from that symphony. Another patient recalled sitting at a train stop as a child and she could verbally describe every train car as it went by in her mind’s eye. And he found that some of the memories that were triggered actually pre-dated some of their first conscience memories. He was tapping into things that were there, that they had forgotten about. Dr. Penfield concluded that every experience we’ve ever had is recorded in this internal hard drive, if you will, that region of our brain known as the cerebral cortex. Here’s how it works, and this is where it gets critical because I want to break it down in a very nuance way because I think many of the reasons that we suffer from the same problems and fall into the same traps and have the same issues is because we have a superficial understanding of it and we’ve never really understood at a deep level what’s wrong. So, here it is. When you hear a song or see a picture or read a book, a line is traced on the surface of the cerebral cortex called an ingram or a memory trace. The brain functions a lot like an etch-a-sketch, if you will. If you hear the same song or see the same picture or read the same book, the line is retraced. And with each repetition, the ingram gets deeper and deeper until finally, listen to me, the song, the picture, the verse is literally ingrained on your brain. A memory is an inscription. What I’m saying is, when you read the Word, you are inscribing it on your cerebral cortex and it is becoming the mind of Christ! I think that is such an awesome thing, that we can point our lives toward that. But the only way you are going to get there is to read the Word.
That’s a macro understanding of it, but let me jump into one other verse. Hebrews 4:12 says: For the Word of God is living and active. Now, that’s why the Bible is unlike any other book that you’ll read, because those other books are dead trees, but the Bible is living and active. The same Spirit of God that inspired those writers thousands of years ago illuminates us as the readers and that Word begins to come to life in us. For some reason, as I saw living and active, I thought about the property of yeast, that you put it in the dough and the dough begins to rise. I don’t understand all the mechanics of that but in the same sense, it’s like the Word is yeast in our spirit and our spirits begin to rise and something comes alive in us as the Word is conceived in us. Then is says: sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. You know why a lot of us don’t read the Bible? Because it is just too darn convicting, because we don’t want it to judge the thoughts and attitudes of our hearts. That’s why, when you are in a place where sin is winning the battle against you, the enemy wants to keep you from God’s Word, because it is the thing that will begin to reveal the thoughts that you need to confront. That’s why sometimes we just go on about our lives and do our thing. Why does something never change? Because we’ve never stood in front of the Word of God long enough, James described it as a mirror, we’ve never gotten in front of that mirror long enough to say, God let me look beyond the surface and see deep into the dividing soul and spirit into the thoughts and attitudes of my heart. Listen to me, it’s because we dissect the Word of God instead of allowing the Word of God to dissect us. You’ve got to be in the Word, otherwise, you can’t even identify what’s wrong.
So the process of taking thoughts captive and making them obedient to Christ begins by reading the Word of God.
The second key is prayer. I love prayer. There are so many different ways to think about it and talk about it. How many of you have ever had this experience? You are praying and a thought surfaces that just seems to come from nowhere? Yes? Now, some of those thoughts are some of those convicting things that you need to deal with, but some of those are like a dream you hadn’t thought about in years. Is God resurrecting something in your spirit? Some of those are just insight into what’s wrong. See, as you begin to pray, it is like a depth charge that begins to surface things in your mind. So some of those things that get repressed deep within the subconscious, I know I’m sounding Freudian this weekend, but listen, the Scriptures in I Corinthians that the Spirit searches the deep things of God. And in the same way, the Spirit searches the deep things within us, and as we pray, it begins to surface things.
The Aramaic word for prayer is a hunting idea, jot this down, it means to set a trap. On a larger level, here’s what happens when we don’t pray – the opportunities that God is sending our way, right and left, every day, opportunities to love someone and encourage someone or share our faith with someone, here’s what happens, if we are not in prayer mode and we haven’t set a trap, we miss those opportunities. And, the opportunity costs are staggering. I think it was Billy Graham who said that heaven is full of answers to prayer for which we never bothered to ask. But in the same sense, I think some of us continue in sinful patterns or struggle with self-destructive thoughts because it is only in prayer that I think we really have the spiritual insight and power to be able to take something captive, to set a prayer, to identify it and do something about it. Part of it is because we approach prayer as us talking to God instead of that other dimension of God talking to us, so we don’t allow Him to begin to speak to us and we continue to struggle with many of the same problems that we’ve always had. Here’s the thing, Lora and I in the last year have been converted from PC to Mac. I know that will get a varied response, but a couple of weeks ago, we are trying to find our way in Mac world, we went into the Mac World and we had a one to one with one of their genius bar. That is so cool! I wish we could call church that, welcome to the genius bar. So we go in and here’s the craziest thing in the world, all the things we were struggling with, all the problems we were having, see that little apple up there? I had never noticed that! It said to click on it and go to system preference, and most of the problems we were having was because we had a setting we didn’t want to have, and it has been amazing! Wow! All you have to do is make those little changes.
So, here’s some good news, we are talking about rewiring the mind, let your mind be renewed. In a sense, it is downloading Scripture to upgrade our operating system, if you will. What does the Scripture have to say about this? Jot some Scripture down because of you have the wrong mental setting. Your minds are set on the wrong things and maybe thinking about it in computer terms might help you, because I’m telling you, for some of you, the biggest difference in the world for you, your life could be revolutionized if you change one little setting. Here’s a couple of settings. Romans 8:5: Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set. In Scripture, it is two words but you can put it together, ‘mindset,’ their minds set on what that nature desires. How much of our thoughts are consumed with getting what our human, sinful nature wants? And then likewise, but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The only way you can live on that level is to be in prayer because prayer is where God begins to get our minds set. We go to another place mentally and our minds become set on what He wants. Colossians 3:2 is another example: Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. Philippians 4:8, I love this one, I’m telling you right now, this may be the prescription for whatever ails you, Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. It is so critical. Prayer helps us begin to set our minds on the things that God wants us to be focused on.
This probably goes without saying but how many of you know that we tend to see what we are looking for? We talked about it last week, our family is doing this gratitude journal and it’s going great so far. Every night, everybody writes down something they are grateful for. When we are looking for something to be grateful for, you will find it. You tend to see what you are looking for. I experienced it last weekend watching the Packers Cardinals game. There was a facemask on the last play. But then again, I’m a Packers fan. If you are a Cardinals fan, it was incidental contact. Isn’t it funny, even in the football realm! That’s because it is human nature, this mind set idea of where are we going to focus our minds?
Finally, the third key is confession. This might be worth jotting down, or I Twittered it earlier, you can find it there. If you aren’t confessing, you are repressing and eventually it will get downright depressing. You only have two options, if you are confessing your sin, you are repressing your sin, and what’s happening is, your mind is getting cluttered. Your mind is not at the place where it needs to be, so again, the word ‘repent’ change of mind, what you need to do is confess that sin. Here’s something I’ve learned, I don’t know what you’re going to get out of this message, but maybe this is it, the more defined the confession, I think the greater possibility that you won’t do the same thing again. I think many of us make this superficial confession and we never really deal with the nuances of what’s going on, and because of that, we continue in the same pattern. So what we need to do is actually spend some concentrated time in confession. That’s how you take that thing captive.
The Word helps you identify the thought that you need to take captive. Prayer helps you set a trap for that thing. Then it is in confession that you take that thing captive and make it obedient to Christ. If you confess your sin, I John 1:9, He is faithful and just to forgive you of your sin and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. What happens then is that God doesn’t just forgive and forget, it is not just a judicial thing that then our sin is forgiven and we are in right standing with God, it is deeper than that. It is more than that. What God does as you confess that thing to Him, as you take it captive and confess it, God begins to purify your mind. He begins to purify your mind so that you begin to think his thoughts.
Some of you are here this weekend and this makes sense to you. You understand. But you’ve tried so many times. I really feel like what the Lord wants to say to you is try again. You’ve got to take some steps. You remember Jesus said, in the law it talks about adultery, but I tell you that if you look at a woman lustfully that you’ve committed adultery with her in your heart. And He said if your right eye causing you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. Now, that’s hyperbole, but Jesus is saying you need to take extreme measure to make sure you don’t keep going to that tempting place, that sinful place. Some of you have tried so many times, but I’m telling you it is going to take his power in you. Do you think for a day that you could change the pattern and live in purity before the Lord? You can’t do it in your own strength, but at the beginning of the day, you could say, ‘Oh God, fill me with your Spirit. I’m going to stay in your Word and stay in prayer and I’m going to continue to confess before You.’ What happens is, slowly but surely, your physical reality begins to mirror the deep work that God is doing, that metanoia work that God is doing within your mind.
The battle is won or lost in the mind. May the Lord help us to win that battle. Let’s pray together.
Lord, we come to You right now and ask for your help. Lord I think this is one of those messages that for a lot of us, we so desperately want to change the strongholds in our lives. I can see the anger, I can see the lust, the depression, the fear, the anxiety that seems to grip the hearts and minds, God I pray that You would help us through your Word and in prayer and through confession, that God, You would begin a new work in us and change us from the inside out. Lord I pray that You would help each one of us to identify the thoughts that we need to take captive. Lord for some here this weekend, it is like thousands of thoughts and it is so overwhelming because of that. But God I pray that maybe we could begin with one area, that You would help us, by your Spirit, some area that we need to take captive and make it obedient to Christ. And God that You would empower us to do it. And Lord I pray that in all of this, we’d be motivated by the fact that we want to love You with all of our minds. We want to be pleasing children to You. We ask and pray for your help, in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Ministry Transcription
Margaret Salyers
606-706-5006
margaretsalyers@gmail.com
