This is the Introduction to the Sermon. You will receive the full manuscript sermon in Word format when you purchase.
Title: “Renewed by our Thinking”
Series: A Brand New You: Becoming the Person You were Created to Be
Introduction:
The average brain weighs about three pounds – it contains 12 billion cells. Each one of these cells is connected to 10,000 other brain cells, totaling 120 trillion brain connections. Dr. Duane Gish has observed that “the human brain is the most complex arrangement of matter in the universe.” Some have compared the brain to a sophisticated computer, but technology still has a long way to go before it can duplicate the brain’s capabilities.
The brain is not only the most complex mechanism in the world; it is the most influential organ in your body. It accounts for your ability to think, remember, love, hate, feel, reason, imagine and analyze. Everything we see, hear, touch and smell is recorded on the lobes of the brain.
Your brain elevates you high above the animal kingdom – it literally sustains your life. If you are brain dead, you are dead because the brain supervises everything you do from the involuntary beat of your heart to the conscious decisions of daily life. It also houses your intuition, your conscience and your sexuality. It both houses and actually constitutes the mind. [end of illustration.]
Proverbs 23:7 summarizes so well the over-arching significance of the mind as far as God is concerned in this poetic declaration:
For as he thinks within himself, so he is. – Proverbs 23:7a (NASB)
We may rightly conclude that the human mind is the single most important entity in Creation – for as it goes, so goes the person and the society in which he/she lives. Who and what we will be then must have its origin and sustenance in the mind. What we sanction or suppress mentally determines whether we take the high road less traveled or the low road which is far more popular.
The degree to which we attain the mind of Christ will determine the quality of life we enjoy as well as the eternity we will experience. When we train our minds to become like the mind of Christ Himself we will find ourselves well on the way to personal renewal, because we will begin to think, act and do things like Jesus Himself.
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. – Romans 12:2 (ESV)
The point of this is simple – the pattern of conformity to the world is broken and a person’s life is transformed only if and when the mind is renewed. Whether this renewal of the mind will take place depends upon our daily mental discipline.
Unquestionably and repeatedly the thought life is identified in Scripture as the very source of godliness or worldliness; holiness or unholiness. Our thinking may be dominated by the Holy Spirit or the evil one. We make the determination – we give the permission – we exercise the control. Our thought life is the real battleground – it is in our thinking that the most basic spiritual struggle takes place.
In the Old Testament as well as the New, the government of the mind is the condition which brings about spiritual transformation at the deepest level of a person’s being and determines whether we are holy and pleasing to God. There are two basic areas that we need to really concentrate on today, so that we can truly experience A Brand New You.