I Need to Be More Spiritually Minded

Introduction

Good evening. I’m so glad you’re here, and I’m especially glad. And I may be showing in some means a little prejudice here, so forgive me. But I’m especially glad to see all the families out and all of you who brought your little kids out. I know what a challenge that is. And even though my kids right now are both in college, I remember that season of life so well. That fun time when you’re all racing off to get to the building on a weeknight and you’re scrubbing faces in the car and somebody fell asleep, and you’ve got to wake them up, somebody spilled something, then you’ve got to get this in the bag and this in the back. Did you guys change your clothes? And you all come in there and you put a big smile on your face when you walk in New York.

Everybody goes, Oh, they got it all together. And you go, Yes, we do.

But I want to say this to you. Your faith is powerful. And what you’re doing is extremely powerful. And you will never, ever regret taking your children to assemblies, even when it’s very inconvenient. You’ll never gonna regret that. And I want to say to all those of you who are younger, who have lives of your own and all kinds of things going on with school, that maybe you had to give up something at school or something else that was going on tonight that you chose to be here, God bless you in that decision. Very proud of you. And that’s something you’ll never regret as well. Alright, let’s get into it. I want to begin with a simple question. And I think I think I know how many of you are going to answer this.

How many of you here have ever seen snow? Yeah, didn’t you get a snow this pasture? Actually, you see a few plates, and everybody goes, oh, snow in Houston. Yeah, it’s exciting. I grew up in West Texas, as I told you, and I grew up in Lubbock. And one of the things about Lubbock is you had good four seasons of weather all the time. But every year, every year, you could expect one good snow. And in fact, it would be such a good snow that they would close school because there would be so much snow on the ground and things would freeze over. And oh, those were great days. One day in particular, when I was in my early teens, my brother and I were looking for something to do, so we invited over our best friends, Rod and Lance.

They came over to the house, and we went out to this park that was right by our house, and this was the coolest park in the world when it snowed. Because it had a lake, and the lake was frozen. And on the edges of the lake were these little ravines. Now, this is West Texas, all right. if you were to jump up on a stump, you could see Houston. It’s that flat, and you know you’ve been there. But we had these little ravines that were cut up around the lake, and so they were good places to hide, and they felt like little canyons, and it was a great place for a snowball fight. Well, we got out there, divided up teams, and the war commenced.

And if you’ve ever been in a snowball fight, that’s a blast. I mean, there is nothing more fun than a snowball fight until you’re out of ammunition. It’s not too much fun. And Rod and I ran out of snowballs, and Lance and Todd were just pummeling us because we were dumb enough to go to the bottom of those ravines, a bad strategic military decision, and we’re just getting lambasted, and we had to make a decision. Do we stay here until they run out and just get pummeled? Or do we make a break for it? Well, that was break for it. Well, the place to break for it was across the lake. So we went running across a frozen lake. And I, at the first thought, at first I thought about this may not be a good idea, but I’m like, hey, I’m walking on water.

So I was just running across the frozen lake. As soon as we got to the other side, Lance and Todd decided to follow us. And as soon as we got to the other side, we heard the most eerie sound you’ve ever heard in your life. It was the ice cracking. And I turned around just in time to see my best friend and my brother go down. And that was horrible. I mean, it was cold, clearly, the water is frozen. It’s cold water. And you know, you’re in Boy Scouts, and all your Boy Scout mind was going on. Okay, hypothermia, this, that, and the other. How do you save them? What do you do? And I’m like, oh, you’re going to get a big limb. And you reach out there.

Well, this is West Texas. There’s no trees. There’s no limb. And so all this is going on in my mind, and there’s probably only about a millionth of a second, and all these bad things. And they’re like, oh, they’re going to die, they’re going to die, they’re going to die. And then an epiphany hit me. I had the answer to save their lives. And so I looked to Lance and Ron and I put my hands up to my mouth and I said, Lance, call. Stand up. No, seriously. Stand up. And they finally stopped panicking and they stood up, and the water level came to battle right there.

Now I was the one falling over, just flailing and laughing. But it was so funny. We kind of got back to the house. We’re all just soaking wet. My mom was so mad. But it was one of the greatest days of my life, and I went on the right hand. I’ll never laugh that hard again the rest of my life. That was it. I’m done. I’m done. But here’s what was interesting about it. The more I think about that crazy situation. It’s funny now. But at the time I was certain they were going to die. And they were too. Because anybody who looked down in the eyes, you’ve always heard the horror stories, and you know what that’s like. You go down in the eyes and it’s it’s over.

It’s over. But isn’t it interesting how our minds will do that to us? And then we find some sort of a solution that we look at and go, well, yeah, that really wasn’t that big of a deal. And here I was freaking out. But that’s what happens to us. The most powerful organ that we have, the most powerful thing about our human body in the way that God created us is our mind. But our mind gives us perceptions. And sometimes our perceptions of reality aren’t exactly true. But the perception seems so true to us, we believe it, and then all of a sudden we’re filled with all this anxiety, with all this fear, with all this turmoil, with all this despair. And it’s all going on where?

In our minds. I want you to think about how many times in Scripture we have examples of people who were deceived by what they saw, and they were deceived in their minds. Let’s go all the way back to the garden, all right? Here’s a man and woman, and they’re walking with God, and God is with them, and God is a part of their life, and they have a relationship with God. But then one day, a serpent comes to Eve and says, You know what? Look around you. Look with your eyes. There’s more to this than you realize. And he uses some fruits. And he says, look at that fruit. Don’t you want it? Isn’t that great? And has anybody else ever looked back at that story and marveled at the fact?

And this is the way Moses wrote it. And they saw that the fruit was good. How do they know? How do they know? Anybody who like tomatoes? I can’t identify with you. There is nothing good about a tomato. But they look good. I’ll give you that. It looks good. May I suggest to you that was the first fake news ever shared on the earth? Right back there in the garden. There’s your fake news. Same taste good. No, it wasn’t. There was nothing good. But it looked good to their eyes. The Israelites. The Israelites. What did their eyes do to them and their perception of reality when God was trying to bring them out of Egypt? And especially when God was leading them through the wilderness, they were always being deceived with their eyes.

Oh, it’s hopeless. Oh, we’re going to die. Oh, we don’t have any food. Oh, nobody can live out here. Oh, it’s a barren land. Oh. And God’s like, what? What are you doing? Remember Samson? There’s a great story. Remember how Samson would court for a woman? Oh, yeah. This is good stuff. Woman, pretty. Get her for me. That’s right out of Judges 14. That’s what he did to his parents. Hey, Samson, tell me about her character. Doesn’t matter. She looks good. Tell me about her beliefs, her principles. Doesn’t matter. She looks good. He fell for the fake news. The disciples, when they were in the boat. And they saw the wind and the waves. What did they immediately think in their minds because of what they saw?

It’s hopeless. We’re not going to live through this. The waves are too big. The storm is too strong. It’s hopeless for us. Oh. Jesus is like, really?

Really?

I want you to consider tonight, and this is what our focus is going to be. That we need to have a mind. But our mind must be different from the world’s. And our mind, as we see in Scripture and what the Lord is constantly trying to impress upon us, our mind needs to be a mind that is filled with spirituality. It is a mind that is focused on the things that pertain to life and godliness. In 1 Corinthians chapter 1, Paul will talk about just what people see in the cross. He said, to some people, it’s foolishness when they look at the claw, at the cross. What do you see when you look at the cross? What do you see? And let’s really be honest with ourselves.

Every single one of us struggle with what we see. Because we always think what we see must really be real, and what we see is reality. And how many times have our eyes deceived us? Oh, it looks good. Oh, it looks right. Or it looks bad. Oh, it looks awful. And we would see. What’s the opposite of spiritual-mindedness? Anybody think? What would be the opposite of spiritual-mindedness? It would be worldliness, wouldn’t it? In other words, a mind that is focused upon the world. I would suggest to you that of all the issues that are facing the church today, and a lot of the issues that we feel like we need to preach on or talk about or teach on, that the biggest issue has always been the biggest issue, and it will always be the biggest issue.

And it’s not some doctrine from some religion, it’s not some outside source who’s teaching some crazy ideology. The biggest challenge for all of us is worldliness. And it consumes us. Think about it. Without a spiritual mind, we can easily be teaching our children religion without relationship. Or faith without real foundations or service without sacrifice. Oh, sure, we may have some degree of the truth, some idea of knowledge, but we’ve left out the spiritual-minded part of it. And maybe sometimes we’re preaching the gospel, but failing to preach the gospel without the joy and the peace and the confidence and the security that comes from it. I won’t ask for a show of hands because I’ve done this before in front of an audience of people, and it embarrassed me, and I think it embarrassed them, so I won’t do it to you.

But if I was to ask you to raise your hand tonight, if you’ve been baptized into Christ and you’re a Christian, I know most of your hands would go up. And my follow-up question would be this. So are you 100% confident you’re going to heaven? Keep your hand up. And you know what would happen? A lot of hands would go down. Why do we do that? Well, that sells real good when you go to the world and you try to teach them the gospel. Hey, let me come through the gospel with you. I’m going to teach you, get baptized into Christ. Will this thing I go to heaven? Maybe. You just might. If you’re lucky, we’ll find out when we get there. Boy, that sounds real good.

But it’s where sometimes we’ve allowed our minds and our eyes to deceive us. I believe you should be able to answer that question unequivocally, 100% yes. If you are spiritually minded. I hope you have the heavenly library with you because here’s what I want you to do. I want you to take down the book of 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians, and I want you to go to chapter 2. 1 Corinthians chapter 2. I want to look at a passage of scripture here. And what’s interesting about this passage of scripture is that this passage of scripture not only defines spirituality for us, but it also describes it in great detail. Now, here’s one of the things I want you to remember. I use that phrase all the time, the heavenly library.

You’re like, oh, hey, this guy just comes up with something fancy. You know, he’s got to have those preachers in their text phrases. There’s a reason why I do that. And this is what we do back home. We want everyone in our church family back home to bear in mind it’s not one book. It’s 66 books. And each and every one of these books has its own context written by a specific author to a specific people at a certain time. And it needs to be studied within that boundary of understanding what was the context and the purpose of the book. Does that make sense? What you’re actually doing when you’re reading the Bible is you’re actually reading somebody else’s mail, if I can steal a line from my friend Marty Pickham.

Alright? You’re reading what was written to somebody else. So for you to understand it, you need to get into the context and understand what it was like for them when they received the message and what the author was trying to impart when he shared the message. This particular message in 1 Corinthians chapter 2 is written by Paul to a church. And let’s just say this church, to some degree, is out of its mind. Alright? Now, why would I say that they are out of their mind? Well, they’re dividing over who taught them the gospel. Can you imagine? Oh, Paul baptized me. Who you baptized? Oh, Paul is.

Oh, so this guy. Oh no, this guy. Oh no, this guy. And they were dividing over that. Can you imagine? Can you imagine? Can you imagine the suiness of it all? But it got worse. They had sexual immorality in their congregation. In fact, what Paul says, it was sexual immorality that even the Gentiles wouldn’t do. It was that bad. And they didn’t do anything about it. I’ve often wondered, was that guy just a great giver? You know, what was going on there? Was he just loaded, you know, and you know, and if we kick him out, contribution’s going to drop in half, and oh my word, we owe so much on this building, and why you have to. Who knows? Pure apathetic. But they hadn’t dealt with it.

And Paul’s like, you’re out of your minds. you go to their assemblies when you get a little bit later in the letter, and they’re arguing over preeminence in the assembly, who’s gets to talk, and who gets to talk well, and there, and then the women were fighting for their place, and then they were turning the Lord’s Supper into a drunken feast. Can you imagine? Oh, did you say, oh, brother so-and-so? Oh, man, he got hammered the other day from the Lord’s Supper. Did you see that guy? Oh, wow. They were out of their minds. Out of their minds. But they called it a church.

1. Spirituality Comes First from God's Spirit

They just didn’t have spirituality in mind. So here’s what Paul says close to the beginning of the letter. 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 11. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God. That we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words. Not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit. Interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God. Why? They’re folly to him. And he is not able to understand them.

Why? Because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. For who has understood the mind of the Lord as to instruct him. But we have the mind of Christ. Slow down. Paul just shared a ton of thoughts there. And what he actually does is he implores us to understand what spirituality really is. If you’re running to somebody who’s going, I just want to be more spiritual. I really don’t want to go to church, and I really want to go.

Or you’ve got somebody who’s, you know, they’re really not happy with this or that, and they’re kind of church hopping or they’re hopping from theology to theology, and they’re, well, I’m just trying to find the spirit. And once I find the spirit, I’ll be fine. It’s almost as if they’re trying to find some high mountain. They can go up all the way up to the top and up above the clouds, and they’ll see some wise person there, and this person will give them all the answers, and they’re going to turn around and go, ah, well, I want you to notice what Paul does when he defines spirituality. Spirituality has nothing to do with mere feelings. In fact, what Paul says is this. The spirit and the whole concept of spirituality is what comes from the Holy Spirit, or more importantly, the Spirit of God.

Go back and notice in verse 11. He begins with this idea in mind. Who knows your thoughts? Who knows your thoughts? Who knows what’s going on in your mind right now? Well, really, only you. Why? Because they’re your thoughts. They’re your thoughts. It’s from your mind. And this is what Paul says. Spirituality and the spirit comes directly from the mind of God. Now, that doesn’t mean that you come go out to some big beautiful mountain range and feel God’s presence because you can see the handiwork of God. David talks about that in the Psalm, but I go out and I see the wonders of your creation, the moon and the stars that you’ve ordained. What is man? Well, he could see that there clearly had to be a God.

But creation doesn’t tell you the mind of God. But the Holy Spirit does. The Holy Spirit tells you exactly what God is thinking. And it tells you exactly what spirituality is. And so when you dig into the passage, I want you to notice these five important truths about spirituality. Number one, spirituality comes first and foremost from God’s spirit. When somebody says, I want to be more spiritual, the reply is, oh, so you want to learn more of the Holy Spirit. That’s what it means. That’s what spirituality is. It’s God’s term about his spirit. And these truths, these truths are free to all of us. They’re free. Notice that’s what Paul says here. They are things that are freely given to us by God. In other words, anybody can get this.

Anybody. Have you ever found yourself sometime going, you know, they are so spiritual. Oh my word, this person over here, all what they do is just so amazing. I could never be like that. I could just never. Yes, you could. Yes, you could. That’s exactly what Paul is saying. This is something that can be comprehended by any of us because it’s freely given to those who will be willing to seek it. In Ephesians 1, he says it like this that he says to the brethren, I want the eyes of your heart to be enlightened. Why? That you may know the hope of the inheritance of things. He says, I want all of you to get this. And I want all of you to feel this and know this.

And then he goes on to say, you’re not going to find them in nature. These truths are not going to come merely from the natural world. Now here’s what’s interesting. Last night when we had the devotion, all right? We, one of the things we did last night with the devotion with the kids is we looked at a great scene from nature. It was cool, wasn’t it? You know, water buffalo, lions, crocodiles, oh my. It was great, all right. And it taught us some simple lessons. But every single one of the lessons that we saw in the story were actually biblical principles that we’d already learned from God’s word. We just applied it to the story. So what Paul is actually saying is he’s not saying that nature can’t teach you anything, but he says when it comes to true spirituality, it comes only from God.

And here’s the deal it can only be discerned through somebody who has that spiritual lens. In other words, they’re freely opening their mind to spiritual things and not things of the world. In other words, they’re going to close their eyes so that they’re not deceived by the world. Think of it. God shared his mind. He shared his spirit to Adam and Eve in the garden when he says, all right, here’s the deal. Enjoy it. Enjoy it all. But don’t eat of the truth. God, tell me exactly what’s going on in your mind. There it is. Enjoy. Just don’t eat of the tree. And what did they do? Well, some could say Eve was thinking, oh, but I want to be complete. In fact, isn’t that what Satan said to Eve?

Didn’t he say, no. God knows, and this is why God doesn’t want you to eat it. God knows in the day that you eat it, you’re going to be like him. He’s holding you back. God, he’s holding me back. I mean, I could be more, I could do more.

Oh, that looks so good. What happened? Started looking through a natural lens at their relationship with God, didn’t he? That’s Paul’s point. This is to be spiritually discerned. And those who are spiritually minded are those who are going to be seeking the mind of God. And when they seek the mind of God, notice what he says. This is amazing. And believers get the mind of Christ. I want you to think about that for a moment. I every now and then do a lot of pre-marriage counseling, living at a college town, you can imagine. And one of the things I always do with them every time that is I especially get closer to the end, we start talking about money. I said, have y’all ever heard about the greatest thing in the world outside of our relationship with the Lord?

They go, no, what? I said, let’s go to Dave Ramsey. You ever wanted to win the lottery? God. But I can’t play. I can’t gamble. No worries. I’m going to show you how to win it without gambling. It’s great. And so I go to this wealth calculator, investment calculator, because they’re all young and in their 20s, and if they just put $100 away for like 30 years, how much money they had at the end of it. And they go, oh, that’s so cool. I say, yeah, isn’t you know what it’s called? Compounding interest. Compounding interest. You know what Albert Einstein said? That was the greatest thing ever. The smartest mind of your way, ah, the greatest thing ever. What is it, Albert? Compounding interest.

That’s amazing. Oh. Because literally, your money makes money for you in the end. Oh, wow. To have that mind. Well, you know why that’s attractive to people? Because it’s money. Money. It’s a reticent. And there’s other owners. But Paul says, you ever thought about this? What would it be like to have the mind of Jesus Christ?

To have a mind that knows how to relate to others, how to teach others, how to associate with others, how to win. Wouldn’t that be great? He says, This is how you get it. When you open yourself up to the Spirit of God. Spirituality. To put your confidence only in the Lord. One of the things that we’ve been doing this past year with our kids and our teen group is we’ve been spending a lot of time talking about Navy SEALs. We have a little acronym for this. We call it SEAL training, spirituality, edification, attitude, and leadership in the Lord training. But one of the things that we’ve done is we started reading a lot about Navy SILS, and it’s amazing when you go back and you see how they how they live and how they work and especially how they train.

What’s amazing is some of their slogans that they live with. Some of their slogans of the Navy SILs are these.

Alright, okay. Alright. The most amazing thing about their training is that they are trained to prepare their minds. They are literally put in situations in which they feel like they might die. They’re thrown in the frozen pond and said, survive. They’re put in the places that you would typically not want to go, and they are told to survive. And what they’re taught to do is regulate fear. In other words, they are taught to embrace fear. Fear can actually be your friend. Fear is an adrenaline that comes from the chemicals in your brain that are constantly churning and telling you there’s danger, there’s danger, there’s danger, there’s danger. And they are taught to slow down at those moments and use that fear to their advantage. And they’re taught to plan, they’re taught to see a path out, and they’re taught at those times to execute and use that adrenaline to their advantage.

It’s amazing when you get in there training and see all that. And the more that we got into it, and the more that we got studying it, we realized that’s what God’s trying to do with all of us. The thing that God wants to change about us the most is our mind. Our mind.

2. Meditation on the Spiritual Truths of God

Set your mind on things above. So here’s what I want to give you tonight as we think about, oh, I really want to be more spiritually minded. What does it mean to be spiritually minded? Well, I want to give you God’s take-home for the unbeatable spiritual mind. The training that comes from God’s word to not only make us more spiritually minded, but to give us a mind that we can make it through anything. The first thing that you see with this spiritual mindedness, it begins with this M meditation. Meditation. Then we become individuals who meditate on the spiritual truths of God. Psalms 119. Y’all heard of that Psalm adventure? The longest chapter in the Bible in which every single verse is about the power and the glory of God’s word.

Eight times, eight times in that Psalm alone, the psalmist will implore us to meditate on God’s word. Joshua. Remember Joshua? Remember when he was commissioned to lead the people into the land in Joshua chapter 1, his mentor Moses was gone, and it’s now his responsibility to lead the people into this unknown territory. What did God tell him? Remember? He says, be strong and courageous. Three times he says, be strong and courageous. Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and courageous, being careful to do all that Moses, my servant commanded you to do. And then he tells him this meditate on my law. Don’t turn from it to the right or to the left, but meditate on it.

Meditate on it. What’s he telling Joshua to do? Joshua, you need more Bible study. No. He’s saying you know it. But I want it to be in your mind. I want you to meditate on it. Alright, can I say something here? And don’t throw me out of the church, please. Don’t throw anything at me. Let me finish. Alright. I believe sometimes we harp too much on Bible study. Don’t, don’t, don’t. Oh, nope, oh, don’t.

Whenever there’s an issue, or where there’s a problem, or whether that you need more Bible study. God, you need more Bible. There’s a point. You need, it’s like the cure for everything. Well, I’m a big believer in Bible study. I’m a preacher. But you know what we really need to do sometimes? Especially those of you who’ve been in Bible study for a long time. We need to step back and just meditate on what God’s given us. To really let those truths sink down into our hearts. Maybe it’s not Bible study we need. Maybe it’s memorization. More importantly, meditation. Turning your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 11. I want you to see something. What’s really amazing. When you get to Hebrews 11 and you go through Hebrews 12, there is actually a continuous theme.

And I know what you’re thinking is well, it’s a continuous theme about faith. And yes, it is. But I want you to notice something very important about all these great men and women of faith. Their faith did not come by what they saw. In other words, what you find when you go through all of these stories is they always saw something different. There was a natural thing to see, but they saw something different. And in Hebrews chapter 11, in Hebrews chapter 11, verses 13 to 16, the Hebrew writer says this is what all of them had in common. All these died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them from afar. Well, wait, come out. Did they really see them?

Did they really see them? No. They were from afar. What? They meditated on it. They had heard all about it, but they believed it was there. They could see it in the back of their mind. They could see it when they closed their eyes. But they had seen these things from afar and having a knowledge that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they’re seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country that is a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.

Did you see the difference in them? These truths were deep in their hearts, and they believed it. And they did not let their eyes deceive them. Alright, I want to do something for you real quick. Ready? Play along with me here. I want every single one of you to close your eyes. Nobody’s going to do anything to you. They better not. Everybody, close your eyes. Seriously.

You know what you’re looking at right now? Everything that’s real. Real? You’re looking at everything that’s going to last forever. You’re looking at everything that has great value on this earth. You can open your eyes. What’s the answer? Nothing. Nothing. And what I mean by you’re looking at everything that’s real and real, I mean there’s really nothing? You mean nothing’s really real? No, not in this sense. None of it’s going to last forever. In fact, the body that you have right now is not really you. That’s a temporal body. Isn’t that great? Isn’t that great? That isn’t that great? This ain’t gonna be us forever. In heaven, I’m gonna be 6’5, 300. And everybody who picked on me is going to get it for eternity. It’s coming back.

3. Initiate Spiritual Action

No. It’s not even our real spiritual body. And what we see when we look at these great women and women of faith is that their power of their mind gave them the ability to look beyond this world so that they could see what truly was real. And that’s why God wasn’t ashamed to be called that God. So again, don’t misunderstand my point. Yes, you need Bible study. Sometimes you need some good meditation. But it doesn’t just end with meditation. You’ll notice that when you talk about the mind, there’s an eye involved. And that means we need to initiate spiritual action. It’s not just about learning these truths and meditating on these truths and believing it’s truths. It’s about acting on them. In Colossians chapter 3, that’s exactly Paul’s point as he spoke to the church in Colossae.

He’s saying you need to set your mind on things above. Well, Paul, well, how do I do that? He says you get busy. You get busy. You don’t live like the world. You don’t act like the world. You don’t talk like the world. You don’t behave like the world. In fact, you put it all to death. And you put on, you put on the things that pertain to God. And that means that you become a person of action. Let me show you how this works, alright? Spirituality. What does spirituality really look like and how does it display itself? Well, think back to the last time somebody really did you rotten. Can you remember that far back? I mean, maybe somebody posted something on Facebook about you.

They made fun of your team.

I said, I said to Tony the other day, hey, this was just like two days ago, after Kentucky lost, and he said, Hey, you want to watch the final four this weekend? I said, Sure, what time’s Kentucky play?

That was me. You should have said what the same time tech does. But you think back to the last time somebody did you dirty? How’d you respond? Did you respond like the natural man or the spiritual man? Did you respond demanding, oh, I want repentance, I want change, I want a confession from you. You better make that right. Oh, I can’t believe you said that. Oh, there are going to be some justice paid here. And you let it all out, and you let them have it, and you unload it on them, and you demand it. Or did you respond with a spirit of gentleness and love? Forgetting this, kindness. You see, sometimes when you really talk about, well, what is spirituality? The thing is, sometimes spirituality doesn’t feel very spiritual.

I don’t know about you, but when y’all sing, it feels pretty spiritual in here, doesn’t it? Isn’t that pretty cool? Y’all love to sing. That feels spiritual. Well, in reality, all that is spiritual. Some of the most spiritual things you’ll ever do are the things that are greatly uncomfortable. Remember when Jesus went into the temple and flipped over the tables and cracked that whip. You remember Jesus had a whip? Would you look at that and go, oh, he is being so spiritual? Oh, I want to be just like that. Well, he was. The fact that disciples will later say, we could see in him zeal for the Lord’s house is consumed him. Sometimes spirituality comes with a lot of pain, long suffering. It comes with bending over backwards.

4. Negate the Fears of This World

It comes with looking at the world through the eyes of our Lord instead of the eyes of the natural man. And then when you consider the mind of somebody who is spiritually minded, they’re going to negate the fears of this world. In fact, they’re going to push them out. They’re not going to live with the typical fears that the world lives with. And they’re not going to give themselves over to that spirit of fear. In fact, here’s what Paul said to Timothy for God has given us a spirit, not of fear, but of power and of love and of self-control. If you have the King James Version, it actually says this. He has given us a sound mind. In other words, in the Greek, a healthy mind.

In other words, this is how the healthy spiritual person lives. They don’t live with the fear of the world. I’m going to share something with you now, and you have to hear this. It doesn’t matter what Donald Trump does or doesn’t do. It doesn’t matter what Congress might pass or not pass. It doesn’t matter what happens to the stock market. It doesn’t matter, folks. Quit acting like the world. Quit allowing the world’s fears to be your fears. That’s not who you are. It doesn’t mean that you can’t maybe get involved. It doesn’t mean that you can’t have an opinion. It doesn’t mean that you maybe can’t be encouraging the right path or the right choices. No. But what it does mean is you’ve got to quit scaring your children.

It’s crazy. And the next Christian that says to me, Oh, it just can’t get any worse than it all. I say, you need to go back to the days of Noah and then come back and talk to me. Because you haven’t read your Bible.

Go back to the days of the first century Christians.

Who in the second and third century, especially were being brutally murdered because of their faith. One of the first fathers, when we say first fathers, we’re talking about those men who were the leaders in the church in the second and third century, and they’re called the first fathers because they were the first leaders, if you will, after the apostles passed on. One of those men was the name Tertullian. And Taturlian is reported to have said this. The legs do not feel the chains when the mind is on heaven.

The legs do not feel the chains when the mind is on heaven.

Even great men like Polycarp, who was possibly one of the elders of the churches that you see there in Asia Minor, possibly one of the last pupils to study under the Apostle John of secular history is true. At the age of 80, was burned at the stake, and before he was brutally murdered.

He talks about how great it is to glorify Christ with his life. And if his Lord had died, why shouldn’t he do the same? Do you see the point?

Where’s your state? I’m not scared of death. World. I’ve taken those worldly strongholds and I’ve destroyed them. Somebody came to me not long ago, all concerned about where our nation was going, especially when it came to what is considered marriage and not marriage and what’s taking place. And they said, you know what? Someday what your preaching is going to be called hate speech, and what are we going to do? And all the preachers, what are you going to do, Phil? What are you going to do when you’re arrested because of what you preach? And they throw you in, what are you going to do? And I said, I guess I’ll sing. That’s what you’re doing, Joel, isn’t it? That’s what scripture said. I’ll sing. I’ll sing.

5. Detonate the Worldly Strongholds

It worked for Paul and Science. Why not us? Why not us? And then last, when you consider the mind, we really need to detonate the worldly strongholds. Paul says this in 2 Corinthians 10. For though we walk in the flesh, we’re not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but of divine power to destroy strongholds. And we destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God. And we take every thought to obey, every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience when your obedience is complete. And then the point he’s making is this.

Live with the Spirit in mind. That the choices that you make are with the mind of Christ, not the mind of this world. Well, one of the things, and maybe this is just dear to my heart because I work with kids all the time in camp and college kids and what have you, and I have the privilege of doing speaking at a lot of teen weekends. One of the things that’s very dear to my heart, and I’m trying my best to get across to parents is that more often than not, what parents are inadvertently doing is we’re planting the thorns of the world in the spiritual gardens of our children. And here’s how they work. You know the parable of the sower, how the thorns grow up and choke out the word.

Well, what happens is as parents, we are encouraging so much the things of the world that it chokes out the spiritual mindedness of our Lord. We become so consumed by athletics or education or money or any other pursuit, and we have every excuse why we’re my child can’t make it to camp. Oh, my child can’t make it to him. Oh, I got the oh, they got a ball game. Oh, they got this going on, they’re gonna make a lot of money, oh, they got this on the other. And what we’re inadvertently doing is we’re planting thorns in their garden. And those thorns are gonna grow up and choke the word out, and that day that they leave the church, we’re gonna go, oh, what happened? Where did this come from?

And it’s all because we didn’t detonate those worldly struggles. Don’t misunderstand me. I love sports. My children were in sports. I love making money. Yes. Much more fun when you have money. Yes.

Conclusion

But when it keeps you from spiritual things, and it starts affecting your spiritual walk, and it starts affecting your service in the Lord’s kingdom, you’ve got a thorn problem. And we need to detonate those worldly strong moments. I want to conclude with a simple thought. It came from a writer. Some of you may have written or read some of his books, Jim McGuigan. But in the last few years of his wife’s life, he was having to take care of her every day. Every day.

The grasping for air is real. The incubators, the straps, the tubes, the needles, the pumps, the drips, they’re all real. The silent screaming, the wide open mouth, the tiny toothless gums, the jerking, the twisting, the shrill crying, or the silent panting. It’s all real. There’s no point in denying the reality of all of that. But what if? What if what we see is not all that there is? What if there’s more, not less, to what we see than what we do see? Would you want to believe that there’s more? On a day outside Jerusalem, there was a young man hanging on the public gallows, the spit, the sweat, the blood, the jeers, the taunts, the treachery, the hypocrisy, the race hatred, all real. The thirst, the loneliness, the sense of abandonment, the grief of a mother and friends, the injustice, the evil, all real.

But there was more. In all that, and not simply after it, in and through all that, there was more. There wasn’t less. There was more.

See what he did?

See what he did. Some people would look at the cross and say, it’s over. The child of God looks at the cross and say, it’s just beginning. Because our Lord not only died but was resurrected. So that we would have a place to live eternally with him and the Father. And hear me. Hear me. That place is real. It’s real. Now it can only be seen by those who look through the spiritual lens. It can only be discerned by those who are spiritually loving. But it is seen. And it is real. To those who have opened more than their eyes. They opened their hearts to the mind of God. That’s what it means. That’s what spirituality is. And if you’re really looking for spirituality and you want to be more spiritually minded, I implore you.

Listen. Trust. And believe the mind of God. Let me go back where we began. This would be our invitation. Remember that I story? It’s over.

Now, in reality, they had a great foundation underneath them. They just needed to stand up. And maybe that’s us. That’s us. In Romans chapter 5, that’s exactly what Paul reminds all of us. We can stand in grace. The grace that has been provided by our Lord Jesus Christ. And what that means is no matter the circumstance, no matter the danger, no matter the turmoil, no matter the despair, when you’re a child of God, you always have a place to stand. And that foundation is Christ. And frankly, that’s the only thing that is real. Tonight. You’re looking for spirituality. You want to be more spiritually minded. You’re looking for hope. You’re looking for something to stand on. Here it is. Here it is. Directly from the mind of God.

And if tonight, if you need to have your sins washed away in the blood of Christ, and you need to receive that grace and that foundation, we would love to assist you in doing just that. Or if we can just help you by helping you see these spiritual truths and see God’s love and grow stronger in your walk with the Lord. We want you to come. Come right now while we stand still.