1495 - “A New Kind of Mind” Romans 12:2

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Chris.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is Podcast 1495. Today I want to speak to you about something that's close to my heart, and my prayer is and will be that God will use this podcast 1495 to touch your heart, that after your heart has been touched you will share this with someone else. Because this is one of those podcasts that if we grasp the truths that are taught in God's Word about this concept I'm going to share with you. Nothing new, nothing that is out of the ordinary as far as the normal Christian life is concerned. But the normal Christian life is not what most live in the West. We don't have pressure to do that. For the most part, we live life comfortably. I pray that God will show us the reality of the truth that if you're going to be what God wants you to be in this life, you and I need to become comfortable with being uncomfortable. The apostle Paul, after he had spoken for eleven chapters about the grace of God, the sinfulness of man, the redemption that God has provided in Jesus Christ, who we are in him, we are new creations. God has redeemed us. He has justified us, he has sanctified us. He has already past hence, glorified us as far as our position. Everyone that starts with Jesus will end with Jesus. Everyone that God does a work of salvation in, true salvation is born in the family of God. He is going to make it to heaven. She is going to make it to heaven. That's the truth of God's word. Not your experience, sir, not your experience, ma'am. That's the truth of God's word. Not I know they were saved. No, you don't know anything, and I don't either. We have to trust God's word more than our own experience or our own insight because something may not make sense to us, but our minds are warped. God's is perfect. And He says The one that has begun a good work in you, he will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. If salvation is a gift, it's irrevocable. It's inviolate. God will never take back a gift that He's given, and salvation is the first gift we receive. And that's how we enter into all of the giftedness that God has given. And we become a gift. And God has given us to the world to share the message of salvation. But many of us have a mindset that is contrary to what God wants, so please hear me. I have expounded on more than one podcast, probably three to four podcasts on Romans chapter twelve verses one and two, as part of a bigger picture of the book of Romans. But the apostle Paul is drawing a conclusion in chapter twelve and verse one based upon all the great mercies and goodness and generosities of God. And he says, Do not be conform to this world. Don't allow yourself to be pressed into the world's mold. And the world here is the age. You see, the word means culture. It means an age, a way of thinking. Don't be pressed into the world's schema, outline, pattern, way of thinking. But be metamorphosized, be transformed. What happens to a worm, a caterpillar that becomes a butterfly? It's transformation. How is that done? By the renewing of our minds, by a new kind of mind, a new way of thinking. You see, God when He saves us, we become new creations. We are born again. We have a new mind. We have the mind of Christ. And as we grow into that, we learn more about God's will for our lives, what pleases God by trusting His word more than we do our senses, more than our experience, more than our circumstances. We trust God with everything that's within us. Because without faith, without trust, it's impossible to please God. Doesn't matter what you do, if you're doing it just because you think it's cool, that means nothing. No, it really doesn't. Because you see, God looks at the heart. I want to talk to you about how the mind is changed. Because we are commanded to not think like the age, but we will think like the age, we will think like the culture unless we allow the words of God to transform us. And the reality is I can tell you as a pastor for almost fifty years, I've been preaching 51 years plus, but I've been a pastor for almost 50 years. And I can tell you that many in my congregation where I have served as pastor have not been students of the Word. They've not been readers of the Word. They hit and miss. And so over the decades God has convicted my heart, and so as I have seen people struggle, I developed what I call the 365 Bible reading plan. Many of you have gone through that once, twice, three times. I picked out three hundred and sixty-five key chapters, what I believe is key chapters that tell the great story of God. It's only about a third or less of what the entire amount of chapters are in the Word of God. But I've picked out key chapters that help us throughout the books to keep a somewhat of a running theme through the Bible the story of redemption, the story of God's grace, the story of God's faithfulness in keeping covenants to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and David, and God's faithfulness even when his people have not been faithful, God is, and he still is. But we've got to get that. Years ago I heard for the first time what Chuck Swindah said, and I don't think he was the originator of it because I've gone back and seen the essence of this and other writings that are several hundred years old. But I heard Chuck Swindahl, an Insight for Living as a young man, say so a thought you reap an attitude. So an attitude you reap an action, so an action you reap a habit, and sow a habit you reap a character, and he finished it by saying sow a character you will reap a destiny. Well I want to go back and just go through that very quickly. So that means to lay it out. He's talking about sowing as a way of life. So when you do something, that's sowing. And when you do it repeatedly, that's sowing. And so what he's saying is when we repeatedly sow a thought, think a thought, think a thought, think a thought, then it becomes an attitude. And if we think about it to the point that it's an attitude, it's not going to be long till we're going to do it. Listen, the seed of every sin is a thought. It doesn't matter if it is theft, adultery, lying, cheating, stealing, whatever it is, it started with a thought. And then it becomes an attitude. And if we think it's so long, then it becomes an action. If we do those actions over and over again, we become addicted. This is what happens with drugs. It's not just chemical, it's a habit. Habits will develop your character, and your character will betray your destiny. That's right, it will betray your destiny. This is what the Lord tells us over and over and over and over again throughout the scriptures. The book of Proverbs is filled with it. And it's not just true in precept, but in principle and in the pattern of Scripture. I began to research several years ago on how habits were formed because I was told that if I did something for seven days, three times, twenty one days, I formed a habit. That was only part of it because that's all that the people that I was studying at the time and reading, that's all they knew. But since then much research has been done. Great studies on this. Really studies more in Europe than here, on habits, how they're formed, good and bad. And the reality is that if we do something for three weeks, seven times, three weeks, twenty one days, we form a habit. Now I say form on purpose because it doesn't solidify it, it just forms it. If we do that twenty one days and then we solidify that habit for two more twenty-one day periods or forty-two days, that's sixty-three days in all, we have a habit, an addiction, to where if we do not do it, we will feel a sense of loss. There will be anxiety within us because we have formed a habit, a way of doing something, a way of thinking that has become a way of life. And if we continue that, the longer we do it, the more it solidifies. And this is why you have to detox the body even. And that takes almost a month. Because you have to unthink it, not just get the system clear, but all detox does, as those of you who work with addiction know, that only kind of cleans a slate, and then that has to be replaced with something that's good and positive and godly if it's going to last. So I developed the 365 Bible reading plan. And I did it with just one chapter a day because I had seen over the years people say, I'm going to read through the Bible, and they get into Leviticus and that's over. Or they get into some days that are tough reading, the begots and the begottens and they give up. And they get into all the details of the tabernacle in Exodus 25 through 40, and they give up. What I wanted to do is get people in the Word of God if it was just a chapter a day. So that's why I had 365 chapters get in the Word of God with me one chapter a day. Just one chapter. If you just read that one chapter, what a blessing that is, and you'll form a habit. If you'll do it every day for 63 days, you will form a habit. And there's a good chance if you continue to do it, you'll do it for the rest of your life as a way of life. And so I knew that some people would read that chapter and they'd say, Well, wait just a minute, I don't know what that chapter means. So I wrote for all 365, I wrote four to five hundred words that will give you a summary and action steps for that chapter. Tell you the heart of what it means. And then I did a podcast, a 15 or 20-minute podcast on each one to give you more meat. But my goal is to get you in the word of God, not in the podcast, but get you into the word of God, not in my commentary, but into the word of God, because if you get in the word of God, the word of God will get in you and it'll change your life. Please, please hear me. And pass this on to someone else. If you don't pass on anything, pass this one podcast on to someone else. And so this is important because we need to get addicted to the word of God. People are addicted to drugs, people are addicted to alcohol, pornography, all how did that start? Well, whatever they thought, they acted on it. And they did over and over and over and over again until it became a habit. I don't even have to prove this to anybody. Anybody that has observed life or you've had good habits, bad habits, you know that. If it's biting your fingernails, you'll eat your fingernails off till you get to the point to where you can break a habit. We have habits of every kind. Men have habits of scratching, of spitting, and they don't even need to spit and they spit. They don't even need to scratch and they scratch. And women have their own habits, and I don't want to get into that because I'm not a woman. I don't want to get a bunch of mail. All I'm saying is this is important. And the reason I do these podcasts is just give you something that will help you maybe to start your day or end your day or maybe at lunch or at a break time or just whenever you can, even if it's not every day, you know that you can catch up at any time. Sometimes we'll have several hundred downloads, but we've had as many as several thousand in a day. Simply because people are catching up and it's all over the world, and it's one that they'll send to someone else, and then in Japan, they'll send it to all the different areas in Japan, and then in Korea, they'll do that, in Malaysia they'll do that, in Indonesia, they'll do that, and even in countries in the Middle East, they'll do that. And so you can tell when that happens because the downloads go up drastically. And it may be something that's just a subject. All I'm telling you is I just want you to get into the Word of God because that's where life change happens. Because if you allow the Word of God to get in you and you read it and you read it and you read it, all you have to do is open up your heart and your mind and say, God teach me, God will teach you, God will answer that prayer, but you have to put uh shoe leather to that, you have to open the book, you have to get into the book, you have to form those habits. We've got to do our part, God will do his part, God is faithful all the time, and God's faithful even when we're not. God will make up the difference in our lives, but he will not open the Bible for us. We've got to do it. God will not read it for us. We have to do it. God will not hide it in our hearts, we have to read it over and over and over again until it becomes a part of us, and that's when life changes. And so my prayer for you is that you'll get into the Word of God over and over and over again. And if I can help you, I can answer your questions, write me. DRCrisp at TonyCrisp.org. DRCrisp at TonyCrisp.org. Or if you have questions, questions at TonyCrisp.org. Questions at TonyCrisp.org. But if you just want to talk, then we can talk over the phone. I will help you. Men call me. If your wife has questions, call me, I'll share with you, and then you can share with her. You need to be the hero because that's the way God meant for it to be. My heart is to help you. And I'm so grateful to God for what he's doing in ministry across America to raise up men and women, to be leaders, men to men, women to women. God help us. In Jesus' name, help us. For on the way, this is Tony Crisp.

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Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org, then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's Questions at TonyC R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.