Making the Most of Your Mind — Part 1

SPEAKER 01 : 0:02

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Pastor Rick’s Daily Hope. We’re so glad you’re here. Today, Rick continues in a series called Preparing for Your Future, where he shares how God’s destiny for your life is good and how you get to choose much of your destiny. All right, let’s get right to it with part one of a message called Making the Most of Your Mind.

SPEAKER 02 : 0:24

Now, this week, I want us to look at one of the things we have to prepare, and that is to prepare our minds. You don’t realize it. But there is an invisible war going on around you and actually in you 24 hours a day. And it is the battle for your mind. There are the forces of evil and there are the forces of good that are battling for your mind 24 hours a day. And that battle is intense and the reason why it’s intense is because whatever gets your mind gets you. It’s not an accident that when you go out to drive a motorcycle, you have to put on a helmet. It’s the law. They don’t force you to put on elbow pads or knee pads, although you could skin those up, but they’re worried about your head because if your mind isn’t protected, you’re over. And so it’s important that you know how to protect your mind, how to use your mind, how to expand your mind, how to develop your mind, because whatever is in your mind is what’s going to be in your life for the next 10 years. Now, you know the feeling that comes when you have conflicts in your mind. Romans 7 talks about how sometimes, you know, I know the right thing to do, but I just don’t do it. And sometimes I know what I shouldn’t do, but I do that anyway. And there’s this constant battle going on in your mind. The Bible talks about this in the book of 2 Corinthians. If you look on your outline in chapter 10, starting with verse three, it’s talking about this mental battle that goes on in your mind all the time. Though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. Contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. Now I want you to circle strongholds. We’ll come back to that word in a minute. They have the divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. These are cognitive words, argument, pretension, knowledge. This is a mental battle here. And he says, so we take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ. Now it says that in our minds we get these strongholds. What is a stronghold? A stronghold is a false idea that dominates our life. It can be a mental frame of reference, it can be a worldview, or it can just be an idea. Worry can become a stronghold in your mind. Fear can be a stronghold in your mind. Guilt, resentment, and bitterness can be strongholds in your mind. Jealousy, envy, Impatience can be strongholds in your mind. These are things that have to be torn down if you’re gonna develop into the person God intends for you to be, if you’re gonna be all that God wants you to be in the next 10 years. What I wanted this weekend is just look at the last phrase in that paragraph. We take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ. Now, that word we take captive, akmalatidzo, it’s a Greek word. Akmalatidzo literally means to capture. It means like to take the hill in a battle. It means to conquer. It means to force into submission. It means to bring under control. We need to bring our thoughts under our control so that they’re not just flying all around everywhere. We take it captive, every thought, and we make it obedient. Hupakoe in Greek, it literally means bring to submission. It means bring under control. Now, how do you do that? How do you make your mind mind? I don’t know about you, but my mind is very disobedient. It rebels a lot. It has a mind of its own. It often goes off into all kinds of directions and I didn’t plan for it to go there, but it did. And yours probably does too. You don’t control your thoughts all your time. In fact, a lot of times they’re just going, you’re following them. And they go off into all kinds of different directions and they, you know, you have spiritual ADD. Your mind rebels. When I need to ponder, my thoughts start to wander. And when I need to pray, my thoughts drift away. And so many times, I wanna get it into this direction, but it’s just not going that direction. How do I bring my thoughts under control so that I can do the things that I wanna do, that I need to do, that I know are best for me to do? How do I get into control of these things like worry and fear and envy and guilt and bitterness and all of that? Well, that’s what I want us to look at this weekend. Just a quick overview of five things God says to do that you have to do if you’re going to manage your mind. Do you remember years ago when Dan Quayle was vice president, he muffed that commercial that says a mind is a terrible thing to waste? Do you remember that? And he said, a mind is a terrible thing to lose? Well, yeah. Yeah, that’s a pretty bad thing to lose. But let’s look at making the most of your mind. And I’m gonna give you five things from the word of God. We’re gonna start with two negatives and we’re gonna move to three positives, okay? Here’s the first thing you need to do. If you’re gonna manage your mind, if you’re gonna be all that God wants you to be in the next 10 years, in the decade of destiny, number one, don’t believe everything you think. Okay, you just need to realize that not everything you think is the truth. Now, you know that instinctively, but you really don’t know it because if you think something, you think, well, it must be true. I thought it. If you think you are a certain way, you’re going to act that way. If you feel a certain way, you’re going to act that way. But what you think is not always true. It’s not just because you think it. Now, I don’t mean to shock you. But every one of us in this room has a mental illness. And that mental illness is called sin. Sin means when we’ve rebelled against God, everybody’s mind is broken in the world. Nobody has a perfect mind. You don’t, your parents don’t, your best friend, your husband, your wife, nobody’s got a perfect mind. Every mind is broken. We all have mental illnesses of such because that’s what sin does to us. And as a result, we have worry and fear and insecurity and low self-esteem and all these kind of things. The Bible talks about this. The Bible uses words like darkened mind, depraved mind, corrupted mind, broken mind, discouraged mind. Why? Because that’s what happens because we live in an imperfect world. Nobody thinks clearly all the time. You don’t and I don’t. And so there are a lot of things that go into your mind that are just flat out wrong. They’re false. They are lies. Now, Satan doesn’t have to suggest them to you. He can. When God gives you an idea, we call that inspiration. When Satan gives you an idea, we call that temptation. When you get an idea, we just call that dumb. But the truth is, Satan doesn’t have to give you false ideas. You get them from the world all the time. I mean, you look on TV and every commercial teaches false ideas that if I just had a little bit more money, I’d be more happy. If I just looked a little bit better, I’d be more happy. If I had a little bit more, I’d be more secure. If I had a little bit more, I’d be more loved. Those are all false lies. They’re just not true. But if you believe them and they’re in your mind, that’s a stronghold. And you, of course, come up with plenty on your own. Now, the Bible says this in Jeremiah chapter 17, verse nine, the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? In other words, I can’t figure out my own motives most of the time. Why in the world should I figure out yours? I don’t know what your motives are, because I can’t even figure out why I do what I do most of the time. Now circle the word deceitful. The heart is deceitful. What does that mean? It means that you and I have an amazing ability to lie to ourselves. You do it all the time. You tell yourself things are okay when they’re not okay. You tell yourself things are bad when they really are better than they are. You lie to yourself all the time. You know, you say, well, I really didn’t eat that much. You did eat a lot. Okay. We lie to ourselves all the time. Why? Because the heart is a seafoal. What I’m telling you is that you cannot be trusted to tell yourself the truth all the time. You don’t. And so just because you get an idea doesn’t mean it’s true. And you’re going to need to learn to test your ideas. If an idea comes through your mind goes, well, I feel this way. Well, is that really true? Or is it just the way I feel right now? You see, we all have blind spots. Some of us have bald spots. We don’t stop to think. A lot of times we just make snap judgments without thinking. We don’t see things as they really are. We all have background biases. We see things as we want to see them. Do you know I read this week about the study of the eye that the optic nerve, which is the only nerve that goes directly to the brain, that you would think that when you’re looking at something that all of the electrical impulses would be going that direction. In other words, you see it and they would be going to your brain. But when you’re actually in the process of seeing, there are more impulses actually coming this way from your brain out to your eye than there are from your eye back to your brain, which means your brain is telling you what to see. You don’t always see things as they are. You see things as your brain wants you to see them. And you see things as your filter from all your background and your hurts and your experiences see. And that’s why we all, you can put four people on a corner, they see the same accident and they’ll all give four different testimonies. Well, which one’s right? Well, they’re all seeing it from their perspective. And so we jump to conclusions. We get trapped by categories, it’s either this or this, when a lot of times it’s not either category. We miss the big picture. There are lots of ways why we don’t tell ourselves the truth. And that’s why the Bible says in 2 Corinthians 13, look up here on the screen, examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith, test yourselves. So you’re gonna have to test your thoughts if you’re really gonna move forward in the future because if you’re still listening to old tapes, you’re gonna be in trouble. And if you’re listening to faulty information, you’re gonna be in trouble. That leads me to the second thing the Bible teaches and it is to guard your mind against garbage. Guard your mind against garbage. Now I remember when the computer age started and they, it’s now a cliche, Geigo, garbage in, garbage out. What they meant by that is data processors would say whatever you put into the computer is what you’re gonna get out. And if you give faulty data, then you’re gonna get faulty results out. And of course that’s true with your mind too. If you put garbage into your mind, that’s what’s gonna come out in your life. You need to be much more discriminating in what you allow in your mind in the next 10 years because it will determine your stress, your success, and your stability in life. The Bible says this, Proverbs 15, 14. I love this in the New Living Translation. “‘A wise person is hungry for truth “‘while the fool feeds on trash.'” Some of you oughta put that on a post-it note and tape it to your TV. A wise person is hungry for truth while the fool feeds on trash. Now you go to any nutritionist and they’ll basically tell you there are three kind of categories of food. There’s brain food, which actually makes you smarter. There’s junk food, which is basically empty calories. And there’s toxic food, which is poison and will hurt you. Now that’s not only true with your gut, it’s true with your brain. that there are three kinds of mental food, that you can fill your mind with brain food, that’s things that encourage you, things that build you up, things that make you smarter, things that make you more successful, more skilled, things that make you more confident. You can have brain food, good material in your mind, or you can fill your mind with junk food, and there’s plenty of junk food, just turn on the radio or watch a movie or television or lots of newspaper. Now junk food isn’t necessarily poisonous, It’s just filling. You know, it’s kind of like if you went out and you ate a bunch of junk food right before Thanksgiving dinner, then you don’t feel like eating the meal. They go, but wait a minute, I prepared this great meal, but I’m not hungry, because I ate all the junk food first. And if you never have any desire to learn anything, it’s because you’re filling your mind with junk food, empty calories. It’s not poisonous, but it’s just stuffing. And when you’re stuffed, you’re not hungry. And then of course there’s toxic food. Pornography is toxic food. Occultic literature is toxic food. filling your mind with anti-ungodly things. That’s toxic. It’s in your system. Learning about evil. A lot of people say, well, I think we need to know what they’re doing over there. Well, no, you don’t. The Bible says, I want you to be innocent concerning evil and wise concerning that which is good. So the Bible says in Psalm 101, verse three, I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless. Do you ever put anything before your eyes that’s worthless? Yeah, and so do I. And what I wanna do in the next 10 years is a lot less of that. I wanna do a lot less of putting worthless things in front of my eyes, and I wanna put a lot more worthwhile things in front of my eyes instead. So that at the end of this decade, I’m much further along in my journey than I am now. And you can only grow by what you feed yourself. Garbage in, garbage out. You gotta guard your mind from garbage. Now, how do you guard your mind since you’re being bombarded every day? You know, literally your mind has given thousands and thousands of messages by advertisers in all kinds of different ways during a typical week, even during a typical day. How do you guard your mind when there are people who spend their whole lives trying to get into your mind? They’re called marketers. How do you guard your mind? Well, there are two ways. One is by conversational prayer. That’s talking to the Lord constantly during the day with your eyes wide open. And the other is through concentrated focus on things that are good so you block out the worthless stuff. Now, the Bible covers both of these in Philippians chapter 4. Look at the next verse. Paul says this. Don’t worry about anything. Let me stop right there. I think that’s the hardest command in the Bible. I think that’s it right there. Don’t worry about anything. That’s a pretty hard one to keep. Don’t worry about anything. Instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need and thank him for all he’s done. And if you do this, you will experience God’s peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peace will guard, circle that word, guard your hearts and mind. We wanna guard your mind against garbage. His peace will guard your heart and mind as you live in Christ Jesus. So fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right. And think about things that are pure and lovely and admirable. Think about those kind of things. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Now notice he says two things in this passage. He said, if you want to guard your heart and mind and you want to have the peace that passes understanding, and by the way, you get the peace that passes understanding when you give up trying to understand why God does what he does. and you just accept it. You go, Lord, I don’t know why you’re doing this, but I trust you. Then you get the peace that passes understanding, because you’re not trying to figure it all out. But he says, first, you pray about everything. Now, how do you do that? Obviously, you can’t keep your eyes closed all day. You’ve got work to do. You’ve got all kinds of things. It just means you talk to God while you’re going through daily life. You’re driving in the car. You talk to God. You come up to the stoplight. You talk to God. You get some gas. You talk to God. You go grocery shopping and say, God, do you like that? I sure like those jalapeno potato chips. You know, sometimes I eat food. I go, God, thank you for creating taste buds. And you just talk to God about anything. If it’s hot, say, man, it’s really hot today, Lord. And you just talk to him all the time. You don’t have to close your eyes. You don’t have to say amen. You just keep an ongoing conversation throughout the day. And whatever comes up, You talk to the Lord about it. That’s pray about everything. And then he says, fix your thoughts. And he says, on stuff that’s true and honorable and right and pure and lovely and admirable, stuff that’s worth thinking about, that’s worth praising. That’s concentrated focus. You see, the way you get a bad idea out of your mind is not to resist it. I don’t want to think about it. Food. I don’t wanna think about sex. I don’t wanna think about that person who hurt me. The whole time you’re saying I don’t, what are you doing? Yeah, you’re focusing on what you don’t want. So you don’t say don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Whatever you resist persists. When it comes to your mind, if you resist it, it just goes harder into your mind. I don’t want to think about that. It’s like, don’t think of the pink elephant. Don’t think of the pink elephant. Whatever you’re doing. It’s like coaches know when they’re trying to help a pitcher in an inning, he’s having a tough inning in. They don’t go out and say, for heaven’s sake, don’t throw the curve ball. Guess what you just put in his mind? The curve ball. No, you say, think of the fastball. And you think of what you want, not what you don’t want. And so when you want to get a bad idea out of your mind, the way you do it is not resist it, you replace it. You don’t resist, you replace. And you say, okay, I’m just going to change the channel. If I see something there on TV and I don’t like it, I’ll say, I don’t like this, I really don’t like this. No, I don’t like this. I just changed the channel. No. When you change the channel, your mind changes too. And so garbage in and garbage out, the way you can guard your mind against garbage is two things. Talk to the Lord about it all the time because if you’re talking to the Lord, there’s some stuff just not gonna come into your mind. And the other time is just change the channel. Focus, refocus on something else. And then you get the peace that passes understanding. All right, so if you’re gonna master your mind for a new decade, there are two of the negatives you gotta do is you gotta test every thought, because you’re not always telling yourself the truth. And number two, you gotta guard your mind, because there’s a lot of garbage out there. Now there are three positive things you really need to do to become all God wants you to be that have to do with your mind. Number three, never let up on learning. Make it a lifetime habit. You never let up on learning. You know the word disciple? We talk about being a disciple of Jesus and the disciples follow Jesus. Do you know what the word disciple means? It means learner. That’s all it means, learner. To follow Jesus means to be a learner. You cannot be a disciple of Jesus if you don’t keep on learning. You must never let up on learning. Jesus said, come to me, all of you who are tired, stressed out, weary. And he says, learn of me and learn from me. That’s what it means to be a disciple. That’s what discipleship is all about. It’s about learning. Now, a lot of people act as if their education ended at graduation. Some of you haven’t cracked a book in 12 years. And you go, you know, well, thank God, I got all my education behind me. Well, it shows. Okay, it shows. You’ve gotta keep on learning, keep on growing, keep on developing. And some people, as soon as they get out of school, they’ve never studied anything else, which means they’re out of date. because they’re not keeping up by studying new things. Now, if you wanna be a leader, and I want you to be a leader, all leaders are learners. The moment you stop learning, you stop leading. You can’t take somebody further than you’ve gone yourself. Now, you can learn from anybody if you know the right questions, because everybody’s ignorant just on different subjects. You know some things I don’t know. I know some things you don’t know. The person sitting next to you knows some things that both of us don’t know. Everybody’s ignorant just on different subjects. That’s why you can learn from anybody if you know the right questions. I would suggest you even make a little list of questions. Every time you get around anybody who’s succeeding at anything, you ask them your questions. Like, what have been the surprise successes? What have been the surprise failures? How do you handle discouragement? How do you handle stress? What’s been a good thing that’s helped you with your time and your relationships? You could just make up your own list, because you can learn from anybody. Really, I’ve learned from taxi drivers in Bombay, India, things that I would have never learned any other way, simply because I ask questions. The Bible says that asking questions is a sign of intelligence. Jesus loved to ask questions. In fact, he asked so many questions, he often would answer a question with a question. because it forced people to think. And so he was always asking questions. Now the Bible says, counsel in the heart of man is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out. That means everybody’s got a reservoir of some things they can teach you. And the key thing is just being humble enough to listen, humble enough to learn, humble enough to be teachable. And you can even learn from people who you disagree with. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Think about that, okay? Twice a day, it’s right. So somebody could be totally off on stuff, but still right on something. And a lot of times we, you know, somebody will give you some advice and you go, well, consider the source. Well, that’s true, but you know what? Sometimes they may be a terrible source, but what they’re saying is true. And so you just have to be humble and be teachable. That’s why the Bible says God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. Now look at what the Bible says here. Proverbs 18 verse 15. The mind of a smart person is eager to get knowledge. Are you eager to get knowledge? You always want to learn more? The wise person listens to learn more. Look at the next verse. Proverbs 10, 14. Wise men store up knowledge. Circle the word store up. This is the only thing in scripture you’re told to store up. Everything else the Bible says don’t store it up. Don’t pile it up. The Bible says don’t store up wealth. You’re not going to take it with you. Anything you store up here on earth, you’re not taking with you. But if you store up knowledge, you are taking that with you because it’s inside you. It’s going with you. You see, if you store it up inside you, you’re gonna have it for eternity because you’re going into eternity. Your house isn’t, your career isn’t, your car isn’t, your collections aren’t. So don’t store up wealth, store up knowledge. Why? Because knowledge is far more important than wealth.

SPEAKER 01 : 25:58

What a great message from Pastor Rick today. There’s something I always take away from his message. Here’s Rick to tell you how you can help support this ministry.

SPEAKER 02 : 26:16

That’s worship. And love your neighbor as yourself. That’s ministry. That’s called the great commandment. And then Jesus said, go make disciples. That’s evangelism. Baptize them into the family of God. That’s fellowship, a sign of fellowship. And then he said, teach them, obey everything I’ve taught you. That’s discipleship. And we call that the great commission. We believe at Daily Hope that a great commitment to the great commandment and the great commission will produce a great Christian, a great church, a great company, a great community. You know, I started Daily Hope so I could spread the good news about Jesus, not just across America, but all around the world. And we want people to know that God’s word is filled with hope and truth. And the power that we need to follow him every day is available to every single one. You know as well as I do that the Word of God changes lives. It’s alive, it’s active, and it breathes new life and new love into all of our lives. So wherever you listen to this, whether you listen on the website, whether you listen on a radio station, or whether you listen through a podcast, you’re a part of the Daily Hope family. and I need your help. We could not do this without your support. Now, you know I don’t take any funds from this broadcast. We don’t have any giant million-dollar donor who’s giving big gifts to this. It comes from daily donations from listeners like you. We’re 100% listener-funded. Would you continue to pray for this broadcast, and would you continue to support us? And write to me. Let me hear from you. I absolutely love reading the stories that are sent to me. So write me, pray for me, and support this ministry. And God will bless it, and God will bless you, and we’ll get to heaven, and we’ll thank God for all the people going to be in heaven because you cared.

SPEAKER 01 : 28:08

We sure hope you’ve been encouraged by Pastor Rick’s Daily Hope. And if you have, would you consider supporting us? We appreciate so much your prayers. And if you’d like to give a financial gift, just go to PastorRick.com. Again, that’s PastorRick.com. Be sure to join us next time as we look into God’s Word for our daily hope. This program is sponsored by Pastor Rick’s Daily Hope and your generous financial support.