Retraining the Mind, Body and Soul
Ephesians 4:22-24
In the ancient Greek Olympic games, an athlete would begin training at least 10 months before the race. This training involved rigorous discipline including the athlete’s diet, his sleep habits, exercise routine, and daily running. The goal was literally to punish the athlete’s body until he was in the best possible shape to win. Then, one month before the games, the athlete would move to Corinth, 10 miles from where the games were held. He was assigned a personal coach who put him through additional rigors in preparation for the race. This meant early rising and long days spent lifting weights, exercising, pushing himself to the edge of his strength and endurance. All this was done in order to prepare to run the race of his life. Whatever his success, it was due, to a great extent, to his preparation or training.
So it is in the Christian life. If we are to run the race in life that God has set for us, we must develop a lifestyle of training to be like Jesus. As one noted basketball coach once stated, “The will to win is not nearly as important as the will to prepare to win.” We Christians must prepare to win through training, discipline, and hard work. But here’s the problem: most of us here today have been Christians for at least a number of years, if not most of our lives and studies have found that the lives we are leading and the worldview we carry have very little resemblance to that of Jesus. The Barna Research Group discovered in his annual survey of the status of the Christian faith in American culture that only 9 percent of professing Christians have a biblical worldview. Because of this, today’s believers live very similarly to non-believers. In fact, in the survey the unchurched stated they can see no difference in the lives Christians lead and their own. That would seem to indicate that you and I not only need to enter training but many of us need to be retrained in how we think and perceive the world and how we live our lives so that we more closely emulate Jesus himself. Jesus came in human form so that he might show us what it means to live and serve God. It is his example that we called to follow. In Methodism, John Wesley called this sanctification, the process by which we become more and more like Jesus in our thoughts, words and deeds. We do that by becoming an apprentice of Jesus, learning to live and think as Jesus did.
In our Scripture today, Paul is writing to the church at Ephesus. The church at Ephesus was filled with Gentiles who had not worshipped in the Temple as Jews, but had come out of idol worship to faith in Jesus Christ, as a result of Paul’s ministry to them. So when Paul mentions “With regards to your former way of life”, the condition he’s speaking of is paganism, doing the things they used to do in their pagan worship and way of life. In many respects, the Roman life centered around physical and sexual desires. And for most he’s describing their former way of life too, recalling their former ways but also are reminding them that Jesus has rescued them from that way of life. What Paul discovered was that it was very difficult for these new Christians to maintain their new way of life, especially when surrounded by their former way of life. We all know how difficult it is to change our habits and our way of life.
So how do you do that? We need to retrain our mind, body and soul to live and think as Jesus did. As Christians we are to look, talk, and act different from the world. Our acceptance of Christ means we have accepted a new lifestyle. To overcome all of the temptations around us and our tendency to fall back into old habits, we need to go into retraining. And, as Paul tells us, that begins in the mind which then also extends to the body and soul. In Western society, we make a distinction between the mind, body and soul but the ancient world believed and knew they were all intimately connected to one another, so much so that you cannot separate one from the other. The mind is the seat of reflective consciousness and intelligence, the place we process information about the world and interpret it. It is also where we make decisions and determine our attitude and disposition, which determines our behavior and conduct. That then determines what we do with our body, in other words, the actions we undertake. But it also determines the deepest desires of our soul. As followers of Jesus Christ, our deepest desire should be to do the Father’s will and that means following in the example of Jesus. It is this desire which then helps us to overcome our own self-centered desires and affections. No longer are we in control of our lives but rather it is Christ Jesus who lives in us. Paul put it this way: Galatians 2:20 – "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." Galatians 5:24 – "Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires."
Retraining the mind, body and soul involves the continual process of readjusting our thinking. It is an adjustment of our moral and spiritual thinking to the mind of God which then is translated to our actions. It is the gradual conforming of the person to the new spiritual world in which he now lives. In this retraining, the person is not passive, but is a fellow worker with God in the process. So which comes first, retraining the mind and our thoughts or changing our actions. The answer is both. You need to change to begin thinking like Jesus and as many did a few years ago by asking, “What would Jesus do?” But you also need to take on the actions of Christ in your daily life. They will feel uncomfortable at first but as you begin to live into it, you will find that your thinking and perception of the world and others will begin to change too. The following are soul training exercises begin this process of retraining.
Play. Most of us left the idea of play a long time ago when we left our childhood and took on the ways and airs of being an adult. Most adults think play is silly and certainly not spiritual. In fact, most adults have lost the ability to play. Somewhere along the way, life takes more serious turns: getting a job, marriage, raising a child and what happens is those responsibilities rob us of the ability to play. We need to regain it. You see play can be a spiritual exercise that can teach us about living in the kingdom of God. By its very definition, play is unpredictable. When you play, you never know how the ball is going to bounce or what might happen. That’s good for us because we try to live lives that are too ordered and controlled and the affect is that we lose the joy of life. This is what makes play so entertaining. But it also teaches us spontaneity. We learn to let go and relax and encounter whatever may happen. Jesus told us that to enter the kingdom of God, we must become like little children. Play helps us to do that. So stop taking yourself so seriously and simply enjoy life!
So how do you play? If you have a child or grandchild, play a board game with them or do what they do: hopscotch or even video games. Start to play a sport like tennis, soccer or golf. If you have a hobby, do it with a sense of wonder. Learn something new like pottery, painting or dancing. Learn to play and experience the joy of the kingdom of God.
Second is hospitality. Hospitality is not being nice and accommodating to the people in your life. The kingdom of God is about being inclusive. The world is about being exclusive. And if we’re honest, we are more about being exclusive in our lives than we are about being inclusive. Living in the kingdom of God means loving others because our God is a loving and welcoming God and we are called to be the same, at any measure. That means inviting and including others. Practicing hospitality makes us vulnerable. That’s why we refrain from it. What if they reject my hospitality and thus reject me too? As long as I spend time with people like me, I feel relatively safe. But if I open myself or my home to someone outside of my comfort zone, I may encounter something I do not like or am uncomfortable with. So how can you extend hospitality to someone else? Reach out to someone outside of your comfort zone. It may be a co-worker you don’t like or someone who is just different from you. Ask them to coffee or lunch. Second, listen to people. I mean really listen to them, to the feelings behind the words and don’t let any distractions get in the way. Invest yourself in their every word. Serve them. Do the small the small things for them. Make a nice specially prepared dinner for them with a special table setting. Lastly, be intentional about including new people into your group of friends.
Third, keep the Sabbath. God commanded the Sabbath to be made holy. The Sabbath as God designed was from sun down on Friday to sundown on Saturday. Today, our Sabbath or worship time has shrunk from 24 hours to 1-3 hours if you participate in a Bible study. Sabbath in the Hebrew tradition is a day of rest, worship, study and fellowship. Thus, the ancient Jews forbade any type of work, even the cooking of food, which meant that Friday was a day of preparation and getting the chores done. This was so that your entire attention and effort could be focused on the Sabbath, family and the Word of God. Keeping the Sabbath forces us to be out of pace with the world. So Sabbath is about rest, trust, and surrendering control. Sabbath is also about joy and delight, joy and delight in God, family, friends and the Word of God.
So how can we practice the Sabbath? Plan your Sabbath. What day will be your Sabbath? Prepare for it. In other words, finish all of the work and the honey do lists before your Sabbath begins. Decide what your distractions might be and do whatever needs to be done to make sure they don’t interfere with your Sabbath. Invite friends or family over to share a specially prepared meal. Spend some time reading the Bible and ponder not only its meaning but also its application to your life. Play games! Worship together as a family. Nap! Set aside some private time for prayer and reflection on your life. Read a good devotional book or write in your journal. Look over the list of blessings in your life and give thanks to God.
Fourth, pray for the success of competitors. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek and offer our accuser our wardrobe. Most of us don’t have enemies or accusers in life but the core teaching of Jesus in the Beatitudes remains the same: pray for those who are your competitors. A competitor is anyone you are measured against, anyone whose success in some way diminishes yours. It might be a business competitor or someone you compete against in sports or in school. Perhaps it is a parent your child competes against. Ask God to reveal these people and institutions to you. Or if you can’t think of an enemy or competitor, then think of someone who gets under your skin or causes you problems. Pray for guidance from the Holy Spirit about who you should pray for and then begin praying for them and for God’s blessings in their life. What you will notice is a rise of an inner tension, namely that we don’t really want them to succeed. At first, we merely say it and don’t really necessarily feel it. That’s OK. Be at peace with this. This is a slow process but as we do this over and over, our feelings will begin to change and something amazing will begin to happen in you.
Fifth is de-accumulation. If there is one thing that Katrina taught us, it was how much junk we accumulate. And now we find ourselves five years after Katrina and if we’re honest, we’ve started to accumulate stuff all over again. Try giving five things away in a week, not junk, it must be in good shape and of some value to someone else. You want to make sure that they are blessed by that gift. If you don’t have a lot of stuff, it might be a CD, a DVD or a book you can give away. Be careful: not everyone is comfortable accepting unsolicited gifts.- especially used ones. This is why you need to make sure they need it and would appreciate it first. One warning: avoid the temptation to buy new things to replace those given away.
A young boy about nine years old went with his parents to Europe one summer. Part of their tour was visiting the great old cathedrals of the past. As he would visit cathedral after cathedral, he saw the massive stained glass portraits of the disciples and of other saints. He was so impressed as he stood in these great sanctuaries looking through the beautiful stained glass windows. Upon return, when asked by his Sunday School teacher, what about the great churches of Europe did he like the most and he said the windows of the saints. She asked what was his definition of a saint. And as his mind went back to those massive beautiful stained glass windows, he said, "A saint is someone God shines light through." May we begin retraining our mind, body and soul so that the lives we lead shines the light of Christ through us. Amen.
