INTRO. - ILL.- A man had bought a new gadget - unassembled, of course--and after reading and rereading the instructions he couldn’t figure out how it went together. Finally, he sought the help of an old handyman who was working in his backyard. The old fellow picked up the pieces, studied them, then began assembling the gadget. In a short time, he had it put together. "That’s amazing," said the man. "And you did it without even looking at the instructions!"
"Fact is," said the old man, "I can’t read, and when a fellow can’t read, he’s got to think."
The human mind is amazing. It has great power to do good or evil. It has the power to shape a person’s life. What we think about is what we are or what we do.
Now some quotes, stories and scriptures.
I. QUOTES ABOUT THE MIND:
- “Let the mind of the master be the master of your mind.”
How powerful is this thought! We all need the mind of Jesus! To become like Him we need His mind and His Spirit and this will only happen when we set our minds on His Word.
Phil. 2:5 KJV “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.”
NIV “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus.” To have Christ’s attitude we must have His mind, which will only come from His Word.
- "Whatever you hold in your mind will tend to occur in your life. If you continue to believe as you have always believed, you will continue to act as you have always acted. If you continue to act as you have always acted, you will continue to get what you have always gotten. If you want different results in your life or your work, all you have to do is change your mind."
I don’t know who wrote this, but it’s a great quote. The key to any kind of improvement in life is in the mind. The thinking controls the actions.
- "A wise man changes his mind, a fool never."
Actually, everyone is changing whether they want to admit it or not. The world affects us, changes us, affects our thinking. For example, TV and movies are powerful influences on children and even adults. Commercials influence us to buy products. That’s why companies pay millions of dollars to produce them.
Advertising pays and it pays to advertise.
Movies can influence a person’s behavior. Kids have watched violence and immorality and then have gone out and put these things into practice. WE MUST NOT BE FOOLED ABOUT THIS!
It’s sad to think, however, that the good doesn’t affect us as much as the evil does. Of course, we see less good than we do evil on the movie screen. HOW RARE IS A GOOD, CLEAN, POSITIVE MOVIE! I have seen only one in recent months and that is: CINDERELLA MAN, the life of boxer James J. Braddock who lived during the depression era. That movie will inspire you to better thinking and doing!
- "If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words."
What a person talks about is what he is thinking. Why do we not talk about the Word of God and Christ? Could it be that we are not thinking about them?
- "Out of sight, out of mind." This is often true.
- "A stale mind is the devil’s breadbox." An empty mind or a stale mind is an open door to the devil.
- "The body manifests what the mind harbors."
- "Your mind is what makes everything else work."
~ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
"A man is known by the company his mind keeps."
~ Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907) American writer, editor, poet
- "An active mind cannot exist in an inactive body."
~ George Patton (1885-1945)
- "If you would perfect your body, guard your mind."
~ James Allen (1864-1912) English author of As A Man Thinketh
- "If you don’t control your mind, someone else will." ~ John Allston
- "She unbent her mind afterwards---over a book."
~ Charles Lamb (1775-1834) British writer, poet, essayist & critic (This should happen to us after reading God’s book)
- "Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body."
~ Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English writer, statesman, publisher, essayist & poet
II. STORIES ABOUT THE MIND: TWO DIFFERENT MEN
ILL.- Dateline NBC, August 12, 2005, did you see it? THE BTK (bind, torture, kill) KILLER. Dennis Rader was a hometown boy born in Wichita, one of four sons raised by church-going, Lutheran parents. His mother has been described as loving, his father as tough but decent. One brother said their home was without problems, without abuse.
But while Rader appeared a clean-cut high school senior in his 1963 yearbook, he was already having bizarre sexual fantasies.
He kept them hidden as he served his country in the Air Force, then married a girl from home in 1971. But a couple years later, he could no longer keep those fantasies locked only in his mind. (locked in his mind) His obsession with sex and bondage evolved into deviant violent acts carried out on real people — and ultimately led to murder.
Rader (in an interview with a Harvard-trained psychologist, Robert Mendoza, who performs more than a hundred evaluations for criminal and civil cases each year) said: I started working out this fantasy in my mind. I could lay in bed at night and think about this person, the events and how it’s gonna happen. And it would become a real, almost like a picture show. You know, I wanted to go ahead and produce it and direct it and go through with it. No matter what the costs were, the consequences. It was gonna happen one way or another. Maybe not that day, but it was gonna happen.
Rader: She came out of the house and took the kids to school, so I followed them to school. I thought, well, that’s a corner house. That’s a possibility. And I was in between work. Idle hands, what is it?
Medonza: The devil’s workshop?
Rader: Yes, and all these things seemed to happen most time when I had idle hands. I had just lost a job at Cessna. That was demoralizing to me.
But it was in his job that at least some people saw a darker side to Dennis Rader. Dee Stuart, a long-time acquaintance of Rader’s, has a good friend who reported to him in the compliance department. This friend, she says, found him controlling and belligerent.
Stuart: There were times when he when he yelled at her in front of other employees. He demeaned her. He told her she would never be as smart as he was.
But she says he could turn his good and bad sides on and off.
Stuart: He could be berating her, he could be screaming at her, and if the phone rang and it was a member of his family, he turned into Ward Cleaver.
Dr. Fox, criminologist, says this apparent Jekyll-and-Hyde personality is classic for many serial killers.
Fox: I don’t believe there are two Raders in one body. It’s just that we all have a range in our personality. And somebody like Dennis Radar indeed has two different shades, sides to his personality. And, he hides from the people in his life the dark, negative, brutal.
In his jailhouse interview, Rader blamed his murder spree on that mysterious force he always claimed was way beyond his control: Factor X.
Rader: Factor X is probably something I’ll never know. Actually, I think I may be possessed with demons. I was dropped on my head when I was a kid. I talked to some theological Christian people and some of those people are really strong. They actually believe the Bible says that there’s demons within you that can come into you. That’s the only thing I can figure out. Something drove me to do this. You know, normal people just don’t do this.
Mendoza: You can’t stop it?
Rader: I can’t stop it. It’s just controls me, you know, it’s like in the driver’s seat. That’s probably the reason we’re sitting here. You know, if I could just say, “No, I don’t want to do this, and go crawl into a hole.” But it’s driving me.
Mendoza: You’ve actually used the term, “monster.” There’s this monster inside of you. It almost sounds like something separate, like a different person.
Rader: Yeah, it’s part of the compartmentalizing. I can switch back and forth and — once this character takes over, whatever it is that drives me onward. I don’t know what it is.
But criminologist James Alan Fox says he knows what it is — it’s bunk.
James Alan Fox: To use a technical term: it’s poppycock. It’s just an excuse. It was Dennis Rader making the decisions, not Factor X.
NOW HERE IS THE OTHER SIDE TO DENNIS RADER: (the article states)
But why would anyone ever suspect a man like Dennis Rader? Consider his substantial involvement with his local Lutheran church. Paul Carlstedt has known Rader through the church for 30 years and says he was an exemplary member.
Carlstedt: He will be an usher. He will run the sound system. He’ll count the money after the service. If something needs to be done, Dennis was always available to help.
As hard as this may be to believe, the serial killer told the psychologist in the jailhouse interview that he considers himself a religious person.
Mendoza: Do you pray?
Rader: Yes, I do. I study the Bible daily and that helps, not only just for spiritual. But a lot of it is good meanings and the good concepts, things that you can use in life.
Now, brothers and sisters, here is what is extremely frightening to me. Here is a man who was raised in something of a Christian home. He went to a church that believed in Jesus and no doubt, was taught about Christ as the Savior. He is a man who, apparently, even to this day reads the Bible and claims to get some good out of it. He even prays. BUT LOOK AT WHAT HE DID AND WHAT HE BECAME!
What is frightening is this: If this kind of behavior came from Dennis Rader even though he was going to church, reading the Bible, etc. WHAT COULD HAPPEN TO US? We all DO have a dark side or a darker side, which, if allowed to run berserk in us will produce berserk or beastly behavior in us.
Now, here is an alternate story, a good story. A different man. A different mind.
ILL.- Neil Anderson. Neil was raised on a Minnesota farm. After his Navy stint, he became an aerospace engineer. But then he switched to pastoral ministry for more than 20 years. Neil next turned to teaching at Talbot School of Theology. He founded Freedom in Christ Ministries to equip churches to enable recovery from addictions. Now retired in Carefree, Arizona, Neil works on his golf game and keeps on writing books about Christ-centered living.
What He Said. “When I was a young Christian, I decided to clean up my mind. I had had a good upbringing, for which I am thankful, and had become a Christian in my twenties. After four years in the Navy, however, my mind was polluted with a lot of junk. I had seen enough pornography aboard ship to plague me for years. Images would dance in my mind for months after one look. I hated it. I struggled every time I went to a place where pornography was available.
“When I made the decision to clean up my mind, do you think the battle got easier or harder? It got harder, of course. Temptation isn’t much of a battle if you easily give in to it. It is fierce when you decide to stand against it.
“Although you may despair, with all your steps backward, God won’t give up on you. Remember, your sins are already forgiven. This is a winnable battle, because you are alive in Christ and dead to sin, you can become all God has called you to be. The bigger war has already been won by Christ.”
Brothers and sisters, Anderson is right! All spiritual battles can be won because greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world! We must believe this, trust and ask for the Lord to work in us and through us. We must ask for Him to strengthen us powerfully by His Spirit who lives within us!
Col. 3:1-2 “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”
Phil. 4:8 “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”
II Pet. 3:1-2 “Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking. I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles.”
The only way to wholesome thinking is by reading the Word of God. Ps. 119:11 “Thy Word have I hid…”
II Cor. 10:5 “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
ILL.- Neil Anderson wrote, “As you set out to rid your mind of years of impure thoughts (and make it obedient to Christ), remember that merely trying to stop thinking bad thoughts won’t work. You must fill your mind with the crystal-clear Word of God. There is no alternative plan. We overcome the father of lies by choosing the truth!
“Picture your polluted mind as a pot filled to the brim with stale black coffee. It’s dark and smelly. There’s no way to get the pollution of coffee out of the liquid. However, sitting beside the coffeepot is a huge bowl of clear ice cubes.
“Your goal is to purify the contents of the pot by adding ice cubes to it every day. I wish there were a way to dump all the cubes (words of the Bible) in at one time, but there isn’t. Every cube dilutes the mixture, though, making it a little purer. Since you can only put in one or two cubes a day, the process seems futile at first. But over the course of time, the liquid begins to look less and less polluted, and the taste and smell of coffee decreases.
“The process will continue to work. But only if you don’t add more coffee grounds!”
CONCLUSION-------------------------------
ILL.- A.C. Green currently owns the NBA Iron Man title, having played in 1,192 straight games. He wrote one time, “How can we win spiritual battles?”
He said, “As a kid, when I was afraid of some bully, I yelled [to my brothers], ‘Lee, Steve, come help me fight a bully.’
"’Where is he, Junior?’ they asked, and I pointed the way while I trotted along behind, thinking Yeah, this is going to be good!
"’Jesus, help!’ I say. ‘I’ve got this big, ugly, filthy bully trying to get me.’"
Brothers and sisters, there is a bully out there who wants to “beat up” on us. Satan is alive and well on planet earth. Our only defense is our big brother, the Lord Jesus. We need Him. We need His mind and His Spirit to experience victory.
Phil. 2:5 KJV “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.”
