"learning To Renew Your Mind" Series

DISCIPLESHIP 101

“Learning to Renew your Mind”

Romans 12:1-2

We continue today in our series titled discipleship 101. Four weeks ago when we started this series I read a verse from Luke chapter 9 Jesus was speaking to anyone who might choose to follow him and these are the words that he spoke... If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for me will save it.

This cross, especially in the day of Jesus, stood for persecution; it stood for suffering; it stood for death. So anyone who elected to follow Christ-they knew what they were getting into. If anyone would come after me you must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

Please look at this slide with me. Right in the center of the cross we see the words to deny self. Those two words must always be at the center of our lives as a disciple. Last week my message was titled Learning to live in the Word. And I encouraged all of you to reach deep into God’s word every day, to get in a group and begin to study God’s Word as never before. There is a powerful passage of Scripture that Paul wrote to the church in Corinth that simply says this... We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. When Paul wrote these words, he was writing to a church that was dealing with temptation (or attempting to) but they were not succeeding. They faced a great deal of temptation that we deal with today as well. Paul tells them especially that they should avoid sin in these areas:

• Sexual sin. Do not associate with sexually immoral people.

• Greed.

• Those who worship idols.

• Those who give in to drunkenness.

Now while this was written 2000 years ago these are still huge areas where many struggle today. So Paul was making a very important point when he wrote this down. These temptations start in the same place all temptation starts. It is in how we think. It is in our thought process. Where does sexual sin get started? It gets started in the same place every sin starts. In the heart. We look at things we shouldn’t look at, we read books or magazines we shouldn’t see and these things get into our thought process and they work their way into our actions. So Paul is saying that in order to prevent these things from happening that we must learn to take captive every thought and make that thought obedient to Christ.

Now the psalmist David certainly knew this. And as we have stated before the OT and NT believers did not have the privilege of holding all of God’s Word in their hands as we do. Most of us have access to multiple copies of God’s word. We have the word available on radio, TV, Internet. They of course had none of these things.

So David and many others found the solution to this problem and David tells us in Psalm 119:11 what the answer is. David said I have hidden/stored your word in my heart that I might not sin against thee. As unbelievable as it sounds, Orthodox Jews committed the entire Talmud to memory. 5422 pages. It was divided into 63 sections and they could recite every word on every page. They did this for several reasons. First of all it was necessary. They didn’t have any computers, tapes, devices to record on and even writing was difficult so the only way to store the information was by committing it to memory. Today if you ask a young person their phone number they have to look it up. ?

But not only was it necessary, it was helpful. It had great benefits. And it still does because as a disciple your goal is not merely to get into the word but the goal also is to get the word into you. It is not how many times you have been through the Bible but rather how many times it has been through you. Think of it this way. Think of it as a cup of hot tea. Only you are the cup of hot water and the Scripture is the teabag. Hearing God’s word is like one dip of the teabag into the cup. It absorbs some of the flavor but not all of it. As you read it again and again it absorbs even more. The more times the teabag enters the water, the stronger the effect. And you continue to absorb it into your life until you are completely saturated with God’s word.