"receiving The Mind Of Christ"

“Receiving the Mind of Christ”

1 Corinthians 2:1-16

Ever since The World Health Organization declared Covid-19 to be a pandemic back on March 11, 2020 things have not been the same.

Sure, there was a short respite at the beginning of the summer, once the vaccines arrived and the case-loads began to dip.

But with not enough people getting the vaccine and the virus being given the ability to mutate, we are right back in the thick of it.

And for those who are not vaccinated, things are worse than they ever were.

We all know people who have died.

Many of us know people who are in the hospital, on ventilators right now.

This is a scary time.

Add to this a climate crisis that is bringing with it, seemingly, never ending fires out West, stronger and stronger hurricanes and hotter days every year…

…Oh, and don’t forget the unrest in the Middle East, the political divisions in our country, a never-ending news cycle, and things can sometimes seem too overwhelming to deal with.

So how do we deal with life when things seem too crazy and we feel too small and vulnerable to do anything to change things?

Do we turn to God?

Do we know God so that we can turn to Him?

It is much easier to forget about God and our need for God when everything appears to be going well.

But we are facing hardship.

We are dealing with death.

Creation seems to be trying to buck us off the planet.

Is there any hope?

Is there anyone who loves us?

In our Scripture lesson for this morning, Paul tells us that there are deep and intimate things in God which only His Spirit knows; and that Spirit is the only One Who can lead us into an intimate knowledge of God.

And do you know that God’s Spirit is always working on us, nudging us and loving us—moving us toward a knowledge of God’s love for us for our entire lives?

This is called Prevenient Grace—it is the grace that goes before us…

…it is the love of God working in our lives before or even when we don’t know it.

It’s happening right now; are we aware of it?

God wants to be in relationship with us.

He wants us to know Him and to experience the life-changing peace and joy that comes only through a living and growing relationship with Him.

And whether we know it or not…

…this is what we crave.

This is what our lives are missing if we don’t know God and God’s love for us.

A long time ago there was a guy who, more than anything wanted to get to know God and know that God loved him, accepted him and had saved him.

And so he read his Bible.

He studied it hard.

He got to know all the “Thou shall nots…” and the “Thou shalls…”—the whole shabang!!!

He even went off to a really good seminary—one of the best—where he studied about God and the rules of the Church.

And then, he himself became a priest.

And he found a group of like-minded folks, who wanted to please God.

They got together and formed what would soon be called “The Holiness Club.”

And “The Holiness Club” worked really hard trying to follow all the rules in the Bible correctly.

They figured that if they just tried hard enough they could be perfect and acceptable to God.

But this was a frustrating thing to try and do, because try as they might, they were just human beings with temptations, flaws, sinful inclinations and so forth just like everyone else in the world.

They did a lot of things.

And their intentions were good.

But ultimately they were left feeling defeated and alienated from the God they were trying to emulate.

Eventually, the young priest who had set out to make himself the perfect Christian decided to give up.

He realized that he couldn’t achieve his goal.

And oh, was he depressed.

And oh, did he feel like a failure.

He had really hit rock bottom.

He felt that he would never, ever be able to measure up to the high standards of God as written out in so many pages of the Bible.

One night a friend of his invited him to go to a special Bible study.

And he didn’t want to go.

He’d been to enough Bible studies to last a lifetime, thank you very much, and see where they had gotten him?

But his friend was persistent.

So, reluctantly, he went.

And this Bible study, well, it wasn’t an incredibly academic affair.

It wasn’t like his seminary classes.

There was no highly educated scholar up front using high and lofty words.