Taking Back Our Mind

So, we are in a series called The War, The Battle, The War In Your Mind, or Battling The War In Your Mind, and this is really, I'll tell you what guys, I'm living this out, okay, this is not something I'm sharing with you, just as a nice piece or a nice, worked out, written statement that I studied. These are things that we're working out together. And today, the title of the message is To Take Back Your Mind. There's a scripture in Romans 12 too, very popular scripture, one of my favorites, and it says this, do not conform to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. I don't know about you, but there are times when I make some really dumb, rational decisions when I'm not thinking right, when I'm frustrated, or am I alone in that, or is everybody else just going to polish their halo in here?

I make dumb decisions, I make irrational decisions, I make stupid mistakes, and one of those, I'll just be vulnerable for a minute and tell you, you know, so I get a little frustrated around food. Like, when it's food time, like, when it's food time, it's time to eat, you know, you get hangry, and you do, like, stupid stuff, and I'll come home sometimes, or to be in the evening, and it's dinner time, right? And I don't see any food around, I don't see any, Miranda's, like, already eaten, probably, and the kids are, like, kind of doing their thing, and I'm like, what is going on here? Or, I want something, and I'll tell Miranda, so are we going to eat? Are we going to do, like, yeah, because, yeah, what's going on here, you know?

And I'll kind of, I'll kind of get an attitude, I'll walk into the kitchen, because I want her to just say, hey, you want something to eat, right? Hey, it's dinner time, I kind of have this weird thing about wanting my wife to notice, like, take care of me, you know? Are you hungry, babe? My wife is not. Are you hungry, sweetheart?

You know, she's not that kind of person, okay? So, I come into, I'm, like, coming in and out of the kitchen, I'm opening the refrigerator, oh, there's nothing in the refrigerator, flam! You know, I walk back in here, what's going on, you know? And then I'll go in there, she says, you want to order something? I say, yeah, but no, I don't, yeah, I don't.

I know, and now, then I'll just get mad again, I'll walk back in the kitchen, and I'll start doing the cabinets again, and looking around, I'll say, why don't we have anything in here, and then something that we could have ordered like 30 minutes ago, and get how we had to the house, I'm still complaining, and then it ends up being too late to order anyway, and I don't have anything to eat, so I handled things very irrationally, because I was frustrated, and wasn't thinking right, because our thoughts really determine our actions, right? The way we think determines our actions. Have you ever behaved irrationally? Maybe you want to be nice to your spouse, maybe you get home and you plan to praise them and tell them how great, and then all of a sudden you just start yelling, you start arguing, you start going into that moment. Maybe you want to save money, and you just compulsively spend, and you just don't understand why.

You want to go out and shop all the time. Maybe you want to lose weight, and you just can't get away from food, right? You say, oh, I'm going to be better, I'm going to eat better, but every fast food that comes in distance from you, you want to go in and grab something. Maybe you want to be proactive and organized, and your plan is to be proactive and organized. You want to do things right, but you end up procrastinating, and you're reactive because of the procrastination.

You plan to do it a certain way, but it always ends up going that way. Maybe you want to trust God. Maybe you believe that God has your back. Maybe you believe that God is in control, but for some reason you worry, and in the end there really isn't anything to worry about because it's never as bad as you think it is. Now, why is it that we want to do one thing, but instead we do another?

Why is it that we act and behave irrationally? Well, let me just share an example with you. We're loosely following the book, a book by Craig Groeschel, and he shared his car, his old car. I'm going to share my very first car, my very first car, which was an 86 Mustang. Could y'all pop that up, that 86 Mustang on the screen?

Look at this boy, 86. Where's Mark Griffith in here? I got your back, brother. Look at that. My very first car, a Mustang, man.

Well, it was actually blue, but the red one just looked, any blue one I brought up, it just didn't look like what I had. But I had this car, man, it was, it was, I was working on it all the time because it was an 80, you know, it had 100,000 miles on it, it had leaks all over the place, but man, I loved this car. And because I didn't have any money, I was in high school, you did everything yourself, right? So, you had to have a kick-butt speaker system in your car. You, you had to.

I had my Rockford, I had my 10-inch Rockford Foss skates in the back, I had a Pioneer stereo system in the front, and I did all the wiring myself, I went in and put everything together, I had it all working properly, you know, I had all the tech, right? And, and, and, and I would, I would work really hard so that I can play my Nirvana and Pearl Jam, you know, and as I'm riding down the road, you know, hollering and screaming out the window, pulling up beside people and people rolling up their windows, you know, because I was too loud. Yeah, so, so you had to have that system. But an interesting thing is, I, there was, there was a little tweak in the system that I could never figure out. Every time I hit a bump, it would pop.

Every time I'd, I'd turn, kind of build the speed up, it would, you would hear a little, little fuzz in, in the stereo system. And I went in over, and over, and over again, trying to figure that out. Finally, I just kind of gave up. But what I determined later on was the reason that I had that was because of a bad grounding. I didn't have a wire in place, and there were some exposed wires that were touching each other, and it created kind of some interruptions in my perfect stereo system, you know, that I paid so much money for to, to put in my car.

The wires were crossed. The wires were crossed. I think about National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, probably the, the, the, you know, center of all Christian, Christian, Christmas movies. Everybody's watched this at least once, and probably my favorite scene is the scene, the, the light scene. And I'll, I'll, some of you are like, oh yeah.

So there's something about slapstick, frustrating comedies that I just love. That just, just, just gets you, you know. Brenda says, I, I can't watch it because it makes me so anxious. But man, I love those things because it's so relatable. And, and he's, he's worked all day and worked so hard.

And he's done so much, you know, and he's put the lights, and the lights are all over the house, right? He's put hours and hours and hours in to this presentation. He's got his whole family out in the yard, and they're like, grrr, yeah, yeah, yeah, what's up, man, let me go, and it doesn't work. And he just can't figure it out, right, right? So he goes back, and he goes through all the lights and everything, and he just cannot figure.

He keeps doing it, keeps plugging it in. His wife comes out, you know, and is talking to him, and he's like, I just cannot figure out why these lights don't work. So he goes through the back, and one of the family members comes into the garage and turns, well, the wife was later. Originally, it was the mother or something like that, and switches it on. And all of a sudden, the wife's outside, and it starts working, and she's calling for Clark to come out, Clark, come out, come out, come out, right?

And by the time he gets out there, it's off again. And she's like, hmm. So she goes to the back, and she walks into the garage, and he's like, so he does it again. And he says, why is it not working? It was working a second ago, you know, because he plugged it in, and then it was working, and he was, like, excited.

And then it turned off again because there was a switch in the garage that cut on and off the light, and he didn't realize it. And after that happened, he got so frustrated, he starts running over and beating Santa Claus in the face and in the head, kicking Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer all over the place, acting completely irrational. And then his wife's in the garage and looks and says, hmm, cuts the light on, and all the lights come on. And as he's doing that, he puts it in, and he's, you know, and it's like, oh, and all, like, outer space sees his lights and things like that, and it's working. I mean, just irrational.

He got angry, he just beat everything up, when it really was just a switch that was missing, a switch that needed to be flipped on. And for many of us, it's a switch that just needs to be flipped on. Our wires are crossed. Our wires are crossed. Why do we behave irrationally?

We have these neural pathways in our brain that every new experience that we have, from the time we were children, created these pathways, these ways of thinking. It's weird I'm watching, you know, I mean, when I make it up, but I'm all going to get™ 1990s because there's none of the way it would. The way we perceive life, the way we perceive everything that goes on around us is a result of the way we think. Think of a baby. They're brand new.

There's no pathways formed in their brains yet. So when they look at parents, they form those pathways based on their parents' response. A mother looks at a child and he's goo-goo-ga-ga-goo-goo and smiles. What does the children do back or the baby do back? He smiles, he laughs, or she smiles, she laughs because she relates to that connection that this is a happy moment.

When a baby touches a hot stove, when a child touches a hot stove, they get burnt, right? They don't go back to that hot stove and touch it again because they know that it's bad, bad. Stay away from the stove. Or a baby cries for candy and then you say no candy and they keep crying and you give them candy anyway, what are they going to think? They're going to cry when they want candy because they think that's the way it's supposed to be.

Their minds haven't formed the pathways but they can be trained. So we, why do we have these thoughts? Why do we have these neuropathways? Why do these things, why do we think the way we think is the question. Because the more you think a thought, the easier to think the thought again.

The more you have a thought in your mind, the easier it is to think that thought again. And these could be good thoughts, which is truth, or they can be bad thoughts, which are lies. And for many of us, we have formed fortresses in our minds. In fact, Satan uses thinking to make us think wrongly about ourselves, about reality, about the world, about who we are. And we call these strongholds in Scripture.

So last week we talked about that and we visited 2 Corinthians 10, that there's a battlefield going on and most of life's battles are won and lost in the mind. Most of life's battles are won and lost in the mind. Here's what 2 Corinthians says. It says, For though we live in the world, we don't wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world.

On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds, to destroy strongholds, these fortresses that are built in our mind based on those neuropathways that have been put in place that our thinking has caused over and over and over. Again, but we have the power to abolish those strongholds. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds, and 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. So your life is always moving in the direction of your strongest thoughts. Your life is always moving.

You're always walking in the direction. You're living out the direction of your strongest thoughts, and what comes into your mind comes out in your life. You cannot have a positive life if you live with a negative mind. You can't have a positive life. In fact, our wires are crossed.

We need to uncross them, and you don't, when you don't have control of what you think, you never control what you do. If you don't have control of what you think, you cannot control what you do. If you can't control your thoughts, you can't control your actions. So it starts with our minds, and we need to train our minds. How do we train our minds?

How do we do this? How do we put this into action? Well, if you think about getting in shape, your body, gym, exercising. The first thing we think, and the first thing I would think, and I've always thought, is that you exercise. You lift weights.

You run. You condition. You do all these things to get your body in shape. But what you learn when you get above 40 years old, it takes a little more. It's not as easy.

And it's more about what you put in your body than it is that you do with your body. It's about what you eat, what you put in, drink, what you put in it, how you, whether the fat content and the sugar content and all those things. It's about what you put in your body more so than it is what you do outside of your body to get you to the place you need to be. And in the same way, it's about what you put in your mind. It's about what you process into your mind that determines your heart and where your heart goes, right?

So it starts with our thoughts. The eyeballs of everything, the eyes are the inlet pieces that train our thoughts. And then you you And our thoughts go to our hearts, and our hearts act on those things. So if we can get control of our minds, if we can process things in a way to create new neuropathways to bring these crossing wires into the right place, it is possible, and we have the power to demolish these strongholds. In fact, Paul says it like this, and let me give you some context of the book of Philippians.

Paul was in prison, Paul was under house arrest, Paul was possibly facing his life being taken away from him, Paul was possibly in his last days, and Paul pens this letter to the people of the church, to the people of God. He says this, and what he doesn't say is, God let me down. He doesn't say, I can't go on. He doesn't say, life can't get much worse. He doesn't say that.

Here's what he says, and now dear brothers and sisters, one final thing, fix your thoughts on what is true. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right. What is right, not wrong, right, and get this, and what is pure. Fix your thoughts on what is pure. If it's not pure, then it's probably not God, right?

It's pure. What is pure, and what is lovely, and what is admirable. Think about things that are excellent and praiseworthy. Think about those things. When you're in prison, think about those things.

He was practicing this. I love how the NKJV says it, the New King James Version says it. It says, if there is any virtue, and if there is anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things. He talks about meditation. So I want to give you some practical advice on meditating today.

For some of you, you're like, well, isn't meditation like an Eastern religion, an Eastern philosophy? Isn't that something that we do, a New Age type thing? Do we really want to touch that? Here's the definition of meditation, to engage in mental exercise, to focus one's thoughts. To engage in mental exercise and to focus one's thoughts.

And this is very biblical. This is very biblical. Because godly people meditated. In the Bible all the time. There's in fact scriptures about it.

The psalmist said in Psalm 119, I meditate on your precepts. I consider your ways. I meditate on your ways and who you are. I meditate on your precepts. Psalm 143 says it like this, I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done.

See, Eastern meditation says empty your mind and calm yourself. But Christian meditation says fill your mind with what is good. Fill your mind with truth. Fill your mind with purity. Fill your mind with honorable things.

Fill your mind with the things that God actually says and believes about you and about the world and what he had created. Believe those things. Fill your minds with truth. Fix your minds. We need to fix our minds.

We need to train our minds. Focus is a skill, guys. Focus is something we have to work on. We have to make and process and make better. It's something we exercise.

Jackie Chan on the Karate Kid, and I'm not kidding. I watched this Karate Kid, and it was, you know, it just didn't compare to the old Karate Kid, you know. But I do love this phrase in Karate Kid when Miyagi or Jackie Chan is sharing with the young boy as he's training him in karate. He says, your focus needs more focus. Your focus needs more focus.

Our focus really does need more focus. When we think we're focusing, we need to focus more. Because when minds drift, we generally drift to lies. When our minds drift, we drift to insecurities. We drift to fears.

We drift to the can'ts and I wants and I'm not able tos. And reality comes out of that when we have those thoughts in our minds and in our heads. Our minds tend to drift towards things that aren't true. And when you've been dealing with these thoughts for... For 20 and 30 and plus years, these thoughts take root and they're harder to break.

So we have to be consistent in training and creating new neuropathways in our minds to create new wiring because we've crossed wires and we need to fix those wires. So I'm going to visit last week's two points and I'm going to go a little bit further with them, okay? What stronghold first is holding you back? What stronghold is holding you back? What's the thing in your mind, and don't label them all right now, okay?

You may have two or three or four things that you've been struggling with your entire life. But right now, you need to identify one stronghold. One stronghold, one thought process that you are dealing with that has caused you to be insecure. Maybe it's never getting out of debt or you grew up in debt. You know, your family was like that and you're just not able to think that you can handle money well.

Or you can't overcome an addiction. It's just something that you've been a part of for a long time. You can't overcome it. Maybe it's you always struggle with your health or you've never felt close to God. Maybe you have that stronghold like, I've done so many bad things that I just can't get close to God.

Maybe you've never had a meaningful job or you feel like, I'm never going to get married. I'm never going to have a partner that I can share life with. Or my marriage will never be good. I've just already been divorced once or twice and I'm in this marriage and it's not working as well. And I'm just never going to get through this.

I'm never going to be able to do this. Or whatever that stronghold might be. The insecurities that are placed in us. That I'm not good enough and I won't be able to. That maybe we've been struggling our entire lives.

That somebody spoke into our lives as a child or as a young person or as a developing human being. That has caused this thought process to take place. Maybe it was something as simple as, you never got picked on the kickball team. You know? And maybe that's been a root of yours.

You were picked on and there's a stronghold as you were growing up. That you've just never been able to get past. Identify what's holding you back. That stronghold that's keeping you from being. That stronghold that's keeping you from being.

What God wants you to be. And when you do that, you've got to identify what truth destroys that stronghold. What truth in scripture, you need to go to scripture because it has the power to demolish and to destroy the strongholds. And you have to believe that. Do you believe that today?

That God's truth can actually destroy a stronghold in your life that you've been carrying for years. Well, how do you do that? How do you do that? You've got to identify it, and then you've got to take that stronghold and find a truth in scripture. A truth to destroy that stronghold.

So, here's what you're going to do. You're going to write it down. You're going to write it down. You're going to write that truth down. You're going to think it and you're going to confess it until you believe it.

You're going to write it down. You're going to think it and you're going to confess it until you believe it. You're going to write it down. Think it. Confess it till you believe it.

Write it down. Think it. Confess it till you believe it. Can I say that one more time? Write it down.

Think it. Confess it till you believe it. You need to write these things down. Put them in paragraph form. Put them in whatever form about these things that have been tackling you for years.

And confess it. Think it. Confess it until you believe it. And you will believe the truth. And what will the truth do?

The truth will set you free. In the book, I'm going to give you a few examples of what that looks like. And honestly, this is something I'm doing with myself. And by the end of this series, I'm hoping I can share my own thought process as I pin things down about the things I'm struggling with. But here's the deal.

Let me just give you some examples. Say you struggle to know God's will. Maybe that's something that you've struggled with a long time. Here's what you can write down. My life belongs to God.

Daily I seek Him and daily He directs my steps. I know His will and He leads me to His perfect will. Maybe you lack confidence in your life. Maybe confidence is hard for you. My confidence is in Christ and Christ alone.

Because His Spirit lives within me, I can do everything He's called me to do. Maybe you fight lust, lustful thoughts. Maybe you have a history of pornography or whatever it may be. And that's... Something that you're struggling with, you can make this claim here, I'm not a slave to lustful thoughts because God has purified my mind.

I will honor Him with my eyes and thoughts, and my God is faithful. Even if I am tempted, He will always give me a way out. And you can confess that. You can write it down, think it, confess it until you believe it. Maybe food just comforts you.

You're always eating and you have a problem with your weight and things like that. And when you're stressed, it says, and you can write this down, when I'm stressed, I turn to God, not food. I come to Jesus because He is what I need. In Him, I find strength and comfort. Or maybe you're battling worry.

Maybe you're battling just anxiety. But you can say this, because of Christ, I'm not anxious about anything. I cast my cares on God because He cares for me. And I have the peace, as we sing about the day, the peace of God dwelling in my heart and ruling in my mind. Write it.

Think it. Confess it until you believe it. Write it. Think it. Confess it until you believe it.

Break these strongholds in your life. You can do it. Write it. Write it. Think it.

Confess it until you believe it. And I shared with you a little bit last week of some of the things I battle with as a leader, as a pastor, my insecurities, feeling like I'm not good enough at times, feeling like I can't be the best family man, I can't be the best pastor all at the same time, and the struggle that I deal with, the back and forth I deal with. Well, in this book, one of the most famous, most well-respected, greatest communicator, probably in our times, Craig Groeschel, Pastor Craig Groeschel, shares some of these very same insecurities. And it really touched my heart because I'm like, he's dealing with the very same thing I'm dealing with. And he has a church of 20,000 and more, and he deals with these things all the time.

And he wrote down how inadequate at times he felt and how it was hard sometimes to put God first and how he struggled with family life and how he struggled with the church and how he always felt like he had to prove people, people. To prove to people instead of proving to God who he was. And that struggle is so real. And he wrote down his own statements in this book, and I thought I would share them with you. And these aren't all of his statement that he's made, but this is something that he's worked on for the last year of his life.

And I figured I could just share this with you. He wrote this down as he struggles with these insecurities. He says, Jesus is first in my life, and I exist to serve and glorify God. I love my wife, and I will lay down my life to serve her. My children will love God and serve him with their whole hearts.

I will nurture, equip, train, empower them to do more for his kingdom than they could ever imagine. I love people, and I believe the best about others. I am disciplined. Christ in me is stronger than the wrong desires in me. And I am growing closer to Jesus every day because of Christ.

My family is closer, my body is stronger, my faith is deeper, and my leadership is sharper. I am creative, innovative, driven, focused, blessed beyond measure because the Holy Spirit dwells within me. I develop leaders. I develop leaders. That's not something I do.

It's who I am. I bring my best and then some. And it's what I bring after I do my best that makes the difference. The world will be different and better because I serve Jesus today. That last statement really hit me hard.

Lord, I serve Jesus and this world will be better because of it. This world is different and better because I serve Jesus. You got to take back your minds. We got to meditate. We got to meditate on the things that are truth.

We got to fix our minds. We got to identify it and destroy it. We got to write it down. We got to think it. We got to confess it until we believe it.

And as Christians, we will not be conformed. We will not be pressed down to the patterns of this world, but we will be transformed by the renewing of our minds. And if the band could come up, I just want to... We're going to enter into this second part of this message, we're just kind of landing the last part of this message. Because as Christians, we will not conform.

As Christians, we will believe what God says is truth. We will not bounce to the lies of this world. It's not self-help, it's not our own efforts, it's not trying harder, it's not being smarter, it's not any of those things, it's the renewing of our minds with truth. It is about truth because you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. You will know the truth, that truth, capture it, put it on paper, write it down, think it, confess it, until you believe it.

And the more you write it down, the more you think it, the more you confess it, until you believe it. The more you meditate on that thing, that truth, your mind will be renewed. The wires will be fixed. Those things that have crossed your entire life will begin to align in the direction of who God meant you to be. Who God always wanted you to be.

And in a moment of honesty, how many of you would say, I need this? Raise your hands, I need this. Maybe there's others of you here today that struggles with the I'm not good enough to be close with God. I'm not that type of person that God would love. I'm not that type of person that God would help break that habit or break that addiction or break that insecurity.

I've lived with this all my life. I just don't think God would love. Can I tell you, you have a God that loves you so much that he actually gave his only sin. For You. And He turned His back on His only Son so that He could have a relationship with You.

That He could come and actually connect with You intimately. That He could know You. That You could actually speak to Him and be with Him face to face. Did you know that? Did you know that?

That you can ask Him to come into your life. Did you ask Him to come into your heart? That you could say, Lord, I want a relationship with You today. I want to know You. I know I'm a sinner.

I know I've done all these things. But I can actually know You. I want to know You. And He would say, I'm here for You. And I've been here for You all along.

I've been following You my entire life. And your entire life. I've been chasing You your entire life. But you haven't seen me because you've been focused on the wrong pathways. Your neuro pathways have been going the wrong way.

But I've been right here waiting for You to turn and look at me. Because I love You so much. And with all heads bowed and all eyes closed, let me just pray this prayer in all seriousness. And we can all pray it together as a church. But there's some of you here today, under the sound of my voice, as I speak, that you've never given your life to Jesus.

Because you've never thought that you could have a relationship with God. He says, if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that He is Lord, you will be saved. And you will have a relationship. So pray this with me. God, I believe that You are the Son of God.

That You died on the cross for my sin. Today, I give my life to You. Come into my heart. Change me and transform me inside out. I'm a child of Yours.

I'm a child of Yours today. And I will follow You for this day. Amen. Can y'all give God a hand clap of praise for those. Somebody gave your life to Jesus today.

And I challenge you to let us know. Fill out that card. Connect with somebody. Let them know that you made that decision. That you'll never be the same after this and we want to help guide you along this path and I want for those who believe I just want to end with this for those who are in Christ I want to make some statements for you can I make these statements for you today I want to declare some things over you today new Christians Christians have been Christians for a long time those who gave their lives to Jesus today this is for for all of us let me just say this you are strong and mighty and you have the same power that raised Christ from the dead dwelling inside of you and you are a weapon of righteousness in a world of darkness you are not your past you are not what you did you are who God says you are he says you are forgiven and he says you are redeemed and he says you are free you are not a hostage to your unhealthy thoughts the weapons you fight with are not the weapons of this war you have the divine power to demolish strongholds in the name of Jesus you have the mind of Christ directing your thoughts you have the word of God guiding your steps worry is not your master your trust your trust is in God his peace guards your heart guards your mind and guards your soul in Christ Jesus your God has not given you a spirit of fear but a spirit of power and of love and of a sound mind claim it speak it confess it until you believe it the Lord is my helper and you will not be afraid you are not a slave to your habits you are not a prisoner to your addictions you have been rescued you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the kingdom of God's life you are God your God will bless you abundantly so that in all things and in all times having all you need you will abound in every good work nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing can separate you from God's love not death not death not demons not the present nor the past no power on earth will separate you From His love, that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Most of life battles are won and lost in our heads and our minds. The battle rages, but we've won the war. You need to proclaim that, that you've won the war. Can y'all give me a battle cry today? We've won the war!

We've won the war! We can kick! He cannot win! And He will not win, because we are children of the Most High God. And we can conquer anything that is put in our way, because we have truth, and the truth sets us.