Scripture Reference: Colossians 3:1-3 (NKJV); Colossians 3:1-2 (TPT); Colossians 3:1-2 (MSG); Ephesians 2:7-10 (AMPC); Romans 12:1-2 (MSG); Romans 12:1-2 (TPT); 1 Corinthians 1:18-20 (MSG)
Good morning. Thank you for joining Sunday church service. Always, I’m thankful and grateful that we have good health, that we have a heavenly Father that takes care of us and that even though we are not together, we are together. So, I just want you to agree with me as we start this message today that the Holy Spirit is present. That He rests upon your mind, rests upon your heart and that you have the capacity and the capability and the desire to receive the Word of God. And that it will gain entrance into your heart and it will release the power of the great believer that you are, the great Christian that you are; that it will release the power of God in you. If you’re in agreement with that, wherever you’re sitting or standing, you can say; amen.
Just for the record; the people that are in the auditorium are people that are working in the ministry. We’re not yet open in the ministry for live services, just so that you know. Last week I ministered to you on Blow your mind. Now, you know, if you go into a shop and you buy products; if you go and buy a camera or you buy a toaster, something, oftentimes you will see that terms and conditions apply to a warranty. Or, if they give you a special sale then the sale is subject to terms and conditions. So, everybody is familiar with the terms or the words terms and conditions. Well, the reason why people put that on there is because they don’t want a legal liability or they don’t want you to come back and say, “You promised this, we got that and so you have to give us money back.” Or they use it for a year and then want to return it. Terms and conditions become very important in a legal document.
So, the title of this message is Blow your mind: T’s and C’s apply. Meaning terms and conditions apply. Last week I read you a scripture which comes from Colossians chapter three verse 1-3, 1If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. 2Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. 3For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:1-3 NKJV).
I’m going to read this again in different translations – The Passion Translation and the Message Translation. I want to just say that this passage of Scripture is definitely talking about a revelation, a spiritual recognition of who you are in Christ Jesus. But being that person in Christ Jesus, and having a revelation of being that person in Christ Jesus, translates into a world that we live in, in this environment. I’m reading from The Passage Translation the same scripture. 1Christ’s resurrection is your resurrection too. This is why we are to yearn for all that is above, for that’s where Christ sits enthroned at the place of all power, honor, and authority! 2 Yes, feast on all the treasures of the heavenly realm and fill your thoughts with heavenly realities, and not with the distractions of the natural realm (Colossians 3:1-2 TPT). Once again I’m wanting to bring this to your attention and keep your attention on this. Because even though we live in the natural realm and we have to continue to conduct our lives in the natural realm, this scripture clearly tells us that we need to fill our thoughts with heavenly realities. The more you fill your thoughts with heavenly realities, the more you are able to deal with the distractions of the natural realm. And we are going to talk a little bit about those distractions and what they mean and how they apply to us as believers.
I want to again read the same verses from the Message Translation. Verse 1, 1So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. And you’ll remember from last week, I spoke quite a lot about this. 2Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ – that’s where the action is. See things from his perspective (Colossians 3:1-2 MSG). Again I want to bring out this emphasis that if you live life as it were, shuffling along and you are constantly distracted and absorbed with the things that are happening around you all the time, you are in danger of not becoming more fully integrated into the heavenly realities and the heavenly possibilities.
It is something that most of Heritage of Faith people should be able to almost recite by now, I’ve said it so many times. What’s the point of being a Christian? The point of being a Christian is so that you can become spiritual. The point of being a Christian certainly includes not going to hell but going to heaven. But that’s a given when you become a Christian. When you become a Christian it’s a given that you’re going to go to heaven. So what’s the point of living as a Christian? To be spiritual. What’s the point of being spiritual? So that you can bring heaven to earth. The only people that can bring heaven to earth are spiritual people. So, what is the evidence of someone who is spiritual? The evidence of someone who is spiritual is someone who is aware of all the things that are going on around Christ and are familiar with heaven’s realities. They’re not moved or easily distracted by natural things. And when the natural things are really large and big in their face, their response is first a heavenly reality response. It’s not a natural world response.
And so last week, I said things to you like; your desire follows attention. Whatever you give your attention to is what you will desire. I also said things like; a revelation is intended to replace your current reality with redemption and restoration. These are fundamental principles that I live out every day of my life. Every day I am, when I’m awake I’m immediately aware that I’m not just an ordinary, natural being. Every day I wake up I am aware that I am a spiritual being, and that I carry the spirit and resurrected Christ in me which means that the day that is ahead of me, moment by moment, I am likely to have a choice. Moment by moment I am likely to have a choice of either living in a heaven reality or living in a natural realm distraction. So one could say, “Well, Pastor John, is eating food a natural realm distraction.” No, I want to go so far as to say that if you’re a Christian, and you enjoy cooking, and you enjoy flavours of foods, and things like that, it might be something that the Lord really would like you to enjoy, to experiment and explore and spend some of your free time, your relaxed time, your rest time experimenting with different dishes and different tastes and different flavours. It becomes a natural distraction when that becomes such an important part of your life that you begin to reorganise and reestablish things in your life to accommodate that. And so it’s not the other way around. Does your life that you live in Christ accommodate your cooking? But if you are living in Christ, and you’re so involved in cooking that now Christ’s business is subject to what I’m cooking. I’m cooking, I’m going to spend this night doing this. Well, God might actually want you not to do that, He might want you to do something else. So then if you are willing to lay down the cooking – and this is really practical. This is really how it works. You might say, I’m going to go and buy the ingredients. And some of the ingredients that you want to cook with might be fresh ingredients. And now you have them in your fridge and you’re going to get ready to cook. And suddenly the Lord puts somebody on your heart and He says, “I want you to pray, I want you to pray right now for that person.” Well, does the cooking take priority or does the praying take priority? I mean, that’s a choice, that’s a choice of a spirit-being. And as you make that spirit-being choice, you become aware of heavenly realities, as opposed to natural realm distractions.
Again, cooking and experimenting and enjoying something like that, you might, some people in the natural world might consider it a hobby. I consider it as rest. I’m not a food guy, you know, I’m a photography guy. I’m a natural bush guy and I would rather spend my free time doing things that will help me learn about photography, and or improving my sporting life or my conditioning. Those are things that I would use as rest moments. But I’m using cooking because it’s something that everybody can relate to. Not just, not just people who exercise or even people who take photography. I consider that healthy rest time. But in a given moment, if I’m not resting, if I’m resting, and God says I want you to do something, it’s my responsibility as a heavenly minded being, to obey God and to change my plan that I had for rest to obey God. I can never lose here. Because whatever I give to God and I do, and I choose heavenly realities, He is always going to reward me back with more time. Or, He’s going to send somebody – just for an example – He might send somebody my way that has a particular style of cooking. It might be a highly qualified chef. And one day you’re out somewhere, maybe you’re in a mall or you’re in a shop that sells cooking utensils that you might need to cook with. And you come across this chef that is doing an impromptu cooking thing because the shop invited him to promote their shop. And you walk into the shop and here is the chef. They might say if you just fill out this form that you attended here, or that we can send you an email – I wouldn’t normally do that. But I’m just using, I’m elaborating on an example. It might be that, before you know it, the prize of attending that lecture and going into their shop is that the chef comes in, gives you a full day’s worth of lessons on how he cooks his meals. You can never actually say whatever I give God is wasted. Whatever I give God is lost time. On the contrary, if you’ve planned something that’s rest time, and you give God that time when He requires it, He will give it back to you over and over again in extravagant, and magnificent and special ways.
So if we’re going to talk about a heavenly-minded person, heavenly-minded people will bring heaven to earth. Wherever you go, you are bringing a mindset. Other people would call that a worldview, a mindset, a worldview. You’re bringing a spiritual force. You’re bringing understanding, revelation, enlightenment, and you’re bringing a Spirit-led impulse, a Spirit-led responsiveness you bring to every event if you like or every moment that you’re doing something, you bring that with you. Why is it important for you to recognise that if I’m a heavenly-minded person, I’m bringing that? Well, because as a heavenly-minded person, bringing your spirituality, bringing your heavenly solutions mindset, you’re likely if you are practised in this – and actually, this is how God wants us to live. He wants us to live practising His presence, practising obeying His ways and His commands, practising being responsive to what He says. So why do I say practice? Because oftentimes, you think you’re hearing from God, but you’re not sure because you’re learning that only through obedience do you learn; oh, that’s the voice of God. Sometimes you think the Lord is speaking and you get it a bit wrong. Then you find out later, why did I not read that this was the Lord? If you ask the Holy Spirit and or you go and speak to somebody mature, and you are open and honest about what happened in there, you might find that your head was filled with all kinds of emotions or your heart was filled with emotions and your head with ideas, and suddenly you thought you were making a spiritual decision, but actually, if you go back you will find that you were quite conflicted and there was quite a lot of things in you and around you and things that were happening and that conflict is a real thing.
As you become somebody who has learned and become practised in bringing heaven to earth, it’s amazing how many opportunities you’ve got to solve problems. It’s amazing. You become a magnet actually to drawing people into your world by which you can solve problems. I’ll give you an example of how that worked out in my life. When I left the corporate world to join the ministry, people thought at that time that I was leaving the corporate world because, at the level that I was in management at that time, people often left the corporate world because they didn’t just want to take any job. They wanted the right job that would be a step-up in promotion, in the right company, the right position, the right timing. The assumption always is that if you’ve reached that level of management, and often this is the case – if you reach that level of management, and that level of leadership in an organisation, you should have enough finances to give yourself enough time, to make the right transition into another position. Well, when I left the corporate world, people thought I was doing that. They thought I’m not really… I am just taking a sabbatical and I will be back in the corporate world and they kind of all wanting to see where I was going to show up next, you know. Because they didn’t understand actually that my life was dedicated to God. But as it became obvious that I was not really looking and in those days in the technology industry, it was quite a closed and a fairly small industry and certainly, in a management space, it was a fairly well-known group of people that were in senior management in large corporate IT companies or computer companies. And so, it became pretty clear soon that my CV wasn’t out there. I wasn’t having lunches or meetings with other executives or other people. I was quiet, you know. And it became obvious to them that maybe what John said he was going to do – was follow his passion to follow God in his life – he is actually doing that.
So, as it then turned out, because of the way that I was known for managing human resources – managing the people to get the jobs done, rather than managing tasks to get jobs done. I managed people to manage tasks. Because I became known for the way I managed people and helped people, computer companies and people in the industry started to send people to me to help them in their personal lives – marriage problems, family problems, issues that they would be having because I was outside the industry and yet I understood what it was to live under the pressure of that at a senior management level in that industry. So they started sending people to me to help them in their personal lives because it was affecting their performance and they didn’t just want to take a guy who had obviously dedicated a lot of passion, time, energy to get to the level that he was in the business to just write him off, even though there was a lot of people who wanted to take his place or her place. They didn’t want to just write you off, they wanted to be in a position where they want to help you. And I found myself in that role, helping people at senior levels. Helping them in their marriages, helping them with very sensitive information. Why? Because when you become a heavenly-minded person, you become a problem solver, and you become a magnet. You become a magnet to circumstantial issues that arise to solve the problems. So oftentimes you are faced with issues, you’re faced with problems, and you think, I don’t want to solve another problem. It seems like everybody’s pet and dog and pony and everybody is coming to me for help, you know. It does, it feels like everybody needs help. Why are they coming to me? Well, because you are a magnet. You’re a God-ordained problem solver on the earth. And you will see that actually, you become a peacemaker because, in a sense that when people come into your world, and you have a solution for them. They find peace around you. They find steadiness. They find wisdom. They find knowledge around you and so they don’t mind you being a Christian because you have solutions for their lives. That’s the way God intended it. Sooner or later they will be confronted with the true message of the Gospel, and then they will have to make a choice.
I would like to read to you from Ephesians chapter 2 verse 7 to 10. I do need to read this from the Amplified Bible because it just says it so well. Please bear with me because the Amplified Bible gives more words, gives more information, but it is really good. So, Ephesians 2 verse 7, 7He did this that He might clearly demonstrate through the ages to come the immeasurable (limitless, surpassing) riches of His free grace (His unmerited favor) in [His] kindness and goodness of heart toward us in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:7 AMPC). So, the minute you become in Christ Jesus, you are immediately elevated to this person that He demonstrates Himself. God the Father demonstrates to you His limitless surpassing riches of His free grace. He demonstrates to you His kindness. He demonstrates to you His goodness. He demonstrates His heart towards you that is in Christ Jesus. This is an amazing revelation that actually God is waiting to demonstrate Himself to you.
8For it is by free grace (God’s unmerited favor) that you are saved ([c]delivered from judgment and made partakers of Christ’s salvation) through [your] faith. And this [salvation] is not of yourselves [of your own doing, it came not through your own striving], but it is the gift of God; 9Not because of works [not the fulfillment of the Law’s demands], lest any man should boast. [It is not the result of what anyone can possibly do, so no one can pride himself in it or take glory to himself.] (Ephesians 2:8-9 AMPC). So when you experience the goodness of God, the kindness of God, His free grace that He gives to you, no one of us can boast and say, “Look at what I did to earn it. And look at the grace that I have on my life because I earned it.” I didn’t earn anything. I just receive it. I believe it, and I receive the goodness of it. 10For we are God’s [own] handiwork (His workmanship). So how can I boast about my life when I’m a product of His workmanship? It’s like this table saying, I’m boasting in myself because of how good I look. No, you can’t because you didn’t make yourself. Someone created you. God created me, so how can I boast in anything that I’m possibly capable of doing? Recreated in Christ Jesus, [born anew] that we may do those good works which God predestined (planned beforehand) for us [taking paths which He prepared ahead of time], that we should walk in them [living the good life which He prearranged and made ready for us to live] Ephesians 2:10 AMPC).
The best life that you can live has got some terms and conditions attached to it. The best life that you can possibly live, requires you to recognise that everything that you have in your life is a free gift from God. It’s His grace, it’s His favour. Therefore, you can’t earn more that is already given freely. How can you pay for something that’s already been given freely? I mean, I own this iPad. It’s a fairly new one. And it’s a fairly expensive product. I paid for it. If I chose to want to give it to you – and I’m pointing to the cameras, not to the staff in the auditorium here. If I chose to give it to you, you can’t pay for this. If I choose to give it to you, it’s already paid for. So what are you going to do to pay for it? So you might think; well, okay, I can’t pay for it in money. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to pay for it in kind. I’m going to be especially kind to me. I’m going to be especially attentive to anything that I can do to help in any area of my life, so that I can show how grateful I am. You can do all those things, but none of that is a payment. Even so, you might say, I think I’m paying it back, but you’re not really paying it back because you can’t pay for this. So you might change your attitude towards me because I’ve been kind and gracious towards you but you can’t pay for it.
The terms and conditions of having a heavenly mindset and becoming spiritual are that you must recognise that everything that you have is free from God. It’s free. It’s free. I hope this blows your mind. It’s free. The terms and conditions for you to be heavenly minded are you have to understand; it’s free. It’s a free gift, your salvation is a free gift. You can’t earn it again. you can’t pay for it again. Let me also say this, that if I spend my whole life giving all of my energy and all of my time and even all my rest time to God – my whole life – and I have this hard-working mentality that I’m working 18 hours a day and I work, work, work. I only sleep and eat, work, work, work, work, work, work because I want to prove to God that I’m a worthy vessel. Sorry, if you’re not doing what God assigned you to do, if you’re not doing what God called you and planned you to do beforehand that you understand that you’re His handiwork then all of your hard work is just a labour of works that will be burned by fire. But if you’re doing as this scripture says, 10For we are God’s [own] handiwork (His workmanship), recreated in Christ Jesus … that we may do those good works which God predestined (planned beforehand) for us, me and you, [taking paths which He prepared ahead of time], that we should walk in them, watch this now, [living the good life which He prearranged and made ready for us to live] (Ephesians 2:10 AMPC).
The good life, so when I say living the good life, people often might immediately say, well, the good life, what is the good life? Means more money, means more holidays, means buying any kind of clothing I want to buy when I want to. It means wealth, health, prosperity, whatever. I say that good life is understanding the heavenly realm. When you have an understanding of the heavenly realm, responding to that, in a moment, all the time you respond to it, you respond to it. Praise the Lord. This is good news for us. It’s good news for us. It’s not often you know, that when you have a heavenly mentality, that you will have huge, spectacular events happening in your everyday life. Oftentimes when you’re obedient to God, it is a daily practice of living in Him. The daily practice has moments and moments of obeying Him. Often the obedience is a pattern of life rather than a spectacular intervention. But every now and again, every now and again, your moment by moment, spiritual life, heavenly-minded pattern of living, reveals, your actions reveal a spectacular moment or event.
One day I was praying, spending time in the presence of the Lord and He began to work on my heart. And so I phoned two people in the ministry that were in business together. I said the Lord instructed me to spend a day with them in their business and ride around with them – a whole day. For me that was like, I’ve got to take a day of my productivity and just go and ride around with them and be with them all day. So we arranged that I did it. In the meantime, the Lord began to speak to me about one of the gentlemen, that his eldest daughter, that God had a plan for her life that is different to the plan that she currently had. She was currently at university. She’d been there a number of years. She was at a very advanced level of being educated already in her degree. It didn’t make any sense to me. I want to say to you, at the natural realm of what I could see, it didn’t make any sense to me, that God wanted to change anything.
But I obeyed God. The first step of my obedience was just to go ride with them in their car. And so I spent the day with them and we did quite a lot of mileage that day. On the way back, I began to speak to one of the gentlemen and I said to him, “I have to speak to you about your daughter. God’s got a plan for her life and I believe that, that this is how it must unfold.” I began to share with him. As I was sharing it with him, he got a phone call from his wife. What was happening is, there was a huge transition that was already happening in her heart and the disconnect from the university degree that she was studying, the environment that she was studying in, was already putting a lot of pressure on her and she was already in a state of disconnection. I didn’t know any of this. And so, what that led to do was that she put University on hold for a year and she came to work in the ministry. That’s what we saw as the wisdom of God. Well, it started off first with a couple of months and then a month turned into a year and it ended up being her becoming my daughter-in-law.
What a plan? A moment in a day; go and drive around with a couple of guys doing business. I mean, that was the heavenly intervention – go ride around with a couple of guys doing business. So when I did that, who was to know? I certainly had no clue, not a clue that first of all, his daughter was just waiting for a God intervention like this. In fact, one could say, there was a desperation in her to have a God intervention that she didn’t even fully understand, but she just knew this can’t carry on in her life. And who was to know that her coming into the ministry, being in the ministry, and responding to the call of God on her life rather than her preordained plan she had for her own life, she had for her own life – predetermined plan she had for her life. She decided I’m going to go with the handiwork of God in my life and let His plan unfold. And as she did that, God spectacularly began to restore her and He began to open doors for her. And like I said, now she’s my daughter-in-law. Who would have guessed? Not in a month of Sundays.
And so that’s how we can say that God truly is part of everything in our lives and He has spectacular results for us if we will let Him. But again, you know, I only responded to the obedience of God to go and ride with those guys for a day because I was in the pattern of obeying God through the day, every day. I became used to a pattern of heavenly minded thinking as opposed to naturally minded distractions constantly. Then God produces, sometimes spectacular results like that. But when we talk about and I talk about the spectacular result like that, as I said, you don’t always see them as spectacular like that, they don’t always show up. Your everyday life doesn’t always show up like that. Oftentimes, God is working around you, is working with you, and your life just seems to get better. It just seems to go well. It just seems that you get more peace and it doesn’t really matter what’s going on around you, it just is like this mantle that is on you. It’s like this amazing presence of just knowing that you are there, God’s there, you’re in the right place at the right time. It’s a peace that anybody that doesn’t live for God, they can’t get it. They can’t pay for it. They can’t study for it. They can’t buy it. There’s nothing that they can do to get it.
I’ve seen people in the corporate world, I’ve seen wealthy people spend money, buying holiday houses, buying yachts, boats, aeroplanes, bigger, better stuff, more extravagant international vacations. Just doing stuff because they’re looking for peace. And so they think if I change my environment, or I accumulate more goods in my wealth portfolio that I’m going to actually have… it’s going to go better for me. It doesn’t. It doesn’t because the natural world can’t actually provide you with that peace. There’s no peace, there is no peace there. So, if you’re going to blow your mind and live in God’s world, terms and conditions apply. Hallelujah. Are you catching the drift here?
I want to read to you a well-known passage of Scripture from two different translations. I’m going to read it from The Message and then The Passion Translation. And the reason I don’t have to read this out of the King James or the Amplified is that you should know it and you can always refer to it at another time. But this is from Romans 12 verses one and two. I read first from The Message translation. The Message translation reads like this, 1So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Can I repeat that? It’s so beautiful. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him (Romans 12:1 MSG). You have to embrace, you have to receive the free gift of everything that God has planned for your life that you are His handiwork. It’s a free gift. He’s given you assignment. He’s given you purpose. He’s given you life in abundance. He’s given you favour and blessing like me giving you this iPad. You can’t pay for it. If it’s mine to give to you, you can’t pay for it. The best thing you can do is take it, embrace it, use it, enjoy it. That’s the best thing you can do. And you can have a great life by doing that, if you accept what God has done for you.
The next passage of Scripture is so good in The Message translation. 2Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. This applies to a lot of very, very thinking people. Let me tell you a lot of very thoughtful thinking, educated, energetic, achievement-oriented people, it applies to them. They fit into life, with such ease and adjustment because of the way they live their life, they create a life of flowing and momentum so easily that they keep flowing in this life they’ve created. And so, I read it to you again, 2Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. And so you might think that what you’re doing, is, look how prosperous and successful I am compared to most other people. Therefore, obviously, I’m a thinking person. No, if you’re thinking like that, you’re already so well adjusted to your way of thinking, that you think like that. Ja, nȇ. 2… Instead, fix your attention on God. Remember what I said? what you put your attention on, that’s what you’re going to desire. Fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you (Romans 12:2 MSG). Heavenly minded person, that’s the terms and conditions. You respond to God, you don’t become so well adjusted to the culture around you that you’re ready, you’re ready to recognise what He wants from you. You’re ready to quickly respond to what He wants from you. And then, when you do that, you’re going to become, and God is going to bring the best out of you and you’re going to develop and become a well-formed mature person.
The Passion Translation also reads very nicely in this. And I like the way he starts it in The Passion Translation, whoever did this, 1Beloved friends, what should be our proper response to God’s marvelous mercies? I encourage you to surrender yourselves to God to be his sacred, living sacrifices. And live in holiness – live like God. Holiness is not a posture. Holiness is not a bunch of ceremonies. Holiness is not the absence of everything you’ve tried to get rid of in your life. So many Christians try to focus on getting rid of sin that they actually forget to be spiritual and heavenly-minded. How do you get rid of sin? Become heavenly-minded and you won’t sin. And live in holiness, experiencing all that delights his heart. For this becomes your genuine expression of worship. As you live in holiness and you experience all that delights His heart, this becomes a genuine expression of worship. Verse 2, 2Stop imitating the ideals and opinions of the culture around you, but be inwardly transformed by the Holy Spirit through a total reformation of how you think. A total reformation of how you think – that sounds like blowing your mind. Huh? Yeah. If you’re going to reform your thinking, you’ve got to blow up your own cultural value systems, your worldview, your own thoughts and patterns about how life should be run. This will empower you. So if you blow up and you are reformed in your thinking, this will empower you to discern God’s will as you live a beautiful life, satisfying and perfect in his eyes (Romans 12:1-2 TPT). Wow. I mean, this is the way to live.
I have much to say more about this and I encourage you to read first Corinthians chapter 1 verses 18 to 30 because it really clearly states what I’m talking about, and I’m going to conclude with this today. 18The Message that points to Christ on the Cross seems like sheer silliness to those hellbent on destruction (1 Corinthians 1:18 MSG). If I have to walk down the street or go in a mall somewhere and say, “Are you a Christian?” And the person says to me, “No, I’m not a Christian.” I said, “Are you determined, actually, to go to hell?” The person would say, “No, I’m not. I’m not determined.” And I’d say, “But you don’t believe in Jesus?” And they would probably respond like this, “So what? So what? I mean, who says there’s a hell?” “Okay. I mean, I can see where you’re coming from. If you don’t believe there’s a heaven and a hell, then you won’t believe there’s a God either.” “Yeah, so why must I… I’m not determined to go to hell.” So they would respond to you like that because they haven’t made Jesus Lord and Saviour of their life. This is why I say the Gospel of salvation is really not a choice about heaven and hell, it’s about deliverance from yourself. When you are delivered from your self-opinion, you automatically have a choice. You automatically choose whether you’re going to be in heaven or hell. When you make Jesus Lord and Saviour of your life, you become heavenly-minded, so that when you transfer into heaven, when your time on earth is done, when you transfer into heaven, you’re already thinking like those that are in heaven, and you are already living like those in heaven. You don’t, it won’t be a surprise to you, because you’ve already practised that on the earth. 18…This is the way God works, and most powerfully as it turns out. 19It’s written, I’ll turn conventional wisdom on its head, I’ll expose so-called experts as crackpots (1 Corinthians 1:19 MSG). In other words, they’re off their mind. We blow up our minds to be transformed like God, they’re off their minds, crackpots. Oh, I know, there’s a lot of people that call us weirdos, Christian freaks, whatever, fanatics. I know that. It doesn’t bother me, it’s never bothered me. I have a peace they can’t even buy.
20So where can you find someone truly wise, truly educated, truly intelligent in this day and age? Hasn’t God exposed it all as pretentious nonsense? Verse 21, 21Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered dumb – preaching, of all things. In other words, preaching is such a dumb thing, to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation (1 Corinthians 1:20-21 MSG).
So I’m going to leave it up there because the rest talks about philosophies and ideologies and all that kind of stuff. But I encourage you to read it because when I’m reading Romans chapter 12 and it says, don’t become so well-adjusted to the culture around you, the culture around you includes all of the philosophies of men, includes all of the long term economic philosophies. Ja, our world system of economics today is based on economic thought patterns and ideologies that were long ago implemented, where your economy was based on real things like gold, silver or things you could produce with your hands, agriculture. And so what you traded was a hard value item for currency and then new economists came out and the economists began to talk about attaching value to services, to potential, to interest rates, to inflation, to how much money can be in a system and why the money can be in the system. And so a lot of things began to change. At the heart of that, when you look at that cultural system, and you say, “I want to live by that way of managing my money.” Well, I want to say to you that anybody that’s out there will say it’s good to save money. They will say it’s good to save money. Well, even the Bible says it’s good to save money. That’s not something you have to debate about. So if you go to a world economist and they will say, you should save so much of your money, you should put so much money into a future investment, you should put so much money towards this and do… I mean a lot of those things are based on what the Bible says. That’s not new things. But then there’s a lot of cultural things about money that you have to recognise, you have to observe what it can do for you, what it can do to you, how it can affect you. For example, if you’re completely unaware of what compound interest does to you, in buying a house or buying a car, and the cost you pay for something by paying compound interest. If you don’t understand that, you will pay a heavy price because you don’t understand it. So that doesn’t mean to say you have to choose that as a way of life. Just because you understand it, just because you know it. You can choose to go God’s way. It’s a better way. That doesn’t make that an evil system. It just makes it a system and it’s better for you to choose God’s system than a different system.
So I think I’ve made the point that God wanted me to make in this message that there are terms and conditions for us to be heavenly minded and one of the things that God wants us to do as heavenly-minded people is, He wants us to be blowing up our mind and the terms and conditions that apply is that we must become heavenly minded. Think like He thinks, understand what He has done for us. He is a free gift, we can’t pay for it. Understand that in receiving this free gift, He gives us access to this whole world that is His world, power, wisdom, understanding knowledge, all the things that God is. A whole new system of living that is a heavenly system. He wants us to live it. Why? Because as we live it, we become an example to the heavenly realm and to other people. We become an example that actually, Jesus is Lord, every knee will bow, every knee will confess that Jesus is Lord. Hallelujah.
If the Lord is willing, I hope to continue on the subject on Blowing Your Mind. And I am going to, want to, hopefully, will be able to share with you more things about dealing with sickness and disease in your body, how to blow up your mind, so that you can get rid of sickness and disease in your body. How to blow up your mind so that you can get God’s economy working for you. How to blow up your mind so that you can get God’s way of doing relationships. So in the weeks to come, as the Holy Spirit leads, we’ll be talking some more about blowing your mind. I like this. Anyway.
Hey, thank you for joining me on Sunday service.
I pray that the Lord would bless you. He would keep you. He would make His face to shine upon you. I pray that you would be blessed going in and going out, coming in and going out. I pray that His favour will overtake you. I pray that the heavenly-mindedness of God becomes the normal pattern of your life and your living. I pray that you will have an understanding and by the Holy Spirit, I ask the Holy Spirit right now, to make you aware of all those easy cultural things that you easily slip into, that He makes you aware of how to identify them and then how to choose a heavenly minded reality rather than a cultural reality.
I pray in the name of Jesus. that all sickness and disease leave your body right now, that you are protected from every virus. You’re protected from every negative symptom that comes from viruses. I pray in the name of Jesus that your income and your business and your finances and the company that you might be working for, that that is protected by the Word and the blood of Jesus. And if there is something that’s going to happen that He alerts you ahead of time, that it gives you a chance to find alternative income so that you are without lack, in Jesus” name. I pray this blessing on you. And I ask His angels to take charge over you, that He won’t allow your foot to get caught in a hidden snare or to stub your toe on something that you can’t see as you live in life. Thank you for joining me in church this morning. God bless you. And I’ll see you soon.
Hey, before you go, you better just watch out, watch your mail and people will be phoning you. We’ve got something special coming from next week onwards for the next couple of weeks. Thank you and God bless.
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