Thinking Our Way to Success - Part 2

Welcome to this weekend's In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley. It's always wise to make healthy decisions about what to put into your body when you eat. And you also have to be extremely careful about what you put in your mind. Let's continue with Success God's Way. Every single one of us is the result of the way we've been thinking all these years in our life. What you and I are going to be tomorrow is the result of the way we think about ourselves today. And you recall in Proverbs chapter twenty-three, verse seven, the Scripture says, As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. He or she is the product of their thinking. So when you think about the power of our thoughts, the Bible says that we are the result of the way we think. We are the result of what we think. And that our minds are the compilations of all these things we've been thinking about. And the apostle Paul certainly believed that because if you recall, he said in Philippians chapter two, that fifth verse, he said, listen to this, Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. Turn, if you will, to Colossians chapter three and notice what he says in this passage. Colossians chapter three, he says, speaking of the Christian life and how God has changed us, made us somebody new, he says in verse five, Therefore, having trusted Christ as your Savior, consider the members of your earthly body as dead. Dead to what?

Immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and greed, which amounts to idolatry. Then he says, For it's on account of these things that the wrath of God will come. For in them you also once walked. That's the way you thought. That's the way you felt. That's the way you believed. That's the way you acted.

In them you also once walked when you were living in them. But now you also put them all aside. Anger, wrath, malice, slander and abusive speech from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the one who created him. Now, what is he saying? This is the way you used to live, but now you don't think that way anymore. He says, Consider yourself dead to those things. If I'm dead to something, I don't think about it. When he says lay something aside, he means don't think about that anymore.

Don't allow that in your life anymore. So when you think about the power of thoughts, Paul is stating here in different ways the fact that our thoughts will determine our character, those thoughts that we allow to lay there, those thoughts that we allow to just abide there, those thoughts that we allow in our mind and in our heart, those things that we think about, we dwell on those things. He said dwell on these good characteristics because that's what your character will be like.

With that in mind, here's what I want you to notice as I think about Paul and how he lived his life. We've said one thing. Number one, listen to this carefully now.

Listen real carefully. If we're going to succeed, we have to recognize the power of our thoughts. The second thing we must do if we're going to succeed in life is to be willing to reprogram our thoughts, our thinking. The second thing we must do is to be willing to reprogram the way we think, reprogram our thinking. Now you say, Well, now is this mind over matter?

No, it is a very definite, clearly given scriptural principle in the Word of God. It is all here, very clearly given to us, simply placed here. God has given us something that is awesome.

Now watch this. When we talk about reprogramming our thinking and reprogramming our thoughts, what do we mean by that? I want you to turn, if you will, to Romans chapter twelve. Look, if you will, in Romans chapter twelve. I want you to look at two verses here.

And I want you to write down a word in just a moment. Verse one, I urge you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. Now watch this. Do not be conformed. Don't be shaped. Don't be conformed to this world. Don't allow the world to pour you into its shape and its image. But be transformed, changed, metamorphosis, change take place by the renewing of your mind in order that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

Now listen to what Paul's saying. He says, stop allowing yourself to be poured into the world's mold because then you act like that. But rather, he says, be being transformed. Let there be change in your life, which will be the result of what? The renewing of your mind. The renewing of your mind. Renewing is a great word, anakanao, which means make change, make a change. The renewing of my mind means I'm going to change the way I think. I'm going to change what I think. Now, when he said, don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed.

Let's think about it now. What's involved? What is involved in the renewing of our mind? What is involved in renewing of our thoughts? Now listen, I want to plead with you in Jesus' name, not for my sake, but for your sake.

Do not miss anything that you're about to hear. I'm going to tell you the truth because it is the law of God. It is the principles that He's placed in this world. This is how He desires that you and I function in order to become the persons He wants us to be and that you can reach your potential in life no matter who you are and where you are. Listen, you may say, man, I'm on the bottom rung of the ladder.

Change your thinking and up the ladder you come. When you change your thinking, not just change your thinking, but change your thinking in relationship to who you are, in relationship to who God has made you and is willing to help you to become. We're not talking about success minus God does no such thing.

We're talking about success God's way. We're talking about how God thinks and He thinks what is best for us. Now, how is it that we renew our thinking in order to think the way we should think in order to think our way to success? Well, the first thing that's important here is I have to have the faith to believe that I can renew my thinking.

Somebody says, well, man, let me tell you something. I've been thinking this way all of my life. You mean to tell me that I can change the way I think? Yes, you can.

How can I do that? It is a choice you make. You have within you the power to choose the way you want to think. And if you say, well, I'm not even a Christian.

The first choice in life you need to make is I choose to acknowledge the fact that there is a God. His Son is Jesus Christ. He went to the cross and died for my sins. He paid my sin in debt in full. And the Bible says if I accept Him by faith as my personal saving surrender my life to God, I will be forgiven of my sin. I will become a child of God. I will have His eternal security.

I will have His Holy Spirit living on the inside of me. I can become the person that God wants me to become. You can change your thinking.

So first of all, I have to believe that I can. If I want to think a certain way, I choose, for example, let's say that I grew up and I certainly did in the situation, circumstance and attitude, what I was taught. The idea that God loved me never really entered my mind seriously. God was a judge, yes. Take care of me, yes.

Supply my needs, yes. Enable me to do what He called me to do, yes. Love me, that was foreign to me. When somebody introduced me in an experience in my life to the fact that God really loved me, what I started doing was looking up those Scriptures that talked about God's love even though I'd been preaching all around it for years. I began to go to bed at night saying, Lord, I want to thank You for loving me. Did I feel it at that time?

Not really. I want to thank You for loving me. Wake up in the morning, Father, I want to thank You for loving me. You know what?

Before long, I not only felt it, I began to live out for the wonderful love of God which set me free from a terrible bondage. You say, does that mind ever matter? No, it is not. Here's what it is.

Now you listen and say amen. Here's what it is. It is choosing to feed my mind the truth. It is not mind over matter. Listen, it is truth over error. It is thinking God's ways rather than man's ways.

And so what happens? When you and I choose to think the truth about ourselves, we choose to feed our minds the truths of God's Word. What happens is that those truths, those ideas, those thoughts begin to dominate our thinking.

When you and I allow truth, truth, truth, truth to dominate our thinking, it will dominate our attitude, it will dominate our actions, dominate our behavior, dominate our conduct. Listen, whether it's in your business or whether it's in your spiritual walk, you will begin to think your way towards success because you in the power of the Holy Spirit have begun to think God's way about your job, God's way about your schooling, God's way about your vocation, God's way about your future, God's way about your finances, God's way about your family. When we are thinking God's way, we're going to experience success. There is no way to overestimate the awesome power of our thinking. You want to succeed in life, then you have to start thinking the successful way.

And how is that? Feeding your mind with truth, feeding your mind with the Word of God. They will teach you how to relate to the Father, teach you how to relate to one another, teach you how to be persistent, teach you how to survive in difficulty and hardship, teach you how to be kind and gentle and generous, how to go the second mile, how to have a servant's spirit, how to concentrate, how to have a definite purpose in life. Think, think, think it is our thoughts that govern and control every single facet of our life. So we look around us and we see people, there seems to be simply no evidence of success in their life. Now, let me just say this, now watch this carefully. God is the one who created this human body. He gave us not only a conscious mind, that we're conscious of what's going on around us right now. He gave us a subconscious mind that works 24 hours a day when we're asleep and when we're awake, always working. All the things we thought, all the things we've seen, all the things we felt, our environment over all these years, it's all there. That's why all of a sudden some thought can come to your mind that you hadn't thought about in 40 years.

Where did it come from? Nobody put it in your mind, it's been there all along. The mind is the most powerful thing in the universe, not talking about God's Word and so forth, talking about what's a part of us. There's no computer, never will be, a computer can match one human brain. There's more electronics that go into one human mind than all the television, radio stations in the world. Nothing can match the human mind that God has given us. And so what we don't realize is this, when you go to bed at night thinking evil thoughts or bad thoughts about somebody, you think, well, I'm going to forget that till tomorrow morning. Mark this down, all night long, your subconscious mind took those bad thoughts that you went to bed with and you know what, working into your thought patterns all night long. And you may get up and you may not think about it first, but I'm here to tell you, it's there. It's working, working for bad, working to destroy you, working to cause you to fail. Now let's turn that right around.

Let me give you an example. I was real busy all week long and so usually I'm way into the message by Thursday and though I knew what I was going to do, I couldn't get to it till Friday morning. So I woke up early Friday morning, got to it.

I sat there all day except for lunch and a brief supper and I sat there from about eight something in the morning or thereabouts till midnight, working away. And so what happens is after you get into something so much, you get foggy and I thought, I'm missing it somewhere here, Lord. So what happens? I went to bed, went to sleep, woke up the next morning, couldn't write fast enough, crystal clear, sharp as it could be. Now what went on during the night? All the information I put in here is working, God's working it.

And so when I sat down, it just began to flow. Now listen carefully. When you have a problem, when you have a question, when you have a challenge in life, don't think that you, I got to think this thing through. No, you and God think it through.

And what you want to do is you want to get God's thinking about this situation. And one of the wisest things you can do is before you go to sleep at night, present it to the Lord. Now the world would say, well, give it to your subconscious mind. You and I know we give it to the Lord. We have a subconscious mind, no question about that. We give it to the Lord. We talk to Him about it and we thank Him for giving us His solution.

We thank Him for the Holy Spirit working in these created bodies of ours. And He who knows the mind so well knows how it can work. Now you say, well, I can just answer anything like that.

No. For example, if I go to bed and I suppose I decide next week I'm not going to study all week long. Saturday night, I'm just going to tell God, Lord, you just, here it is, Sunday morning's coming. Thank you for the message in Jesus' name. You know what?

I wouldn't show up on Sunday morning because I wouldn't have anything. Because listen, it's what I put in this mind that God can arrange and rearrange. It's the information that you put in your mind that you can come out with godly thoughts. Thoughts that are governed by God that's going to govern your attitudes and your behavior in life. And all of us have struggles in life we deal with.

We should bring them to Him. Lord, how do you want me to think about this? For example, when you go through some adversity, you can allow yourself to get, listen, discouraged, depressed, distraught.

It's a disaster. Or you can allow yourself to think, God, you're in control. You're sovereign. I'm going to trust you through this no matter what.

Who's going to come out winning and who's coming out losing? The person that allows themself to think the negative thoughts of distress and discourage and despondency and all the rest, they're going to lose the blessing that God has provided in that adversity. The person who's willing to think God's way, they're going to be able to transform every single adversity, listen, into a step forward in becoming and achieving and accomplishing what God has in mind for them. My friend, you and I are the product of our thoughts. If you don't like the way life is right now, you need to change your thinking, beginning with Jesus Christ as your Savior. You don't like the way things have turned out in your life, change the way you're thinking about Him. Start looking at Him from God's perspective and be positive and with faith and confidence and assurance that you're God. Listen, everything you see around you may yell to you and shout to you, there is no way. But my friend, you don't look at what's around you, you listen to the voice of God. You see how God thinks and how God works.

You tell Him that your trust is in Him. Maybe you can't figure it out. Maybe you can't see. You don't see your way clear. Things look so hopeless when you look at them, but what you want to think is you want to think the way God thinks.

How does He think His way He thinks? I love you. I care for you. You're my child. I want the best for you.

I provided the best for you. Don't be discouraged. Don't despair.

Don't become disillusioned. Trust me. Trust me. Trust me.

Trust me. And my friend, your life will be transformed. If you'll just let Him do it by choosing to allow the dominating thoughts of your life to be godly thoughts, thoughts that emerge from faith, not doubt and not fear. Father, how very grateful we are for Your love for us.

You created these bodies, these physical beings of ours in the most awesome, fascinating and exciting fashion. Teach us how to glean everything we can out of them. And we know that begins by thinking the way you think. I pray the Holy Spirit will sink this message so deep that it will be inescapable, that you would accomplish your purpose in every one of our lives. And that even now, those who have not received Christ would be made aware of the fact that's the first step in finding life at its best. And those who are struggling would choose, absolutely refuse Satan's discouragement, choose to begin to think your thoughts, think your way and to claim your blessings in Jesus' name.

Amen. Thank you for listening to Thinking Our Way to Success. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.