Welcome to this weekend's In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley. Your actions will always be a result of how you think. So if you want to change your behavior, you have to start by controlling your thoughts. Here's a practical lesson from Colossians chapter three.
How can I control my thinking in such a fashion that though I live down here, I don't have to think this way? I don't have to be caught up in these thoughts that are destructive and extremely destructive, not only to a person's life, their family, and their future. But I believe in the book of Colossians, here is the answer. And I want you to turn, if you will, to this third chapter, and let's read the first two verses.
Now the title of this message is Controlling Your Thoughts. It begins, If then you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is their life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory. Now, there are three essentials, I believe, to being able to control a person's thought life. One of those is the foundation of all the rest, our position in Christ. One of the reasons people get in trouble in their thought life is because they don't realize what their position is.
The average person who goes to church on a Sunday morning, who is saved realizes that they gave their life to Christ, he forgave them of their sins, but somewhere along the way, they've never understood the full impact of salvation. You are not what you used to be patched up with something good. You're not what you used to be with a little change in your life.
You're not what you used to be struggling to change and to be better. You are someone different. Everything about you is different and therefore we have the responsibility of thinking differently about ourselves. That is the whole foundational truth. That is because we are different from God's viewpoint, we need now to begin to think differently about our life. If I understand that, then I have the, you see, that is the foundation and the fountain from which everything else God sends into our life comes.
That is our relationship. That is we have an inseparable relationship with him. We can never be separated from God because he's living on the inside.
Now, because he's on the inside and because he is our life. Then Paul says, look, if you will, in chapter three, verse one, since then, since what? Since you've been crucified, since you've been buried, since you've been raised, since you've been seated, since you've been hidden, since you're coming again. He says, keep seeking the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Now, the word seek here is not the same word as the word set your mind.
Don't in some translations in English it is the same, but in the Greek it is not. When he says seek those things above, it is a present active imperative word, which means continuously habitually keep on seeking. That is for the believer. It should be the believer's lifestyle that you and I would seek those things that are of God. You see, my friend, the truth is you and I are to live godly in Christ Jesus, godly in an ungodly world. That isn't something we cannot do. It's something we can't do within ourselves, but it's not something we cannot do because of our relationship with him. Christ is our life and so our thinking determines our actions. Now, in a world that is so totally opposite of the heavenly, the spiritual, the holy, the righteous, many believers excuse their sensual, idolatrous, materialistic thinking by saying I can't help it.
Yes, you can. You can't ever tell God that you as a believer can't help the way you think. You can help the way you think. Otherwise, he would not have said seek those things above where Christ is seated the Father's right hand now. He says since then you've been raised with him, that is since our relationship is what it is, crucified, buried, raised, seated and hidden and coming again with him. He says first of all, we are to seek those things which are above. Then he says, using another word, set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. Now the word set and the word seek are two Greek words.
The word set here means also present active imperative, which means to continuously and habitually do so to make it a way of life. We are to focus. That is to set your mind means to anchor it. Concentrate your thinking.
Seek out, this is another word, but it's more of a word that expresses the inner attitude, our focus of our attention, our interest. Set your mind, he says, upon things in heaven, not on things upon earth. Now one of the mistakes we make is that some people say, well, I do have a problem controlling my thoughts because I have these evil thoughts or sensual or lustful or greedy, jealous, angry, hostile thoughts of rejection. I have these thoughts and what I've done is I've told God I wasn't going to think them anymore. And so I've gotten on my knees and I've said, now God, I want to ask you to forgive me for thinking such thoughts.
I know they're evil. I want to ask you to forgive me for thinking sensual. I want to ask you to forgive me for being jealous. I want to ask you to forgive me for being so envious in my spirit and thinking these things. God, forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.
I want to tell you, you can confess that until Jesus comes and you will never gain the victory. Because now think about this. That's not the Lord's way of overcoming the wrong kind of thinking.
It wasn't Paul's way. He doesn't teach that in the scripture that the way you overcome wrong thinking is telling God about it because every time you tell God, God, I'm not going to think about that anymore. You just thought about it. If I set my mind on what is wrong, I just keep repeating the same old problem. We are to set our mind on the very opposite.
Set your mind on things. Let's say, for example, that you may be a jealous person. What is the opposite of that?
You may feel unworthy. What is the opposite of that? You see, we set our mind on the things of God. Listen to what Paul said in Philippians chapter four.
This was his way of saying the same thing. In the eighth verse, notice, he says, Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things. The believer is to control his and her thinking in such a fashion that we dwell on the things that are of God.
Not on the things that are... I'm not saying that you should not confess sin, surely. Sin comes to life, you deal with it. But you don't keep bringing it back to God and confessing it over and over and over again because once is enough. If you sin again, you acknowledge it again. But you don't overcome evil thinking, which has as its fruit evil deeds by telling God, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not. You set your mind on the things of God.
Listen, when a young person sets their mind on the Lord Jesus Christ and His purity and His holiness and His will for their life and His purpose for their life, what happens to the things that are impure and out of God's will they fade away? He says, set your mind on the things that are of God. We are to seek and to focus, we are to anchor our thinking on things that are characteristic of the person of Jesus Christ. We're the sons and daughters of the living God. Our citizenship is in heaven. Our name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life. We've been purchased by the very blood of Jesus Christ. We have been made holy in the eyes of God, citizens of the kingdom of heaven.
We don't fit in the world's muck and mire of erroneous, dirty, filthy thinking. Now, when you sit down in front of the television at nighttime and you, you know, you get all comfortable and you settle down in your easy chair, you're going to watch your favorite four programs. So starting about seven o'clock, about eleven thirty or twelve o'clock, you'll be, it'll all be over. Here's what you've done. You've thrown your mind in neutral. And for four hours, nudity, profanity, violence, garbage of all types come flowing into your thought patterns. And you see, a lot of things are subtle. That adultery is all right. That sleeping with somebody else's wife is all right. That's what they portray.
That profanity is OK. Everybody's using it. And all kinds of insidious innuendos and vain pagan godless philosophies are poured into your mind. And here you sit in this state of neutrality, all settled down to enjoy the evening. I want you to ask yourself this question. You mean to tell me that you believe that you can think on the things of God, that you're seeking the mind of God, that you've set your mind upon the Lord, and that you can think God's way if you spent night after night letting somebody else pour the garbage of their advertisements and sensuality, nudity, profanity, all kinds of vulgarity, innuendos, insinuations, vain, idolatrous philosophy into your mind. Then you wonder, why can I control my thoughts?
I'll tell you why. You have garbage and truth mixed up together. It's all confusion. It is all the lies and the untruth and the evil and the sensual and the idolatrous philosophies of the world pouring in the minds of God's people. And then they wonder why they can't control their thinking. The reason you can't control your thinking is because you've turned the faucet of garbage into your mind. And when you mix that with things that are true, I'm here to tell you that which is garbage and unholy and evil is going to conquer. Because you cannot go to church and open the Bible once a week to things that are righteous. And the pastor leads you to think about things that are holy and you go right home Sunday afternoon and open up the garbage and let it pour in.
The garbage will overcome that which is holy and righteous before God. Do we wonder why our kids are growing up the way they're growing up when they sit before a television five, six, seven hours a day as a babysitter to absolutely pollute and corrupt their minds? Then we wonder why our children act the way they act. Because we allow them to cut the faucet on that destroys anything that's holy and righteous and good. And my friends, you and I can't tell God we're not responsible. We're responsible for what we think. And the truth is, because Jesus Christ is living on the inside of you, you have been empowered to direct your thinking and to control your thoughts and to set them on things that are good and righteous and holy.
And a lot of people do not understand what's happening to them. You realize when you fill your minds with enough garbage and enough trash, enough sensual materialistic attitudes, that those good things that God wants to send your way, those wonderful opportunities that God provided for you, that you'll miss them? Because you see, your thinking has been dirtied up and muddied up and fogged up with that which is untrue. And so you miss, you see, if you're not seeking the mind of Christ, you're not going to have it. He says we have the mind of Christ, but it won't be a reality unless you're seeking it. He says set your mind, anchor your mind to that which is true and real. God has given to us the power to direct our thinking and to control our thoughts. Now remember, I said Satan may send something your way.
That's one thing. You don't have to grab it. In your office where you work, somebody may come in very, very scantily clad. You don't have to look. You may glance when they pass by.
You don't have to look. God wants us to think righteously and wholly because, you see, he knows what destroys and he also knows what builds up and edifies. And my friend, you get this in your heart. When our thoughts are under God's control, God is able to do within us far more than you and I could ever dream. But when I lower myself to think these thoughts, eventually, if I keep thinking, I'm going to act upon them. And I wonder how many blessings and how many privileges and how many opportunities and how many of God's wonderful gifts we've missed.
Because we allowed our minds to be filled with things that are untrue. You see, the devil says have it now. God says wait till marriage. The devil says it'll give you a lift.
God says it'll destroy your life. So you and I choose what we believe. And I want to remind you of something that ought to be sobering to all of us. Every single one of us is where we are today because of what we've been thinking all the years of our life. We're the products of our thinking. You say, well, but my opportunities, we're the products of our thinking. You can take a person who comes from a very difficult situation with no human opportunities, it seems, and my, what they can achieve in life. Somebody else comes out of a bountiful supply of opportunities and they blow it in life. It's the way you think. And that's why he said seek those things that are above and God will give in return what you need. Most probably most of what you want or what's good for you. Set your focus on things that are holy and godly. And what we set our minds on is what we become like. You know, every week I can't wait to get in God's word.
And sometime on Sunday night I go home and I start studying for the next week. Not because I'm trying to get a sermon, but because I want to discover myself something else about the person of Jesus Christ. Because that's where my heart is. That's the thing that satisfies me above everything else. There isn't anybody in the world who can give me what I want most out of life, except Jesus. Only Christ.
So I want to ask you, what brings you the most satisfaction? Now think about this. My friend, listen to me carefully. If this book seldom crosses your mind except on Sunday, your priorities are disastrously out of order. You're not seeking the mind of God. You've not set your mind on the things of God. And the reason I'm warning you is because if you set your mind on this world, it's going to destroy you. It's going to ruin you. It's going to corrupt you. It's going to cheat you out of the best of God's blessings. You see, the way God operates is this. It's real simple.
The world doesn't operate this way. God says, you set your affection on me and I'll grant you more than you could ever conceive of. You seek me and don't seek this and I'll provide what you need. That's why He said, seek ye first the character of Christ, the rule of Christ in your heart and all these things, what things? Everything we need will be given to us.
Now, I don't expect the world to believe that, but I believe we have a right to expect God's people to believe what Jesus said. If there's something missing in your life today that you really want, I want to challenge you, my friend, to begin right now to seek the Lord Jesus Christ and His will for your life, His wisdom, His knowledge, His understanding, to focus your attention upon the person of Christ. Get in the Word of God. Begin to read the Gospels. Listen to what Paul said about Jesus Christ. Set your mind upon Him and tell Him that you want whatever He wants for your life, that you submit to Him, you yield to Him. You'll be amazed how God will change your life.
It won't be what you did. It'll be God's wonderful loving response to your simple obedience to seeking Him, setting your mind upon Him, controlling your thoughts. Thank you for listening to part two of Controlling Your Thoughts. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. And don't forget, we have a limited podcast series this month titled Songs of Spirit and Truth, got at work in the Philippines and Indonesia. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
