What does the Bible Say About Thought-Life?

Hi, this is Bernie Dake. Welcome to the Salvation Army's Words of Life. Hi, I'm Megan Hoffer, and I want to invite you to check out another show brought to you by the Salvation Army. Heartbeat is a one-minute show about real life. Heartbeat touches on topics ranging from finances and prayer to dating and mental health.

If money is important to God, then it should be important to us. Recently, I began feeling like my life was on autopilot. The alarm goes off, get ready for work, battle the morning commute, rush to get home. If you are looking for a short message of hope to challenge you and brighten up your day, subscribe to Heartbeat wherever you get your podcasts or visit salvationarmysoundcast.org. Welcome back to Words of Life, and welcome back to Cheryl. Thank you. We've missed you. Oh, thank you.

I've missed you guys. You had a busy summer. Oh, my goodness.

Which included taking your last child to college. Yes. Empty nesting, perhaps? Yes. It is a beautiful thing. No, I'm just kidding.

I miss him with all my heart. Yeah. It is a transition. He's a good kid. Yeah. Excited for him.

Thank you. Well, Cheryl, as you know, we're launching a new seven-week series today with our friend Major Mike Harris. He joined us on the show a while back for a series on finance, but this time he's going to be discussing our thought life as Christians. Yeah, and the concept may seem a bit abstract at first, but our thoughts are so powerful. We will see throughout Scripture that so much of our behavior and identity begins with our thoughts. From how we personally develop our own theologies to what we say about ourselves and to ourselves. It really is a very powerful thing to be conscious of.

And the reason I love Mike doing this series is I know him. We are friends. In fact, for a very short time as young men, we lived in the same house.

We experienced life. You know he may talk a little differently than you and I because he calls England home, but he's really using 2 Corinthians 10, 5 when he talks about taking every thought captive. Right. And that's a difficult thing. I mean, in my brain all throughout the day, there's constant fighting of thoughts going on, you know, what to say, what not to say, and all those things.

I really do appreciate the way he approaches this series. You know, a lot of our battles are in our mind. And so to take every thought captive under the lordship of Jesus Christ is what that verse particularly says is so important to the way we live our lives and how we think about everything.

And so, yeah, I appreciate that as well. And we're not children anymore. When we were kids, we thought like kids, we talk like kids. Now we're adults. We're supposed to actually use all of our life experience to control those thoughts and live a life that's clean and thoughtward indeed. Have you read that somewhere before?

Yes, I have. All right. Well, we know you're going to enjoy this series. Mike is such a gifted speaker and we're honored to have him join us.

If you miss any episodes from this series, you can learn more about the show and subscribe at salvationarmysoundcast.org. Well, hello. My name is Major Mike Harris.

I am what they call the divisional secretary for business in Texas. And it's my delight to be doing a seven part series that we're calling Pathways. And over these seven podcasts, we'll be looking at the importance of thought life. And what we're going to ask you to do is to check your thoughts and your internal philosophies.

In C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, we see a series of letters written by Screwtape, which is like a senior demon to Wormwood, his nephew. And one of the things that Screwtape writes in one of these letters is this. Your man has been accustomed ever since he was a boy to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside of his head. It's a very curious and very interesting statement that C.S.

Lewis places in this letter. And I think in many ways it sums up many of the issues that we're dealing with when we're trying to find absolute truths, as we're trying to process the world that we're living in as Christians. And in many ways, this particular comment questions Christian doctrine as opposed to contemporary theologies, and our ability to find that truth, or indeed if the truth really matters at all. So today what I want to do is establish truths as they pertain to the subject at hand, and that is our thought life. Now as salvationists, and as really any mainstream denomination is, our foundational doctrine is that of scripture. And it's important that we see our first doctrine that way, because our belief in scripture, and that it's got inspired, that it's the divine rule of Christian faith in practice, it's important we see it that way because without that doctrine, our following ten doctrines have no foundation on which to stand. So what I want to do today is to therefore start by looking at our thought life as it is seen in scripture, and also what the church has to say about our thought life. The second book of Corinthians is an interesting letter.

The first nine chapters are very positive, they're very affirming. Paul is obviously in a very good place, but then suddenly in chapter 10 through chapter 14 there's a shift, a shift in the tone of the letter, and suddenly Paul starts to give warnings and admonishments. And so it is in 2 Corinthians chapter 10, starting at verse 3, he writes this. For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not weapons of the world.

On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God and, listen carefully, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience once your obedience is complete. Interesting notion, taking captive of every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

What does that mean? Well, it doesn't mean to take captive our intentions. It doesn't mean that we are to take captive of our ability to wonder. It means we take captive, that is to take control of, our mind in its entirety, our schemes, our designs on life, all of these things. So just as the fruit of the Spirit includes self-control, so Paul is urging us to control every aspect of our minds and its thought process.

Now you might wonder, how can I do this? How can I take control of every thought? I say to you, surely that's part of the transformation from us being into the person Christ wants us to be. That is people who love him and people who are obedient to him. And part of our obedience is thinking as he thinks, and that's done through the process of sanctification, that transformation that occurs through the indwelling of God's Holy Spirit as we, over time, become more and more like Christ. I think Scripture is very clear when it comes to expectations of the thought process. So what of the Church?

How does the Church look at our thought process? Now we are salvationists, therefore John Wesley is very significant to our history and our theology. And in the writings of John Wesley, that early leader of the Methodist movement, his writings have been found to contain four distinct sources when coming to theological conclusions. And these four sources that make up the theology that each one of us have is now known as the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. So the first source of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, of the four things that shape our theology, is that of Scripture. Now it's very, very important that we put Scripture in its place.

It is the overriding authority. It is the God-breathed word that's given to us by God himself. And we have to allow that to sit and be predominant over all the elements of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. John Wesley himself called himself a man of one book. He saw Scripture as absolute. So as we look at the other three things, bear in mind, nothing should go beyond Scripture.

Nothing should go outside of the realms of Scripture. So the second piece of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral is tradition. I'm a salvationist, therefore my tradition is that of a salvationist.

Others listening may belong to other denominations. And so therefore our tradition, our denomination, our church, helped to form who we are through its doctrines, through its approach to Scripture, and through the messages, of course, that we hear on a Sunday morning. Then there's experience. Experience is an important one because it's all about our experience with God. It's your testimony.

In the Salvation Army we enjoy sharing testimonies. We allow people to tell us what God is doing in their lives, how God is shaping them, and how God is shifting or working with them when it comes to their theology. And the final thing is reason. And perhaps this is the scariest of all because through reason God has given us the ability to think. And our ability to think, and we referenced this earlier with that quote from the Screwtape letters, that ability to think allows us to go to places where Scripture is not, to go outside of its realms. So this God-given gift could also be the greatest danger of all.

Because here lies the problem in controlling our thoughts. Let me go back, if I might, to the experience thing. Our testimony. I've heard people say, and I've heard it on numerous occasions where people have said, I heard the audible voice of God.

Now I'm not one of those people. I've never heard the audible voice of God, but neither will I dismiss somebody's testimony to that end. If I look in Scripture, it's quite clear to me that God has spoken to people audibly. So therefore it happens. It could happen again.

It does happen again. God is no more limited now than ever he was. The problem is I've also got other people saying, well, that's not been my experience. I've never heard the audible voice of God, therefore that's crazy.

That makes no sense. I've heard people dismiss another's testimony. Well, that's a dangerous thing to do, because what you've done by dismissing another's testimony, and certainly if it pertains to something like this, is you've gone against what Scripture says. Scripture talks about people who have heard the audible voice of God. So therefore, for me, it makes perfect sense, although it's not my testimony.

Scripture backs it up. But for those who dismiss it, what they've done is also ignore what Scripture says about it. And once you've questioned Scripture, in this instance because of your lack of experience with God, you are then allowing yourself to go beyond Scriptural principles, to think beyond the realms of the Bible, to think of things that Scripture does not back up at all. And when you start to reason beyond Scripture, it just opens the door to all kinds of things, and suddenly you start living outside of Scripture.

And then what happens is because you're living outside of Scripture, because your experience is not strong, your tradition begins to change, and suddenly different thoughts and principles and doctrines are being brought into Christian churches, some well established and long established Christian churches, and suddenly we're seeing now this reshaping of the doctrine that's not based on Scripture at all. So throughout this series we want to look at this process of thought. We want to ask questions such as, Is thought life important?

Does it matter? We're going to talk about our worldview when it comes to Scripture or beyond Scripture. And I hope it's at the end of all of these sessions that our relationship with Jesus Christ will be renewed and that the understanding of how we must control our minds will be understood.

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