Love God with All Your Mind

Love God with All Your Mind

Hi, good morning. Um my name is a nine Scherer, my wife and I help direct the college ministry here. And this morning we’re gonna be continuing our series. This is just the second week um of our series in first Peter. Uh so if you missed first week, um you kind of missed uh not a lot, but pretty much to set up. So I’ll overview it a little bit, but you’re not too far behind, it’s gonna be okay. Um So yeah, we’re mike last week um kind of set us up perfectly. Um and the title for the entire series, um as you noticed what’s called Real Identity, and it’s this idea that as christians, we want to have a real identity in christ. And basically what this letter is in first Peter, what this letter is is a letter written by um Peter or spoken by Peter and take into these churches that are in exile, they’re being persecuted against. It’s tough. Um and they’re discouraged, right? And Peter, what he’s trying to do is is given encouraging kind of exhortation to them and saying, hey, you know, you chose to follow jesus, you chose to say yes. And so this is what your identity looks like. This is now who you are, have confidence in this, This is a good thing. And furthermore, while he’s explaining that he’s kind of going over what it actually means to have an identity in jesus. Um and so I’m going to pray real quick. Um and then we’re gonna get into first peter um starting in verse 13. So let me pray and if you would just pray with me and then we’ll jump in heavenly Father, just thank you for this time. Thank you for your word. Um God thank you for um your son, jesus and God that we can and put our identity into you God and that we can be called something different. Something new. God that you are loving. You are kind. You are merciful. I’m thankful for you. God. Would you just allow me to speak truth today? Um and and and would your word and your spirit be in this room with us? God, we love you and we praise you and your name. I pray amen. Um before we start, you know, you know, one more thing I think that um you know, you might be like ah here we go again. Because if you’ve grown up in church, you’ve probably heard this phrase so often, right? Like let’s be real. You’ve heard this idea of Fine Dragon, any of jesus find your identity and jesus, you’ve heard this so much. So you might be like, I got this one in the bag. Maybe you haven’t, Maybe you have it. Well, that’s even better. I I have growing up, I heard this a lot. Find your identity in jesus, but sometimes it happens so often it’s spoken to us um assuming that we know what that even means. And so I think what’s great about this chapter here in verse Peter is he’s going to take a real practical look at one step that we can take to find our identity in jesus by no means, am I saying this is the whole thing, right? I’m not going through the whole bible today, this is one step. And this is a this is a great, great first step. That’s why it’s towards the beginning of the letter, a great first step. If you’re like, yes, You know, I want I want to follow Jesus, this is an amazing first step to hone in on focusing on and say, you know, I might not be able to do everything all at once tomorrow, but I can focus on this, I can take this one step towards finding my identity in Christ. So here we go. I hope you’re excited, I’m ready verse 13. Here we go. This is therefore preparing your minds for action and being sober minded. Set your hope fully on the grace that we brought to you at the revelation of jesus christ. And I’m going to pause for a second and just sit here a little bit before we move on. We have to get this verse, we can’t miss it, we can’t miss this verse. I I think the rest of what’s gonna happen. Um it’s still it’s kind of standing on this verse. So we got to get it. Um you know, we’re starting here today, but Peter didn’t start his letter with this verse. This verse is like a point that he’s making, He wants us to look at it, focusing on it, see it and notice what he says. Therefore preparing your minds for action and being sober minded. Set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of jesus christ. What’s so interesting here, if you and I were greek or jewish and we knew greek and we read this, Peter does kind of a wordplay here and we might even chuckle at what he’s saying. Um You see in ancient times when when Peter is writing this, uh, you know, they cared about their fashion, right? They had some fashion trends. Stick with me. They had one kind of article, article of clothing that they wore, right? You know what it is? It’s a rope. They wore robes, right? Men were robes, Women were robes, Children were robes. They wore this one sheet of clothing with a rope tied for their belt. They had robes on and they would have this, there’s this word that they would use um when they were about to go to work uh if they were about to go to battle, if they were about to build something, I don’t think that people in this time like how to set time to exercise because I think they probably kind of exercise, but if they did and they were going to go exercise, what they would do is is it said they would gird up their robe and what they do is they tie up all the kind of the loose, you know, ends of the rope and they hike it up and they stuff it into, they actually stuff it into the belt and it’s so they can move, you know what I mean? So they can run and so they can walk, you know, build stuff and like, I don’t know what it’s like, but I’m sure the ladies in the room maybe know what it’s like to kind of wear like a robe, you wear a dress, right? If you were going to battle, are about to build something, you probably don’t want that dress on, right? Um the word that that we read in english as prepared when he says, therefore prepare your minds for action in greek, it’s that word gird up and so peter is using this genius little wordplay here and we can’t miss it. We’ve got to catch this, he’s saying, he’s saying gird up your mind. He’s saying tie up all the loose ends of your thoughts, your dreams, your desires, tie it all up and stuff it into jesus. He’s saying, we got to tie everything up so that we can do what so we can move so we can do something so so we can hear what he’s calling us to and we’re ready. See God is calling each and every one of us to something. And if we don’t tie up all the loose ends of our mind here, our thoughts, our desires, we’re not going to hear him. We don’t know what he’s calling us to. We’re not prepared to do something for him. C. C. For peter Christianity isn’t something that that you just dip your toes in, right? It’s not something you you you know, walk slowly in a robe in for Peter being a follower of christ means everything it means, you’re prepared to go to war, it means you’re girding up and ready to move like it’s all in for Peter and if you’re really like, I want to find my identity in christ my real identity, we gotta be all in and noticed that he talks about the mind here. He talked about the mind and that’s why the title of the sermon and everything is kind of coming to this kind of thesis, if you will, of what I think today is, it’s it’s a real identity in jesus means loving him with all of your mind. We don’t really focus particularly just on the mind um very often, but it’s all through scripture, our mind, our thoughts, he’s saying, he’s saying our thoughts, our mind has to be on jesus in jesus, we have to find it there. Our minds are powerful and christ wants our minds right? We have to submit our minds to him. And and just as a disclaimer before I moved through, I am going to be talking a lot about the mind. I’m gonna be talking a lot about thoughts. Um what I don’t want you to hear me say, uh for for those of us, um either online or here in person that have an actual mental health issue. Don’t hear me say that. The reason that you have that is because you lack faith. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m not saying that you have, you know, a real mental health problem because you haven’t prayed hard enough. That’s not what I’m saying. Don’t hear that. I don’t think Peter is riding to specifically to those who are struggling with a single mental health issue. He’s writing to a large group of people. He’s writing to kind of the normative um thought processes and things that are going on in life. I’m not trying to discuss and talk about or diagnose or help with a real mental health issue. I just want to put that out there. I’m talking a lot about the mind. Um what I’m doing is I’m simply interpreting scripture and I’m reading through this passage and I’m reading through other passages and I see that in order to follow jesus and find our identity in Jesus, we have to love him with our minds. It’s over and over and over again. I’m pulling from um Isaiah 26 3. This is before jesus even comes on the scene. Um he’s talking about having peace in battle. They’re building a wall, they’re doing all these kind of different things and he says, you keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts you. I’m pulling from Philippians 45 and seven. It says, let your reasonable, reasonable nhis be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything but in everything. By prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Let your requests we may note to God and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds. In christ jesus if God wants to guard something in your life because it’s important because it’s very important to him, he wants to guard your mind, your mind. And then of course I’m pulling from Matthew 22 37 this is jesus talking, he said to them, you shall love the Lord, your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul and with all of your mind, I’m talking about the mind. So there’s a lot more like there’s there’s more right, but this is a great first step. We have to love jesus with our minds if you and I want to be and have a real identity in christ, um our minds are very important to God and I think it’s because God and Peter understands that some of the biggest battles you and I will ever face in life is right here in our head, some of the biggest wars that you will ever like wage in your entire life happen in between your ears, below your hair, you know, like it’s in your head, I don’t, I don’t know. For me it is like maybe maybe you would say no, but for me, like man, there’s a war in my head, sometimes I read a study preparing for this that said um they newly, I don’t know how, you know, um I don’t know how they exactly figure out people way smarter than me, looked at people’s brains and their thought patterns and they figured out that Um the average human being has over 6000 thoughts a day. 6000 thoughts a day. That’s more than you’re actually, I don’t I don’t do 6000 things throughout the day, but I have 6000 thoughts throughout the day. That’s so much, there’s so much going on and that’s like an average, you know, so some days it’s like 10,000 thoughts. Some days it’s like You slept for the whole day, you know what I mean? It’s maybe only like 3000, I don’t know, but like we gotta, we have so many thoughts going on in our head and Peter knows that and Peter knows to really follow christ. It’s got like, the mind is a huge factor in it. If you want more, like, evidence of how powerful the mind is. Uh, you know, I grew up playing sports, my dad was a coach, Sports is a, is a big thing. We love sports. And when you think about, you know, an athletic competition, you think mostly that it’s, that has to do with just the body with physicality. Am I taller than you and my stronger than you and I, you know more practice than you. But if you interview like a top athlete in their game and you say, hey, what does it take to win the NBA championship? I guarantee you one of the biggest things that they say is a mindset. It takes a mindset to win the championship. Right? When you asked Lebron James or Michael Jordan or whoever, whatever athlete that, you know, tom brady the, like these people, I’m not saying these people, you know, I don’t think I like them or not. But if you interview them and you say, hey, like what, what sets you apart from literally everybody else in the world? Why are you you so much better at throwing a ball? I think he would say it’s a mindset, like it’s because I set my mind to do this and I’ve, and I’ve done it, you know, now I know, like even if I set my mind at Lebron’s level, I might have a disadvantage playing basketball against them. I get the part of this physical, but I would be a lot closer. Like if I had the minds of the Lebron James, like, uh maybe I’d score 1.1 on one, you never know. But it’s a mindset thing, I’m just trying to say, even, okay, forget sports, Let’s take creatives. If you’re like, I hate sports, I don’t like sports, but but you do anything creative, right? Anything like, what’s the key? The key to making something is your creativity? Where does creativity come from your mind? It’s your head, right? You got to somehow get into a space where you can allow yourself to to imagine or or um have a mental kind of creativity so that you can produce uh this art, whatever it is, right? If you’re in school, you learn something like it’s it’s a mental thing. Most of our jobs, when we go like the first week is like, you’re learning stuff, right? You’re watching videos or something. It’s because it’s a it’s a mindset, like it’s our mentality drives so much of who we are as people, the things that we think and in order to follow, follow christ, we have to have this right kind of mindset, we have to gird it all up and stuff it in jesus. So we’re ready for action. Let’s let’s keep going into actual Peter here. Um we’re gonna read uh starting in 13 again and going to verse 17, he says, therefore prepare your minds for action, be so reminded. So you’re hopefully on Grace, that will be brought to you at the revelation of jesus, christ as obedient Children do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, You also be holy in all your conduct. Since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy. And if you call on him as father, who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourself with fear throughout the time of your exile. The big thing here that I think that we’re going to go through here is I’m just gonna give some some try to give some tips on to what we need to set our mind to. And the first one is that if we want to be people who are identified as christ followers find their identity in jesus, we have to set our minds on grace. I don’t think this should be a leap, a huge drastic leap of interpretation. I hope you can see this in the text verse 13, it says right there, so you hope fully on Grace, this is kind of loaded because because now we have to understand Grace, right? And I could spend a whole, you know, whole sermon series on Grace, we could do. Um but in order to set your mind on Grace, you have to understand what graces and Grace is, something that you and I do not deserve. It’s something that we don’t deserve. So it is a little bit different from athletics in that That manner, right? Um following Jesus is a little bit different than than saying, well I have a mindset to make 30 shots in a row, so I’m gonna train and then I’m going to do it, right? If we can’t work ourselves to Jesus, it’s not something that we can get to, no matter how hard you set your mind to. The first thing that peter reminds us and we have to start out believing is that it’s about grace, it’s about the fact that we don’t deserve this, we don’t deserve this salvation. We don’t deserve to even be able to follow jesus because we have sinned because we’ve messed up because we’ve done something to create this, this split between us and God, right? This is not something that you deserve. It’s not something that I deserve and we can’t get this on our own. We can’t have this mindset on our own. We have to focus and hone in on this idea of grace, the idea that it’s all because of jesus. It’s all because of what he’s done for us, despite who we are despite it. We don’t deserve this and we can’t get to a place where we do deserve it. We have to have a mindset on Grace Colossians three verse 2 says, Set your minds on the things above, not on the things on earth for you have died in your life is hidden with christ. When Christ, who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Right? The same idea in 1st 13, set your hope fully on grace that that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. The second thing we have to set our minds on is christ’s return. This is a huge tenant of our faith, right that Jesus will come back and all glory will go to him Out of 6000 plus thoughts yesterday. How many, how many thoughts were about Christ coming back, right, I had you know Faith and I kind of went on a little bit of a retreat and then we rested a little bit yesterday and um so my my day yesterday, I would say we’re around 4,000 5000 thoughts, you know, maybe not 6000. Uh the number of thoughts that I had on christ return where zero, I’ll be honest, I’ll be honest, it was zero for me and that’s kind of sad, like as I was, I was praying this morning um and actually what’s crazy even for me this morning, when I woke up my mindset was like okay what am I talking about? And then as I was going through, I was like what am I doing? I’ve got to set my mind on jesus, it’s not about about what I’m talking about, you know what I mean? So, I even go through this whirlwind, right, like mornings, and I was like, man, I didn’t even, I literally prepared for this and I didn’t even set my mind on jesus coming back yesterday, not once, you know, It’s a hard thing to do, and I’m not saying that all 6000 your thoughts, you need to walk around like a Zombie, Jesus, you know what I mean? That’s unrealistic. Even Jesus thought about, I’m sure what he was going to eat, you know? But like, we’ve got to at least have this on our on our minds, right, that our God is coming back, like how different would we live? How different would we look? It’s like we at least thought pretty regularly about my God is returning, like, he’s returning, I don’t know, it would be different. Right? Okay. I think I would I would walk a little differently. The next thing that you see this at the beginning of verse 14 is we have to set our minds on obedience. This is tough. Especially as young people we do not like to obey, right? I mean like it’s hard, it’s hard to obey because it takes a bunch of other words that we don’t like. Like being humble, you know, being of service and being submissive and and giving what like, we don’t like any of those words, it’s like, gosh, get that out of here. Obedience is a significant part of finding your identity in christ. Like if you can’t obey God, if you can’t obey, jesus. If you can’t obey this book, I don’t know what to tell you. You know what I mean? I don’t know what to tell you. You’re not you’re not like your identity is not going to be found in christ. When people look at you, they’re not gonna be like, well you follow, You follow Jesus, it’s like no, you’re not literally like the whole book that you guys go after, it’s like I don’t see one single person doing any of that. You know, like we’re not going to be identified as believers as Christians if we can’t obey what he says. Hebrews eight verse 10 says for this is the covenant that I will make with the House of Israel after those days, declares the Lord, I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people. Why would God put a law in in your mind? He just wants you to like, no, it was like no, that’s I know that’s a law and just keep no, he wants you to obey it. He wants us to obey it. So he puts it in our minds, but we don’t know like God’s law unless we read the book. So, like, we have to be focused on this, we have to be focused on God’s, you know, the obedience of God. This is important, you know, linked with this is this idea of Being Holy. This was found in verse 15. Um, and we have to set our minds on holiness. Holiness is an insanely hard word to describe. I try, I looked up, you know, some dictionary definitions and it was something of God. You know, I was like, okay, um, I looked at some, it’s way smarter people than me that have written on holiness. It’s a tough word to describe because it is something that you doesn’t appear anywhere else in the world unless it’s God, right? Because that’s essentially the meaning of holiness. That may be a great way to put it, is that it’s something that set apart, it’s something that’s other, it’s something that is um so great and and different than what you and I can experience. Um it’s holy, um you know, and and revelations, the angels, it says that um in heaven, the angels cry out to God for all of eternity, says they cry out to God, Holy Holy Holy, they don’t cry out a different word, they don’t cry out. There’s other amazing aspects of God, but they don’t cry out like power. They cry out Holy Holy Holy. And and and my my older sister actually when I was younger, kind of explain this to me because I was really curious and she really helped me, she had heard this from somebody else, and she really helped me kind of understand a lot what was going on there, or what could be going on there, right, It’s an interpretation of the scripture, but but she said that um as the angels are eternally looking to God, our God is so amazing, our God is so great, he’s so infinite, that the angels are actually learning something new about God for eternity. They’re seeing another aspect of him, They’re going deeper into like, wow, he’s so loving, and it’s like, they’re literally crying out like Holy holy Holy, like, wow, for eternity. They keep learning and experiencing who God is more and more and more and more, and he’s infinite Guys, he’s like, we can’t wrap our heads around the holiness of God, I’m trying to explain it, but I can’t I don’t do it justice. This man standing in front of you and the words in english coming out of my mouth cannot describe who our God is in his holiness. I can’t do it. I’m failing you right now. As I keep going, He is holy. And and and Peter literally says that we can like come into this holiness somehow. I don’t know. I mean, I’m just reading scripture. I don’t understand all of it, right? I don’t think we can, but we have to have a mindset on this holiness if we’re even going to attempt a couple of verses to aid us in what holiness may look like here on earth. Second Corinthians uh, 10, starting in verse three, for though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments in every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought, every thought captive to obey. Christ. There’s obedience as well. Being ready to punish every disobedience with the obedience when your obedience is complete. Um, it’s there’s there’s a mentality about this, right? And I like him. I don’t see this. There’s something about our minds here. We’ve got to focus in on, we’ve got to hone in on here that we take every thought captive. We can actually do this now because of jesus and what he’s done for us and his holiness. We can actually now be different. We can look different, we can think different, we can talk different, We can act a little bit different than the rest of the world. We can now be set apart because of him because of his holiness and because we’re setting our minds on it. Another verse, colossians 38 through 10. But now you must put them all the way here is what they are. Anger, wrath, mouth of slander, obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another saying that you have put off the old self with its practices and put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge After the image of it’s creator Romans 12 2 do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. By testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. I don’t know about you. I think a lot of us have sometimes asked what is the will of God? How could you ever know what your mind has to be renewed is what this France is saying. You can’t be conformed to this world and you have to let yourself be transformed and renewed in your mind. Ephesians 4 20 to 24 to put off your old self which belongs to your former mentor of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. I don’t know, I’m just reading scripture, just reading like this is all throughout scripture guys that if we want to be followers of jesus, if we want to have an identity in christ, there’s a component of it that’s mental and we got to figure out how to do this thing. Mhm. Yeah. The next thing is that we have to set our minds on the glory of God. This is a huge point that we can’t miss as well. This is significant because what happens, I’ve done this, I’m sure a lot of you have been here, what we start to do is we come away from a message like this and we say yeah, yeah, I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready. And we’re going to be like, we think we’re gonna be like super christians or something, right? We’re like I’m gonna knock down walls, right? And we start we start doing it right, we start trying to set our minds on some of these things and what happens is when we start to do it. Um we start to feel like we deserve something like man, I’m doing all this work for you God, where’s my blessings bro? You know what I mean? Like we’re like why can’t I overcome this problem now, man? Like what’s happening, Why is it still hard Zane told me to do some of this stuff and I’ve done it for a week cause it’s not like getting better, you know, what happens is we try to steal the glory from God when we do this, because we think we’re like, you know, we’re doing something great when it’s like, this is just the standard here. This is just what we should all, like, this is the lowest, you know, bar here. But we’re like, man, I’m I read my Bible two days in a row, like, you know, I mean, we have to remember that, this is not about us, it’s not about you, it’s not about you do this so that you get some stuff so that you look good, so your life is better. There is not a single part of the world that was made for your glory, Sorry, there’s not a single part of like that was made for Zane’s glory, Who’s saying like, look, you’re retro viable, you know, for a week, There just isn’t guys, it’s for God, it’s for God’s glory. And and in order to do this in any sort of way, in order to really have any sort of identity in christ rooted in him, we have to set our minds on the fact that it’s about the glory of God, it’s about him, not you, not me, not about sword church, it’s about God. We have to get that because otherwise we start doing it and we get derailed a little bit. Let me keep reading to help Show you this. We left off at 17. So we’re on verse 18, if you’re uh first Peter verse 18 in chapter one, knowing that you were ransomed from the feudal ways inherited from your forefathers. Knowing or again, he says, knowing this is a mental thing, knowing that you were ransom from the future. Always inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver gold, but with the precious blood of christ like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was four known before the foundation of the world, but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you, who through him are believers in God who raised him from the dead. This is God, God raised him from the dead and gave him glory so that your faith and hope are in good are in God. What he’s saying here is the only way that this is at all possible. The only way that we can have any sort of salvation. The only way that we can even come close to even the knowledge of who God is is because of Jesus is because Jesus came lived, sacrificed himself, died for us. And now we can grow in this fullness of God. We can set our minds on grace, we can set our minds on christ return. We can set our minds on obedience, on holiness and on his glory. And in fact God the Father then glorifies himself, glorifies jesus. That’s what it says. It’s about his glory, not ours. And we cannot steal it even when we start to follow God, like in the standard that is there, you know when we start to do this thing, we cannot then steal the glory from him. Let’s keep reading 22 says, having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly with a from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable through the living and abiding word of God for all flesh is like grass and all its glory. Like the flower of grass. The grass withers and the flower falls. But the word of the Lord remains forever. And this word is the good news that was preached to you. Everything we’ve been talking about is kind of a mentality here. And then peter kind of switches in a tone a little bit and he says, um there’s there’s two ways that we have an identity, right? We have an identity that we give ourselves and we have an identity that other people give us. And it’s important that we identify ourselves as christ followers. And it’s also important that other people identify us as christ followers. And how that happens is that we have a mentality of loving others. This is like this is vitally important for other people to see this church and you and I as believers is, we have to love people, like we cannot be mean, like if we start being gross and means of people like man, it just, it doesn’t matter how much you, you, you find your identity in christ, like other people are going to be like, I did not see jesus in that person, you know, and it’s hard, I’m not saying any of this is easy, I’m not saying any of this, uh this is for me, like this message is presenting to learn as well, like it’s not easy, this is all of us trying to do this jesus when he was speaking to his disciples and john, he actually told him, he says a new commandment I give to you that you love one another, he says, just as I have loved you, you also ought to love one another, and then he says by this all of the world will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another as jesus words to his disciples, vitally important for the whole world to understand that we are disciples of christ is that we have love for one another, we love each other actually, we really hang out that we really like play some games and eat food together and you know, I know it’s tough, passed here with Covid, but like we really got to know each other and love each other. That’s important Philippians two verse three through five also says do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others as more significant than yourself. Each of you not only look to his own interests but also to the interests of others and then it says have this mind among yourselves which is yours in christ jesus. It’s a mentality, like it’s real easy to fake, like, you love someone Yeah, you know what I’m talking about, right? Like it’s real easy to fake it, hold the door hey, but like love is a mentality as well, and it’s not that people are more significant than you paul is writing this, he doesn’t say people are more significant than you, but he says you should count them as such, man. Like what if all of us in this room honestly counted, everybody else is more significant than us. Whoa, That’d be different. Yeah, that’d be different. But our world revolves around us. Like most of, I mean we’re walking around, it’s like, man, it’s about me, you know, I hope hope somebody says hi to me today at church. I hope I hope the words good for me today at church. You know, I hope my kid doesn’t distract distract me so I can worship today at church. You know, like it’s just so ingrained in us to be so selfish, like, oh man, it would look so different if if we counted others as more significant, not that they are more significant than you, but you count them as such, that’s a mental thing that you have to do, and so, you know, I know, I hope, I hope you’re like, I’m down, I get it all through scripture, it’s about renewal of your mind, it’s about changing, you know, this is something, this is a mental thing that we follow, jesus, but you said this would be practical and like not real practical doesn’t seem real practical. This is all like mind stuff, what do I do, what do I do about it? And and that’s hard, like it is just playing hard even for Peter, I’m sure it’s like how do you, you know how do you speak of things of the mind of following christ with your mind, how do you make that something and give somebody a practical, like okay, but here’s what you can do and yet Peter gives it, what does he say at the end of it all, he says, it has to be the word of God, it’s the word like we have to set our minds on the word of God, this is you know, one of the hardest things for some reason, as Christians and I’m in the circle, I’m in the bow, It’s like for some reason we’ve got 6000 plus thoughts a day and we can’t give any of those thoughts to like reading the bible some days and we all like we’ve heard this for so long in our lives, if you’ve been a christian, you know that you’re supposed to read the word like you know that you’re supposed to, but it’s a mindset like I don’t know, it’s a, it has to be a mindset that you’re like I need jesus so much in my life and where do I get him? Like the word is right there, most of us probably got five of them in our bedroom, you know, we just gotta whip it out, We just got to know we got to read this thing. And so the practical way, if you’re looking for something practical to do after today, it’s like you’ve got to figure out how to read this book, you’ve got to do it in your own life. I don’t have like a formula for every single one of us in here today on the three steps to read this. But you know what I mean? It’s gonna look different. Our lives look different, you know our distractions look different. But you’ve got to figure out how you can read this book at a consistent like pace in your life. You’ve got to figure it out. There’s a lot, there’s a lot to do in following jesus and if you do one thing after today, if you’re like, I want to follow him and I want to do one thing. If you do one thing, figure out how to read this bible, like figure out how to read it. Just literally like how to sit down and do nothing else but open up this book and read something in it and that will go miles. That will go so long on setting your mind on christ it will, I’ll give you a few hints. They might not work for you. But something I like to do is journal. I journal a lot and and it helps me in the morning to, to get up and to start by writing something about me. I mean it’s it’s about me a journal. Um a lot of times there’s been times where I’ve started off by by just saying like all the things that I’m thankful for in the day and I just start listing off things I’m thankful for and just just setting us just getting in that time, my phones away, my TVs off, there’s there’s music not going just having that time then propels me to be like okay, well I got 10, 15 minutes before I got a shower and get ready. Let me read. You know there’s there’s a time where I did, you know, what am I sad about? What am I mad about? What am I glad about? You know what I mean? And just answer those questions every day, Like why am I sad today? Because my favorite pants and I don’t know, you know what I mean? Like my favorite pants are in the dryer, I don’t know, I guess I could still wear them if they’re in the drive. You know what am I sad about? What am I glad about? I just fill that out and just thinking about that then makes me like, okay, I can go to scripture, it’s a big thing, you’ve got to figure out how to set aside distractions, you know maybe a step before that is you’ve got to figure out when in the day you’re going to aim to read your bible, you cannot wake up and say I’m gonna read at some point today and then start going out on your day, you know what I mean? Because like, we don’t, like, it’s we gotta figure out, I’m trying to aim to read my bible at this point in the day, you know, I’m gonna wake up an hour before my, my first thing, I normally start my day around like eight, let me be disciplined enough to go to bed a little bit earlier so I can wake up one hour earlier, and like that’s what I’m aiming to read my bible, you’ve got to figure that out for you, like you actually have to do it, you got to write it down somewhere, you’ve got to figure it out. When are you going to read your bible? Maybe it’s at night, you gotta, I’m telling you, you can’t just, you got to figure it out and then you also have to figure out what you want to read because then it’s hard, it’s like okay I woke up at eight, finally I can do this. And then you’re like wow, where do I start? There’s so much just pick, pick one thing, ask somebody and and read that. Read first peter if you if you read first peter one chapter a day like you get done through the whole thing before next week and you know what the pastor is going to talk about next week, you know it, you’ll be like I read that monday, you know like read something, pick it out, have a plan when you’re waking up and saying you’re gonna read your by was like waking up and saying I’m going to work out today. We all know that doesn’t happen. You got to pick out the time that you’re going to work out and you’ve got to pick out what you’re gonna do when you go to the gym, like things are important. You gotta, you gotta set this stuff up and it’s got to be a mentality. Then you’ve got to set your mind to actually do that. I understand that I’m not a parent so I don’t presume to like relate to the distractions of parenthood. I can, I can try to understand that it would be extremely hard to be a parent and find time. So I don’t envy you. But even in parenting like you and your spouse or somebody, you’ve got to work together to find out like when is my time to read my bible and be with God, you know like hey Could you just try to wrangle the kids for like 30 minutes every day, like right after dinner or something and then right after I’m done, I hope you put them down. I don’t know what the formula is, right, but you’ve got to like, you’ve got to figure it out, otherwise it’s not gonna happen, you’re going to go away today and it’s gonna be another one of those sermons where you’re like supposed to read the bible, you know, if you want to find your identity in christ, peter would tell you, read the word of God, figure it out. There’s other things of course that we can do, I think that are super helpful. One of them is community like being here today. What are we all trying to do if you’re still awake or paying attention, what we’re all trying to do is set our minds on christ, right? Like this is good, this is a good thing, it’s a great thing that we’re doing when we gather for community groups and we eat together bible studies or if you have like a one on one kind of disciple person that you meet with, all of those things are really good because they help remind us to set our mind on christ, those things are good, it’s good stuff, so keep doing it, if you’re doing it, if you if you don’t have that, if this is your one thing a week that you’ve got like find something else throughout the week, being a believer is not a one day a week thing, so like find something else, let’s let’s find you a community group, let’s find you a bible study, let’s get you with somebody that can read scripture with you, maybe keep you account, maybe you pick the thing together, hey let’s both go through romans, you know community is great to keep your mind set on christ things like prayer, you know different disciplines, there’s so many, but the biggest one, I mean peter points to it is the word of God. We’ve got to figure this out if we’re gonna have our minds love God with all of our minds, if we’re going to attempt to do something like that, we have to read the word, it just has to happen. There’s, there’s so many things in the world today to identify with, there’s a lot of things to identify with um and some of them aren’t like bad things to identify with. There’s so much right, there’s so much stuff in the world that is persuading our thoughts in our minds Every day. 6000 thoughts. If you thought like I don’t have that many thoughts, maybe it’s because like eight hours of the day, you were like letting something else think for you. and so you had 6000 thoughts, but 4000 of them were about your favorite netflix tv show. You know, like, I promise you have that many thoughts, but they might not be your own because we have so much telling us what to think every day. If we can’t give, like a few of those thoughts to God, like where are we at? You know what I mean? It’s going to be tough to identify with God if, like, you’re being flooded with a lot of stuff and none of that is this book, it’s gonna be real tough. You have said yes to God, you believe in him and you did that because of the grace of jesus. And you understand the Grace and you want to identify with him fully. You want to have that focus on Grace, on his returning on obedience and holiness, on his glory and loving others. And so the best way that we can do that is having a disciplined time of reading scripture of meeting with people who do the same thing and encouraging one another. And essentially what we have to do as believers is, we’ve got to gird up all the loose ends of our mind. We’ve got to gert it all up, get it together. We got to stuff it into jesus and be ready for action. Be ready for what he’s calling us to do individually and together as a church. I want to pray and then we’ll do communion. How many father? Just thank you for today. God, thank you for your word. God, thank you for Grace and salvation, who you are God. And that we can have an identity uh, in you, for you, that we cannot be identified as followers of you. God help us. We need so much help give us the courage in the desire to begin to set our minds on you and to love you with all of our minds. Um, it’s in your name. I pray. Amen.