Unfortunately, due to technical difficulty, there is no recorded audio file for this sermon. However, below you will find the manuscript of the sermon A Mind for Christ, as preached by Pastor Sarah Shin on January 10, 2018. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Mark 12:30 – Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with
all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.
Good Evening Jubilee, Welcome to our Wednesday Night Service.
Today we’ll be continuing on in our January series of “The greatest
commandment” of loving the Lord our God with all heart, soul, mind
and strength. And today we’ll be looking at what it means to love Him
with all our minds.
Let me begin by asking these questions: ‘How’s your thought life?’
‘What do you think about all the time? And ‘Have you ever taken time
to examine it?’
These are very important questions because what we think
determines our steps and our life. Our thoughts lead to habits, habits
form character and character our future and destiny. Proverbs 23:7
‘As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.’ So we ARE what we think.
And this is no exaggeration because if we think about it, our mind
works 24/7 even when we are sleeping. So it’s the part of us that’s
most alive and active, and much of reality is being lived out in our
minds.
This is what Mark Twain said about our minds: ‘we think that a person’s life are his acts and his words. But his real life is led in his head, and is
known to none but himself. All day long, the mill of his brain is
grinding, and his thoughts, not those other things, are his history.’
So thoughts affects our lives in tremendous ways.
But of the thousands of thoughts a person has every day, it’s
estimated that 70% of this mental talk is negative — self-critical,
pessimistic, and fearful. And I didn’t need scientific research to tell
me this because I could just look at my own thought life and it was
just obvious that it was not very healthy, positive and godly all the
time.
But why? Why do we naturally, by default, think such negative and
sinful thoughts?

That’s because when Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the garden,
our minds became corrupted by the fall and sin had its effect on our
minds. So in our natural, unregenerate state, there’s something
dramatically wrong with our minds.
The Bible describes the fallen and corrupted state our mind as
follows:
- Romans 1:18-21: our thinking became futile and we suppressed
the knowledge of truth in our wickedness.
- Romans 1:28 – since we did not think it worthwhile to retain the
knowledge of God, he gave us over to a depraved mind.
- Col 1:21 – We were alienated from God and were enemies in
our minds.
In other words, our mind in its fallen state hates God. There’s nothing
more repulsive and distasteful to our minds than the love of God and
we choke at the very thought of Jesus’ command to love God with
our minds. So any consideration of the human mind must begin with
the understanding that by nature the mind does not love God at all,
unless and until the Holy Spirit changes its disposition/nature
instantly and sovereignly to set the affections on Him. So
regeneration is the absolute necessary condition for loving God with
our minds.
But being born again (i.e. when we are given a brand new Spirit from
God) does not mean we immediately eliminate our mind’s hostility
toward God. We are given a mind to desire to have God in our
thinking for the first time, but because we are still in this flesh that can
sin and we have the residual effects of sin, we got some work to do.
Our old self and old ways of thinking need to be cast off by renewing
of our minds. Romans 12:2 says we are to be transformed by the
renewing of our minds because as Christians we still have the
capacity to think like the world as long as we have this body. It’s
interesting that it says renewing our minds leads to our WHOLE
BEING transformed. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to change
yourself but I have and I failed miserably. We cannot change
ourselves. But what we can do is change our thoughts. When we
change our thoughts, this leads to change in our lives. So if you want
transformation in your life, it has to begin in our mind. We need to
walk through the process of sanctification of renewing our minds so
that we’ll grow to loving our God more!
Having said all this, it might seem strange to think that Jesus said
that we are to love God with our minds because we don’t usually
speak of love in terms of an intellectual activity; it’s usually about
emotions and heart. But if we think about it at a deeper level of what
love is, it’s very much based on our knowledge of the person we love.
Nothing can be in the heart that is not first in the mind. So we
cannot love God if we don’t know Him. Same thing with any
relationship- we cannot love the person or grow in our love for them if
we do not know them. So if we want to love God more, we have to
know Him more deeply – and this both intellectually and
experientially.
So then what does it really mean to love our God with all our mind? I
believe there are several components to loving him with our mind but
today’s I’d like to highlight 3 aspects of it:
1. Dedicating our minds to knowing Him:
How do we dedicate our minds to knowing Him? By encountering
God through His Word. Loving God with our mind involves taking
time to fill our mind with God’s Word because we have to rightly
agree with who He is. I’ve been learning how important it is to see
God correctly for who He really is.
John Piper says ‘the apex of glorifying God is enjoying him with
the heart. But this is an empty emotionalism where that joy is
not awakened and sustained by true view of God for who He
really is.’
I couldn’t agree with this more. When our mind grows in the
knowledge of our Lord and we come into agreement with God about
who He is, His nature, character, His ways and deeds, it’s inevitable
that we grow in our affections for Him because He’s just so beautiful,
so glorious, so kind, so awesome and lovely! It’s impossible not to
love God. True knowledge of God always bears fruit in greater love
for God and a greater desire to praise Him.
And we if we want to know Him more, we have to read the Word of
God, because it’s through His written Word that He has chosen to
reveal Himself mainly.
But reading the Word of God doesn’t mean just accumulating
information or getting puffed up in head knowledge, but about
encountering God and experiencing transformation because His word
is SPIRIT AND LIFE (John 6:63). Reading and studying the Word
does not mean ‘oh this is some good teaching. Let me go apply this
in my life’ and you try to change yourself in your own will and
determination like you would with any moral teachings you get
elsewhere. It’s not AFTER you read that you DECIDE to live it out,
but it’s WHILE you are reading, AT THE VERY MOMENT, you
encounter God.
This can never be achieved by our own human efforts- we need the
Holy Spirit to make His written word, Rhema (spoken) word. It’s as if
Jesus is right in front of you and He’s speaking to you and when
Jesus (who is God) speaks, things never remain the same- I mean
God spoke and this universe came into existence. When Jesus
spoke, strongholds were broken, dead people were raised, sick were
healed, demons fled, people sinned no more and life and
relationships were restored, peace, joy and freedom came. That’s
what we are to experience every time we encounter God through His
Word. We need to invite and allow the Holy Spirit to make this
happen. And the amazing thing is that the Holy Spirit wants to do
this. We do not have to beg him to come and encounter us as if He
doesn’t- He WANTS to do it. We just have to avail ourselves to Him.
Loving God with our mind also means letting His Word affect not only
the way that we think about GOD but about ALL things in life. It’s
learning to think in all His ways. Because, if all truth is God’s truth, we
should seek to grow in our understanding of all areas of truth,
whether that be in areas of science, art, music, biology, history,
politics, geography, relationship and family, marriage, etc. So His
truth is to affect our life and every decision we make.

All of this involves dedicating our minds to knowing Him.
The second aspect of loving God with our mind involves…
2. Remembering God and His goodness using the tool of our
memory:
The bible is filled with commands to remember God’s goodness and
deeds. One such example is Deuteronomy 6:12 where God tells the
Israelites to REMEMBER HIM.
Deut. 6:12 says do not forget the LORD, who brought you out of
Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
When we use our minds to remember His kindness, faithfulness,
patience, deliverance, provision, and forgiveness, we build a
foundation of faith, hope and love and it leads us to worship. When
we go through difficult times, we can always look back to the times
where God came through, and we can find hope and strength in
knowing that He’ll continue to show himself faithful and good both in
the present and in the future.
I realized that I am so easy to forget how God has worked in my life
and how good He’s been to me. So recently I started to jot down
every goodness of God that I experienced or witnessed, and write
down every answered prayer, both big and small. So when I read
them over, it’ll be an evidence of His goodness in my life and it gives
me peace, and joy and leads to thankfulness. And God loves people
who are grateful all the time.
So let us use our memory in remembering His goodness and in
loving our Lord!
Thirdly, loving God with our mind means
3. Using the faculty of our imagination to love our God:
The way we think is in pictures, and our mind operates through
imagination. Everybody sitting here has the capacity to imagine
things. When I say ‘think of a dog’ – Nobody will think of the letters
‘D.O.G’ in their head; instead you all have different picture that come
to your mind. And this tool of imagination is an amazing gift from
God. And when God gives a gift, we are to use it for His glory in a
way that He has intended it to be used.
Now, earlier on I said ‘you are what you think’ (Prov 23:7) which can
be put in another way as ‘you are what you imagine,’ because God
considers your imagination your reality. What you imagine is your
reality in spirit realm but it also manifests in physical realm. That’s
why you just imagining things in your mind leads you to experiencing
emotions (whether that be emotions of happiness, anger, sadness
etc.) and seeing actual bodily symptoms like sweating and fast
heartbeats when nervous.
That’s why in Matt 5 Jesus said, you have already committed murder
if you hate your brother in your heart/mind. Because you start
thinking of all the bad things he/she has done to you and you think of
bad things you wish would happen to that person. You don’t have to
swear or physically hit or kill someone to show that you hate them
because God already looks at what happens in your heart and mind
and considers them a reality.
Same thing, if you look at a woman in a lustful way, Jesus said
you’ve committed adultery. Why? You’ve done things with that
woman in your imagination and that’s a reality to God.
So we want to use this aspect of our mind correctly in loving our God.
Phil 4:8 tell us to develop a Christian thought life by constantly
thinking about things that are true, noble, right, good, pure,
lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy. (You see all the list
of adjectives?)
Where else would all these good things come from but God? And
again they are found in His Word. And what we put before our very
eyes and ears is VERY VERY important, because what you put
before them determines what you think about or imagine.
For e.g. if you watch a scene from a movie where two people are
making out, you might possibly be thinking and start imagining things
in your head. And if you don’t watch out, it’ll lead you to places where
you do not and should not go. For some, that one scene can trigger

things in your heart that causes you to lust and sin. And a lot of the
stuff that come from TV, music, movies etc. unless you filter them, do
not help you very much with your thought life. If often pollutes, tempts
and leads you further away from God.
So I tell you, put the Word of God ever before you and let it repaint a
picture in the imagination of your mind. Watch on what you see and
listen to. You need to intentionally and effortfully learn and train to
think and imagine biblically, truthfully, and wholly about every aspect
of your life. That’s why the bible tells us not just to ‘read’ the Bible but
to ‘meditate’ on the Word of God day and night (Joshua 1:8/Psalm
1:2).
** This word ‘meditate’ means ‘imagine’ in the original language
Greek (hagah). So you meditate using pictures of your imagination.
Now let me tell you, it’s not easy to meditate day and night. I know
that if I don’t consciously think about it, my mind goes off somewhere
and thinks about all kinds of things all day long. Research shows our
brain can generate up to 50,000 thoughts per day. But I consciously
try to think about God every time I become aware that my
mind/imagination is running. I think about the things that I’m thankful
for, things that I want to do with him, I imagine Jesus walking into my
room while I’m praying, I think about all the promises God has given
me and the person I’ll become based on His promises (which may
not seem very realistic at present)– I think about all sorts of things
that me keep me focused on God. It’s not easy but over time, it gets
a little easier and easier.
The sad thing is that most of us have not let the Word of God paint
the picture in our mind. But instead, we’ve allowed this world, other
people and our experiences tell us who we are. We often bring down
the level of the Word of God to our experiences instead of taking our
experiences to the level of the Word of God. Don’t let your
experiences dictate who you are and your path/future.
About 3 years ago, this one person said something really mean and
negative over a period of time and I became bitter and hurt. One day
I cry and complain before God, telling on her to Him. After a while,

God spoke to me and said, ‘Sarah, stop.’ And He did this in a very
loving and gentle way as always but He said, ‘It’s your fault that you
chose to believe what she said about you over against what I said
about you through my Word. This is who I said you are, but you gave
a greater weight to what she said about you.’ At that moment, I
stopped crying because I was surprised- I was kind of expecting God
to comfort me and say ‘aww you poor thing, I’m sorry she said those
things about you, I’m sure you’re hurt, I understand’ and allow me to
go into this whole self-pity mode. But instead, He said, ‘You allowed
her words, which are not true, to have greater influence over your
heart and mind than what I said about you - you believed that to be
true and that’s why you were hurt.’ So I had to repent before God,
and I said, “Lord, I choose to hold onto your truth and let that dictate
who I am and let that dictate my life.” It was a very refreshing way of
God telling me His truth.
Any negativity and anything that’s not of God that you’ve seen,
heard, believed, or experienced-i.e. anything that’s not true, noble,
right, good, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy,
God wants you to delete it – scratch it and cross it out and replace
them with truth. And one thing that He taught me is that you can do
this mentally in your imagination.
Let’s all try this. I want everyone to close their eyes, and I want you to
draw and paint a picture in your head of anything that’s not good or of
God– it can be about yourself, it can be about your future, it can be
about your family, anything that leaves you with hopeless and
despair, worry and fear, etc. Now, tear that paper of your imagination
and picture a trash can and throw it into the bin. And Now I want you
to form a picture of who you are, how wonderful your future is going
to be, how awesome your relationship will be with your siblings or
spouse or parents, picture healing taking place, picture your thriving
and finding joy and peace in God etc.
Now you might think this is super weird and that this is not even real.
But as I said, your imagination and your mind is reality. And the more
you imagine and think something in your mind, you eventually come
to believe it and when you believe something, the bible calls that
having ‘faith.’ And the bible says that if you have faith as small as a
mustard seed, you can move the mountains for real! And when you
take the truth of God and believe it, BAAM, your situation changes.
What’s real in the spiritual realm manifests in the physical realm. And
let me tell you this:
You cannot become someone who’s bigger your
imagination. You simply cannot get beyond that.
With our imagination we can explore the possibilities we have in God
in all areas of our lives. This releases hope, faith and love in God.
Having said all this, our knowledge of Him and right thinking about
God should always lead to an emotional embrace of God. “The mind
has not yet loved until it hands off its thoughts to the hearts where
they are embraced.” And when the mind and the heart work in
harmony, we experience both intellectual and affectional love for
God. Heart and mind are inseparable.
For me, when the truth sets in my mind, when the revelation of His
word comes, my heart, my emotions and my whole being just grabs
hold of Him and His truth and says ‘wow Lord, I love you. You are
soooo good! This is just amazing.’ So the more we search the
Scriptures and the more we focus our minds’ attention to who God is,
the more we love Him. Biblical knowing involves more than mere
cognition; it leads to intimacy, worship and obedience!
Now, I’d like to close this message by reading a short chapter of a
book called ‘My heart-Christ’s home’ by Robert Boyd Munger. It’s a
book about inviting Christ into the home of our hearts and letting him
take over all the rooms of our home.
As we read, I’d like us to switch on the imagination and walk through
this story together.
We have the mind of Christ. Let’s love Him with it!
My heart -Christ’s home: Robert Boyd Munger

The author says that ‘After Christ entered my heart, in the joy of that
newfound relationship, I said to him ‘Lord, I want this heart of mine to
be yours. I want you to settle down here and be fully at home. I want
you to use it as your own. Let me show you around and point out
some of the features of the home so that you may be more
comfortable. I want you to enjoy our time together.’ He was glad to
come and seemed delighted to be given a place in my ordinary, little
heart.
‘The study’
The first room we looked at together was the study- the library. Let us
call it the study of the mind. Now in my home room of the mind is a
small room with thick walls. But it is an important room. In a sense, it
is the control room of the house. He entered with me and looked
around at the books in the bookcase, the magazines on the table, the
pictures on the walls. As I followed his gaze, I became
uncomfortable. Strangely enough, I had not felt bad about this room
before, but now that he was there with me looking at these things, I
was embarrassed. There were some books on the shelves that his
eyes were too pure to look at. On the table there were a few
magazines a Christian has no business reading. As for the pictures
on the walls-the imaginations and thoughts of my mind-some of these
were shameful. Red-faced, I turned to him and said, "Lord, I know
this room really needs to be cleaned up and made over. Will you help
me shape it up and change it to the way it ought to be?" "Certainly,"
he replied. "I'm glad to help you! I've come to handle things like this!
First of all, take all the materials you are reading and viewing which
are not true, good, pure and helpful, and throw them out! Now put on
the empty shelves the books of the Bible. Fill the library with the
Scriptures and meditate on them day and night. As for the pictures on
the walls, you will have difficulty controlling these images, but I have
something that will help." He gave me a full-sized portrait of himself.
"Hang this centrally on the wall of your mind." I did, and I have
discovered through the years that when my thoughts are centered on
Christ, the awareness of his presence, purity and power causes
wrong and impure thoughts to back away. So he has helped me to
bring my thoughts under his control, even though the struggle
continues. If you have difficulty with this little room of the mind, let me
encourage you to bring Christ there. Pack it full with the Word of God,
study it, meditate on it and keep it clearly before you the presence of
the Lord Jesus.
This is just so well put.
Jubilee, my prayer for us is also that we’ll invite Jesus into the room
of our mind and let Him dwell there and take His rightful place so that
we’ll learn and grow to delight in Him and love Him with all of our
minds. Amen.