Dear People Who Keep Company With God,
God has given us access to the greatest and most beautiful mind that exist, the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16). How do we access the mind of Christ? I have learned that it is by grace. Grace is a teacher and invites us to become her lifelong students.
Here are some of the ways grace has taught me about accessing the mind of Christ. Just remember, what grace teaches, grace empowers.
Grace teaches us how to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Cor. 10:4-5), so we can live the life Jesus died to give us – a life of peace with God, ourselves, and other people. We can possess real joy and the ability to become all God has created us to be.
Grace teaches us to choose the thoughts and think things on purpose (Col. 3:1-3). In other words, we don’t have to just think about whatever floats into our minds. “As [a man] thinks in his heart, so is he.” (Prov. 23:7). The way we think affects how we live and who we are.
Grace teaches us to “think soberly” (Titus 2:11-12).
The word soberly is sopranos in the Greek. It comes from two words; Sozo, which we know means saved, healed and delivered and phren, which is a word for the mind. It means a sound mind and healthy emotions.
It is used as an adverb in this verse and it tells us grace teaches us how to think and act in a responsible manner, sensibly, wisely, being in self-control and in full possession of intellectual and emotional faculties.
Grace teaches us how to think as a New Covenant believer versus an Old Covenant believer.
First, we allow God to deprogram the old mindset of wilderness thinking that we have carried around with us. In the wilderness, six days a week the manna rained down, just enough for every man, woman, and child to eat. Each family gathered what they could eat. After the sun had gotten hot, there was no manna left. The manna was melted. They had just enough for that day (Ex. 16).
That was God’s plan for the wilderness, but not the Promised Land. The day they ate corn in the Promised Land, the manna stopped (Josh. 5:12). The mind of Christ never thinks in terms of having just enough. Jesus showed us that when He fed the 5000 and 7000. They had leftovers (Mark 8:19-21). He always thinks in terms of overflowing. That is what graceful thinking looks like, overflowing.
Paul said, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” (1 Cor. 13:11) What are the childish things Paul was talking about? It is the old carnal, poverty-driven, wilderness thinking.
At the end of the day, grace will tell you that it comes down to choosing to believe what God says more than you believe your feelings, what other people say or your circumstances.
“Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” (Rom. 12:1-2 NLT)
Notice, the “pleasing and perfect” feelings that flow from God’s will don’t come first. Rather, changing our way of thinking comes first. In other words, right feelings follow the graceful way of thinking.
The renewed mind of Christ with all its grace, wholesome, and overflowing thinking is the inheritance of every born-again person.
Many Blessings, BW