Sunday, June 22, 2014

We Have the Mind of Christ

As we watch the prophesied events of the end times play out in our day, it doesn't deliver the same joyful expectation that it did back in the 1970s & 80s. We would listen to prophecy teachers speak of a coming cashless society, of some new world religion coming, of a new kind of vulture showing up at Megeddo, and a target date of 1988 for a pre-trib rapture. We had Hal Lindsey, Chuck Smith and Doug Clark heralding the coming events with such a thrill of excitement in their preaching that we just all got titillated too.

All those things were somewhere down the line. We didn't see that there would be an entire breakdown of morality - we thought we'd seen it all back then after the age of Aquarius. We never conceived of same-sex marriage -- especially in the church!

We heard from new agers of a coming paradigm shift and didn't realize that the same shift was going to happen in the church and take many of our friends and loved ones along with it. We didn't anticipate that new age altered states of consciousness would take hold in our own circles under the guise of contemplative and soaking prayer.

The shifted worldview has now encompassed the visible church and left us few sheep behind. We don't see the Word of God as a success-motivational tool or a diet book to get in shape by following Daniel and his friends' choice of veggies. I like what Jesus said to the Pharisees who misused the Scriptures:

“You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me." - John 5:39


Rather than going along with the paradigm shift in the church we need to see the world and the church through the eyes of Jesus and with the mind of Christ. As we meditate on His Word, not gazing into our navels, we renew our minds and are better able to exist in this world where we do not fit in.

Compromise with the world is one of the most dangerous temptations the devil is using to overcome the saints.

LORD, keep us set apart for Your purposes in these evil days. Amen.

"Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance; but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, 'Be holy, for I am holy.'" - 1 Pet 1:13-16

"Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. For 'who has known the mind of the LORD that he may instruct Him?' But we have the mind of Christ." - 1 Cor 2:12-16


 

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