The Path Runs Through Your Mind

All right, well, welcome, everybody. Come on, clap your hands, be alive. Welcome to all of our campuses that are joining us today. Man, special welcome to our Dickinson campus. I just wanna say congratulations to Pastor Logan and Madison who gave birth to a little girl last week. It's amazing. They named her True, beautiful, and those two make babies like they make disciples. It's just happening, but love you guys, and so grateful. It is Super Bowl Sunday. I know nobody cares because what we all really care about is the tennis that happened last week, but I just thought it was worth mentioning that it is Super Bowl Sunday. I will be cheering for Vikings quarterback, Sam Darnold, and the Seahawks today, but in better news because he's no longer the Vikings quarterback. There are some Vikings players coming to the arena, men's conference that's happening in May, and so in honor of Super Bowl Sunday, I'm so excited. We were with a bunch of men last night dreaming about the arena and what God was gonna do in the lives of men in our church, and excited that Carson Wentz will be back. He's bringing CJ Hamm, who played fullback for the Vikings this year, but also Micah Mack, who's spoken at our church before,

and one of my friends, Kevin Meyers, are gonna be sharing, and we believe there's a movement happening in the men in our church, and a conference is not the end. It's not the goal. It's a tool for these men to continue to grow in leading in every arena of life, amen? And so I wanted you to know that because it's Super Bowl Sunday and people apparently care about football, that there's a discount today on tickets for the arena. It's the cheapest it's gonna be until May. So if you're not registered, or if you have a man in your life that you think he needs to go to this thing, and he needs to experience this, then just buy him a ticket and kick him out of the house on May 1st, and send him on over, and truly, we just believe God is gonna do an incredible work. Also, if you are a guy and you're registered, think about a coworker, a family member, somebody else who could be a part of it, because truly, last year, God met us there, and we believe he's gonna meet us there this year as well, and it's gonna be a powerful time together, amen? Amen, on Super Bowl Sunday, millions of people direct their attention and their thoughts. It's actually, if you go through the most watched television productions in history,

eight out of like the top 10 are Super Bowls, and so it's like the one time of year where everybody turns on their television, directs their attention to this one event, for better or worse, to check out what is happening. It's because it's more than a game. It's a gathering point for people. Many get together and eat food and don't even watch the game. They sit and visit instead, and it's a cool lesson, and even what we're gonna talk about today, because whatever has your attention is shaping your direction, right? Whatever has your attention every day, every month, every year, whatever you spend your time thinking about is shaping the direction of your thoughts, and it's shaping the direction of your life. This is what the Apostle Paul writes about this topic in Colossians chapter three. He says, since then, you have been raised with Christ. He's saying you have new life in Christ Jesus if you're following him. Set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set is an active tense. It's not passive. It's not like when I tell my kids to set the table and they don't do it,

and maybe they just think the dishes are gonna float out of the cabinet onto the table. That's not how it works, and our hearts don't automatically just set themselves. The Bible is telling us, set your heart. Take agency, take responsibility for your heart. Set your heart on things above. It continues, and it says, set your mind on things above, not on the earthly things. For you died. Your old life before Christ is gone, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God, and we talked about that a few weeks ago. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. He's saying, set your heart, set your mind. The Bible is clear that what you think about matters. What has been at the top of your mind all week matters. The path to God's plan and his purpose for your life lives and dies in your mind. It lives and dies in the things that you think about. In fact, your mind is like the map. You can look at somebody and discover what they've been thinking about, where their thoughts have been, and it's a pretty good determiner, determination, determine, it determines where their life is going. If you audit your thought life and what you've been thinking about, it's a pretty good indicator.

of the direction that your life is headed based on the thoughts that you think, and if I could even go further, the thoughts that you allow in your mind. So all that means is we need to think about what we're thinking about. We need to stop and we actually need to think about what we're thinking about. Let me ask you this, what were your intrusive thoughts this week? What were the thoughts that jumped in your mind that you thought, I don't know that I wanna think about that, or I never meant to think about that, but now it's in my mind. What are your intrusive thoughts? And the second question is, what do you do with those intrusive thoughts? I woke up this morning and I realized our closet light wouldn't turn on, which led me to the understanding that the panel that our alarm is on is on that same wall, and so if the breaker was off for the closet light, the alarm system was also off, and I had some intrusive thoughts. I watched the news too much this week. I had some intrusive thoughts, and I thought, are my kids in my room? Or are my kids in their room? And if I check on them, they're gonna wake up

and they're gonna wanna come to church with me, but I don't want them to come to church with me at seven o'clock because they're gonna be crabby this afternoon, and you kind of have to go, okay, what am I gonna do with these thoughts that I'm having that all of a sudden are causing feelings within me? And I began to reason. My dog hears everything. If there was something actually for cause of intrusive thoughts in my mind, my dog would have noticed, you know? Or the panel downstairs is still working, and I almost had to reason my way back. Have you been there? Have you had those intrusive thoughts that just kind of hit you like, oh, that person, what they did kind of hurt me, and you know what, I think they did it intentionally, and they're probably gonna do it again, and all of a sudden, these intrusive thoughts are, there's this path that you're going down that you have to stop and think, is this actually the path that I wanna go down? The Bible specifically commands us what to do with our minds. It says, don't conform to the pattern of the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, saying, here's what you need to do, even in the midst of intrusive thoughts.

It also says in Psalm 139, search me, God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. So the Bible is clear that we need to have some agency when these kinds of thoughts come into our minds, and so I wanna give you a message today entitled, The Path Runs Through Your Mind. The path to God's purpose and God's plan for your life that we've been talking about over the last couple of weeks runs through your mind. It runs through what you think about and what you allow yourself to think about in your life, and the Bible's clear that if Christ is in us, then our thinking can't stay the same. In Corinthians, the apostle Paul also writes and says, you have the mind of Christ, and so if we're in Christ, then our thinking has to change. What we allow ourselves to think about has to change, and that starts, he says in Colossians 3, by setting your heart and setting your mind. It's active engagement in what you let into your heart and what you let into your mind. You are responsible for what you think about, and he ultimately says, you know what, if you set your heart, that's going to set your mind in the right direction. And so normally, the way that we're taught and the way that we think about it is, my thoughts are leading to my actions, which leads to my habits, which is determining my future.

Many books have been written about you are the accumulation or the culmination of many thoughts that are actually landing you in the future that you're in, that they are determining your path, but the Bible actually teaches it a little bit more deeply than that thought, because the Bible says that it's setting your heart that sets your mind, which sets your actions in place, and then your habits, and then your future. And so it's not just about changing the way you think, it's actually about setting your heart in the right direction as well, and the mind and the heart are always connected. This is what the progression looks like. We have to start in our heart. Proverbs 4.23 says that your heart is determining the course of your life. So it's not just, you know, you can have hope and say, here's what I want out of my future, but if your heart isn't set in that direction, your mind will not be set in that direction, your actions won't be set in that direction, and your habits won't be set in that direction, and you'll never actually reach that future. So it really comes back to, what are you setting your heart on, and what are you setting your mind on? The heart. It really is the control center of our lives. In fact, science confirms this.

It teaches us that our brains are wired so that our emotions and our values lead before our logic, right? This is why when you have an intrusive thought, you have this flood of emotions and this flood of thoughts that might not even be reasonable or rational, and you almost have to wait for your sensibility and your rationale to catch up sometimes, right? It's like whenever our kid would get croup, I would, I would, I was like, Janae, you're the mom who's like protective and here's what we gotta do. And I'm always the one who's trying to determine like how serious is this? Like, and sometimes when one person is rational and the other person is feeling a lot of emotion, you need each other, right? To go, hey, not everything you feel is real. We need people like that in our lives. Not, what's actually going on here? And it matters because what's in our hearts gets in our heads and it leads us down a path that we might not wanna go. What we love, what we fear, and what we prioritize activates our thoughts. I heard a teaching on this recently that really helped me and if you'll allow me, I just have to nerd out for a second because I love psychology. And I thought this was really interesting

that, you know, we talk a lot about the brain and the mind. And the reason I'm saying this is because there's people who have legitimate challenges in capturing their thoughts or setting their thoughts in the right direction. And I've heard people say, well, I just need to pray about it more. And I'm like, yes, and. Or I just need to read my Bible more. I'm like, yep, and. Because you are, what's in your head is two parts. It's both mind and brain. And they are, it's like a duplex that has one door. And so your mind is the part that Jesus says, I will come and I will transform you in the renewing of your mind. Transforming you in the renewing of your thinking. But your brain is an organ, like you could set it on the table, like your heart, like your physical heart. And when we don't take care of our brain, when we don't take care of the organ, it's like eating saturated fats and processed foods your whole life and looking at a heart that is a physical heart that's just unhealthy and saying, now I need a miracle to undo what I did for the last 40 years. And there's a real physical organ that's in your mind that God can do the renewing, but you might need some habits and some help to reset some neural pathways and to rewire that mind.

The good news is that science tells us your mind out of all the organs in your body can be changed. That neuroplasticity shows us that your mind, the organ, can actually heal itself. That's an amazing thing. So yes, we need the renewing of your mind and we need to pray and we need to read the word and that transforms the way we think, but you also might have some habits and hangups that are stuck in the organ of your mind, pathways that you've been going down for years. It's like the old cattle trails out on the ranch, sorry, but you're driving the four-wheeler across the pasture, you're having a great time, you're a kid, it says you shouldn't drive this if you're under 16 and you're 12 and mom and dad cut you loose and you're having a great time and then all of a sudden you hit that one spot where when the cows walk down to the river, they always take that same path and now it's about two feet deep and you hit it and, right, snap the handlebars right off the thing. That's the way that your minds are. The paths that you've traveled down, how your brain is, the paths of thinking that you've traveled down and traveled down and traveled down and traveled down are well-worn and sometimes we have to go to somebody or we have to set a period of time saying I'm gonna wear a new pathway in my mind.

When this comes up, I'm gonna think different and that takes some time and sometimes that takes some effort and sometimes that takes some godly counsel. So God can heal you and transform you in your mind but your brain, the organ, might also need some help and some healing, does that make sense? So what is the remedy if this is where we are as people? If we're going to shape our minds and thoughts in a Christ-like direction, then the ultimate tool to use is God's Word because God's Word guides our heart by giving it direction and if God's Word is directing our heart, then our heart will give our mind thoughts that come from God's Word. If you're not in God's Word, your thoughts are going to be informed by the world that you're living in and your own intrusive thinking and this is, some of you are going crazy because the stuff you're dwelling on. calling on all the time and thinking about it and you're so bothered and angsty and I'm not judging you, I have been there, but you're out of sync with the word of God, with the promises of God that anchor those thoughts and cause you to think on things above, not just on things below. Hebrews 4.12 says this is the work that the word does.

The word of God is alive and active. It's not just a book, it's not just helpful thoughts, but it's sharper than a double-edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing the soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and the attitudes of the heart. So it is living and active and it slices away at the thoughts and the attitudes of our heart that then give thoughts and attitudes to our mind that produce our actions and our habits and the direction of our lives, even determining our future. This is why the word of God is our daily bread. Especially in a world of information that we live in right now, we need the word of God every day. We need it dwelling and active in our hearts. Psalm 119.105 says your word is a lamp for my feet. It's a light for my path. The path runs through your mind. The word of God is the path that we want running through our mind. And so how do we do this? God's word has to be hidden in our hearts. It can't just be in front of us. It actually has to be tucked away so that in the moments where something happens, the first thing that you draw on is not what some person says, but what the word of God says.

So that when you don't know where else to turn or you're feeling a certain way, God's word is what pops up into your mind. I have a confession. My son has this hunting game on his iPad. And I was putting the kids to bed the other night and I thought I should shoot a few deer on that hunting game. Which led to me conquering a whole level that night. And I went to bed that night and I closed my eyes and do you know what I saw? Deer running through a screen. What you said in front of yourself, especially at night, is dictating where your thoughts are gonna live. To the point that I'm having images when I close my eyes. And that's when I know what you're doing is not good. When you close your eyes at night, what you think about, what immediately comes to mind matters because it tells where your heart is. Psalm 119, 11 says, I've hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Why does the Bible say this? I don't know about you, but I read verses like this and I think, how actually does this work? How is it that hiding God's word in my heart

stopped me from sinning against God? Like how are those two things actually correlated? The reality is that your heart is the seed of your emotions. The heart is, it feels a lot of things. The Bible tells us that your heart desires a lot of things. That your heart actually has a will, that God has a will and sometimes you don't do God's will because your heart has its own will. In fact, the Bible says don't trust your heart because it's wayward and everything in your life flows from what's in your heart and so your heart really is this beast in your life of feelings and emotion and desire and its own will. And when we place God's word in our hearts, the psalmist is saying that transformation begins to happen in us because what? Hebrews 4.12, the Bible judges the thoughts and the attitudes of our heart and when we put the word of God in our heart, we begin to be transformed from the inside out. The heart begins to redirect its thoughts that go into the mind and our actions and our habits and our future so we hide God's word in our heart in rebellion against the rebellious nature of our own heart. We hide God's word to transform us from the inside out. If this is not happening, it's all behavior management. Well, I know I shouldn't do that and I shouldn't do this but when God's word is in our heart,

it teaches us how to live, it directs the thoughts and the attitudes of our lives. One of the benefits of my life is that my parents taught me scripture from a young age. And I realized, I was writing this message and I realized it's intentionally filled with many verses that I memorized as a kid or as a teenager. Now listen, many of you know me, I am great at quoting select scriptures but I am terrible at telling you where the reference is. Anybody else? It's like, I can tell you what the verse says, it's somewhere maybe in this book of the Bible but I can't give you the 12.2 or the 2.14. But I was thinking about these verses and I thought, I'm so grateful that when I was a kid, my parents taught me scripture. That when I went to college and I was trying to wrestle the thoughts and the attitudes of my heart, I began writing out in notebooks, that I could memorize that would deal with certain attitudes in my heart, that would deal with certain thoughts that I was trying to overcome. I'm grateful that Psalm 139.23 is committed to memory in my heart. I'm thankful that Romans 12.2, do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,

is something that my parents committed in my heart. Psalm 119.105, your word is a lamp for my feet and a light for my path. Proverbs 3, five through six, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your path straight. That there's real power and that there's things that we're able to overcome in our lives when those words are on the tip of our tongue. And so my challenge to you today, and even throughout this life on purpose study that we're doing as a church, is take the memory verses out of the back and begin to memorize them. Hide God's word in your heart. Take some of these verses from the message today. I mean, if you're wrestling with a thought or something in your heart, Google what Bible verses deal with this issue and it will populate it for you. And pick three or five and begin to memorize them and they will interact with and counteract the intrusive thoughts in your heart that are leading to wayward thoughts in your mind. The word grows whenever we plant it, doesn't it? And it becomes useful. It's like the story that we heard about the missionary. It's like the word of God was planted

and little by little after time it bears a harvest. It grows up and it produces something in our lives. And eventually what happens is that God's word is amplified above other voices. So God's word has to be hidden in our heart, but then God's word has to begin to win. It has to begin to dominate other voices. When our hearts are centered on God's word, it becomes the dominant force in our mind. Here's how the Bible instructs us how the word of God overcomes other voices. It says, finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true. Let me read it backwards. Think about these things. Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable. If anything excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. This is actually a defining characteristic of Christianity because other world religions say just sit down and clear your mind and think about nothing. That's not what the Bible says. The Bible says dwell on the right things. Think about the goodness of God. I will recall all your marvelous works. I will think about what is lovely and true and pure and noble and right and excellent and praiseworthy. So the Bible doesn't say just clear out all of your thoughts and think about nothing.

Get in your big nothing box and you will find peace for your soul. No, the Bible says shift. Don't empty your mind, fill it with the right things. Don't just hope your bad thoughts away. Replace them with thoughts that are true. Replace them with the promises of God. I loved what Janaye spoke about a couple weeks ago. Was it last week? Who knows? About friendship with God. And I was thinking about that topic even as she was preaching it and I was thinking when you're a friend of God, you come into a service where people are singing worship and you begin to interact in that friendship. It's like I can stand over there and face the wall and have communion with Jesus because we're friends. It's not about what the person next to me is doing or what the worship team is singing. It's just like I know what it is to be in the presence of God. I know when Jesus is in the room. I know when he's talking to me and I can commune with him. I can do that in the middle of a supermarket with all these other people around. I'm the guy, like I told you, I like to go shopping sometimes, just put my AirPods in, be around people, but not necessarily talk and just shop my way along.

But I'm telling you, when a worship song is on in my AirPods and I can feel the presence of Jesus, I'm almost that guy. That's just like singing, thinking everybody can hear what he's hearing, and I realize it's just me. I came to a midweek a couple weeks ago, or maybe it was a staff chapel, I don't remember, but I was having these intrusive thoughts, the worries of life, the challenges, the weight of decisions that I need to make. And I was kinda, sometimes you can be with Jesus and you can just tell him everything you're thinking about. And that's okay, but I just felt this prompting in my heart of like, no, why don't you fight for new thoughts? And I got down on my knees in the back, and because. I've grown a friendship with God, I just begin to pour out my heart and lay these decisions out. And I didn't get all the answers, but what I did was what the Bible says, cast all your anxieties on him because he cares for you. And I got up out of that corner of this auditorium and not every decision was made, but the weight was off. And that's what God invites us into. Some of us are trying to figure it out or we're having these intrusive thoughts and it's really just a test of,

will you cast all those anxious things on him and then trust that he cares about you enough to take care of it? Will you replace them with the word of God? Sometimes for me, this comes through music, that the tell for me of what I'm walking through in my life always comes with a worship song that I play to counteract what I'm wrestling with. So if I'm lacking faith, I will play a song that builds faith in my heart. If I'm not sure if God loves me today, I will play a song and worship to a song that speaks about the love of God. This is the power of music to our souls. This is why worship is compelling. Because today, even if you walked in the room, just thinking about yourself and your problems, there's real power in lifting your hands and surrender and saying, all hail King Jesus. Let every knee, let every tongue confess that he is Lord. That shifts something in you, doesn't it? That changes what you're thinking about. This is not just positive thinking, this is the spirit of God in you, redirecting your life into the plan that he has for you. His word must be amplified above other voices. Let me give you one more thought about this scripture. It's that God's word must expose our toxic thinking. Consistent negative thoughts scientifically lead to increased stress, decreased quality of sleep,

and over time, a negative impact on our health and even our lifespan. Cynical, critical people don't live as long as people who set their minds on Christ. It's scientific fact. Second Corinthians 10, five tells us then what we ought to do. It says we should demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. What is that saying? That says set your heart and set your mind, and I'm telling you that when you do this, it is not kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya. It is a holy war that you wage in your mind. It is a holy war that you wage against unrighteous thoughts and unrighteous appetites. It is a resolve in your spirit to say, I will only think upon and dwell upon things that are pleasing to God. We pray it all the time in our family. God, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you. Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart, the thoughts of my heart, be pleasing to you. Why do we destroy these arguments and pretensions? It's a parallel to, I believe, the Old Testament scripture where the people would honor God,

but then after a while, they would set up these, what the Bible called high places, and they would worship false gods. And today, we don't really build high places to worship false gods, but what we do is we build up thoughts and we build up pretensions in our hearts and in our minds that oppose the gospel, that oppose the message of Jesus. There's some in some of your hearts and your minds right now because while I'm reading God's word and you believe that it's true, there's things in your life that you think, but I still just don't know if God could change that. That is a high place. And the people of God tore those places down. They did it physically, we tear them down in our hearts. And we say, no, every thought, every ideology, every argument that sets itself up against this gospel will be brought low in my heart and in my mind. It will be tore down in Jesus' name. Again, that's not just emptying your mind, that's choosing to think about things that are true and things that are right and things that are noble. Because as Isaiah 55, nine says, you don't know better than God. His ways are higher than yours. I really wanna close with this thought of, our thoughts are like this fire. And when God's word is a part of our lives, when we're disciplined in God's word

and we're disciplining our thoughts according to the truths of God's word, God's word function as the fireplace. Come on, you know that a fire in a fireplace? Thoughts that are brought into obedience to Jesus, that is a powerful thing. Because you not only believe the promises of God, but you begin to walk in the promises of God. You find victory in your life. But when God's word is absent, and the fire isn't contained to where it's meant to be, the house burns down. And I know, compassionately, that some of your houses are on fire. Because your thoughts haven't been disciplined, they haven't been brought into obedience to Jesus. The path that's running through your mind is a burning ball of flame, and I have been there. I've had weeks and months where I'm like, man, I gotta sit down, I gotta write out all these things, and I need to submit them to Jesus, because I've been carrying them on my own. I've been trying to manage it in my own mind. Come on, you know the difference, right? To sit in front of this, there is peace, there is stillness, there's beauty, there's warmth. And when you're in this, it's like, just get me out, run. Something bad is gonna happen. Bring every thought into obedience to Christ Jesus. What are the thoughts that have been invasive, intrusive?

And what are you doing with those thoughts? Because if you change what's in your heart, it will change what's in your mind, and that will change your life. Amen? Even if you don't believe it, say amen, because faith comes by hearing. If you change what's in your heart, it will change the way you're thinking, and that has the power to change your actions, your habits, and your future. It can change your life. A heart leads to our thoughts, leads to our actions, leads to our habits, and leads us to our future. I'm gonna give you one more thought as I close. There's a man, I've shared this story with you, many of you are familiar with it, but there is a man named Viktor Frankl. He wrote the book, Man's Search for Meaning. And Viktor was a man who was in a Nazi concentration camp, and he lost everything, he lost family, he lost his life's work in writing. And he had this moment of clarity in the midst of suffering in a concentration camp, where he realized that two different people can go through the same brutality, and one can come through and keep living, and others perish. And the difference was what you do with your thoughts. It was the people who, in the midst of suffering,

said, but I know there's still a plan, I know there's still a future, I know that someday I'm gonna get out of this, that survived. And it was the people who lost sight of that, who, by one means or another, many perished. Now, I know there's nuance to that because of the brutality that that people experienced, but he's saying those who could have lived through it, it came down to the thoughts that they allowed their minds to think. And for many of us here today, it's the same thing. And so what are the intrusive thoughts? And what will you do with them going out from here? And my hypothesis to you today is that if you will plant the word of God in memory, in your heart, it will begin to shape your mind and shape your future in a new way, amen? The most memorized verse of the Bible, one of the most memorized phrases in all of human history is John 3, 16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but will have everlasting life. And if you're here today, and Jesus is not your Lord and Savior, the Bible says that God gave his son so no one would perish. To take the house that's on fire, and through the power of his own sacrifice on the cross,

give you hope in a future, forgive your sins. I preach this whole message from the perspective of somebody who already knows Jesus, but none of this matters if your hope isn't in Christ, and if your life isn't surrendered to him. And so I'd like to close in prayer. We're gonna worship together in a moment. Both every head bowed and I'd closed across all of our campuses. If you're here today and your life is not surrendered to Jesus, then the Bible simply says, confess that he is Lord. Give him Lordship, tear down other high places in your heart, and confess that you believe Jesus. I believe you came and you died. And you rose again, forgiving my sin. Come on, there's some people in this room who know Jesus, but you're not allowing his sacrifice to be sufficient for where you've struggled. And today you need to pray that. And say, God, I believe that you are enough. And I believe that your plan of salvation is enough. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Come on, let's stand and let's worship him as we close together today.