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Good morning my “Walking with Jesus” friends,
This week we’re asking God’s help to understand FREEDOM which HE has designed the human race to enjoy. Today let’s focus on the FREEDOM of our MIND! While it is true God has made many animals with brains, none have the mind capacity of human beings. It’s amazing, isn’t it? Around the world schools have opened for the fall semester. The human ability to learn, even at a very young age, and then all the way to our very old age, is remarkable. Have you noticed many parents are teaching their toddlers to express themselves first with sign language, rather than only by speech! By the way, how many languages have you learned? And to combat the dreaded dementia or Alzheimer disease, many older folks engage in mind challenging activities often.
Are you amazed by the human ability to memorize and remember and problem solve and innovate? Or the ability to analyze or evaluate options, predict the possible outcomes of each option, and then make decisions which in some cases will affect many people or even nations. Today I invite you to consider with me what FREEDOM of the MIND means from God’s perspective, and how it is accomplished, and what we should do once it is achieved in our minds!
2 Corinthians 4:4 makes a bold statement: “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” Wow, what does that mean friends? Who is ‘the god of this age’ and how has this being ‘blinded the minds of unbelievers’?
Satan is ‘the god of this age’. He’s referred to as a ‘god’ for several reasons. First he is second in power only to Jesus! Secondly, he was invited by Adam and Eve to replace God’s influence in their lives, in the perfect garden of Eden, when they believed the talking serpent and distrusted what God had said! (Gen. 3) Third, in every generation since, human beings in all places have yielded to Satan’s temptations, and yielded their lives to his evil influence. So much that John writes: “The whole world is under the control of the devil.” (1 John 5:19)
Romans 8:5 says it this way: “Those who live according to their sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires…The mind of sinful man is death…the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.”
Galatians 5:17 says “The sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other.”
Ok, so God says we are all born with a human nature, we understand that, for it’s what distinguishes us from other living things. Since the days and actions of Adam and Eve, the inherited human nature for every person is evil, selfish, with a natural tendency to think, speak, choose and act in a way which is NOT holy, NOT God honoring, therefore sinful. Satan, is fully evil and thus he and his demonic forces work diligently to lead humans in developing their sinful nature to be more and more wicked. Sometimes things get so bad God simply has to intervene. Do you remember that was why God sent the great global flood of Genesis 6, and why God sent fire from heaven to consume the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in Gen. 19. It is why God instructed His Hebrew people to destroy the wicked, idolatrous people who lived in the land which had been promised by God to Abraham and his descendants. (Joshua 7-22)
So according to 2 Corinthians 4:4 Satan works in the life of every human being, from the time we are infants, to ‘blind the minds of unbelievers’. It means Satan nurtures our natural doubt and skepticism of God and God’s spiritual realities. Satan confuses our minds so we struggle understanding spiritual truth. In fact if you read this section of Scripture beginning in 2 Cor. 3:13 Paul is using the example of Moses’ radiant face after his 40 days with God up Sinai, as recorded in Exodus 34, to help us understand how this blinding effect of Satan, on our natural human minds, is like a veil, preventing the glory of God to be seen or the truths of God to be understood! Do you know anyone who has heard the Gospel of Jesus, perhaps has read the Bible themselves, but they simply cannot comprehend its meaning, and in fact it seems like foolishness to them? That is the practical evidence of the mind-blinding work of Satan and his demons, according to 2 Cor. 4:4 .
Do you remember Jesus very often used the phrase “I tell you the truth…” when speaking God’s truths to people. He was challenging them to wrestle with why they naturally disbelieved God’s truth. Remember Jesus said “If you hold to My teachings, you will know the truth and the truth will set you FREE…So if the Son (of God) sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:31,32,36) Remember I said Satan is second ONLY to Jesus in power? That’s because Jesus created Satan and ALL the angels according to Colossians 1:16 “For by HIM (Jesus) all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by Him and for Him…” Most Bible scholars understand the words translated “thrones, powers, rulers and authorities” to be ranks of angelic beings.
Therefore, when Jesus opens a person’s mind to understand spiritual truth, and enables a person to fully trust their life to God in salvation, Jesus is breaking the blinding hold Satan has on their mind and the Holy Spirit of God is enabling that person to understand spiritual truth accurately. Jesus is setting that person FREE from the bondage of Satan’s mind-blinding work!
If you add 1 Corinthians 2:6-16 you’ll see even more about this Mind Freeing work of God. “…no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may UNDERSTAND what God has freely given us. That is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The person without the Spirit of God does not accept the things which come from the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned. …But we have the mind of Christ.”
May I urge you today my friends to carefully read Romans 8:5-9 and then add Romans 12:2…“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your MIND. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – HIS good, pleasing and perfect will.” Do you see all these Scriptures combine to give us a clear picture:
* Our sinful nature minds are naturally and strategically blinded by Satan, preventing our ability to understand God or God’s spiritual truths.
* Only Jesus has the power to break Satan’s mind-blinding stronghold, and through the work of His Holy Spirit, open our minds with the ability to understand God’s truths, and believe God’s truths.
Here’s one more final, important truth for today. Jesus promised that “…when He, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth comes, He will guide you into all truth.” John 16:13
So once Jesus has broken the hold of Satan’s blinding work on our minds, and the Holy Spirit has enabled our understanding of God’s truth, then the Holy Spirit will teach us and lead us to actually begin living each day, not according to our old sinful nature but according to the God honoring Holy Spirit alive and active in our lives!
So my friends…an important question. Is this your experience? Have you invited Jesus to break the mind-blinding work of Satan and have you invited the Holy Spirit to enable you to understand spiritual truth and do you hunger to learn more and more of God’s truths? These are some evidences of the authentic work of God in a person’s life!
Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
Click to read today’s chapter: 2 Corinthians 3:13-18; 2 Corinthians 4:1-4; Romans 8:5-9; Romans 12:2. (At the top you can choose a different translation.)
Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.
Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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