“A Renewed Mind” Conclusion
Broadcast #1612
August 27, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1612 -- taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Phil: Folks, there’s nothing that would hinder. Whatever God’s purpose is for us as individuals, as a church, is not that we seek anything other than, God show us what to do. But we can’t ever succumb to the thinking, well, I can’t because I’m weak, I’m nobody. I don’t have this, I don’t have that. I haven’t been to school.
There’s only one thing. Are we His? Are we willing to be His? Are we willing to take what He says and give it to Him? Give what is that in our hand.
Remember Brother Thomas preached a message, a few of you maybe have been around long enough to remember it. It was, a God-given vision and using what you have. It was that principle of just simply God’s... Here’s something that God wants to do and it comes down to this. What is in your hand?
Well, just give it to me and let’s see what I’m gonna do with it. And God took that and he stood before the Red Sea and stretched out that stick. Now, how am I...? You think from a human standpoint, how am I gonna get this accomplished? How are we gonna get all these, the 3 million people across a body of water with an army behind us?
Folks, we don’t need earthly resources. I don’t know how many religious groups out there that basically operate by the principles of earthly corporations. They got marketing departments, they got five-year plans, they got, you know, the earthly organization, earthly ability. You gotta go to school and you gotta get this and you gotta get that. Folks, we need the Lord and He’s all we need and He’s enough.
And again, this applies to every single person that He calls within the sphere of your life. God’s not limited by our earthly limitations. And those are the things that govern us so much. And so, you see the Lord doing all these mighty things through Saul or through Moses. Sorry about that! And many other....
Well, one of the times you remember they were marching out in the wilderness and the Amalekites saw an opportunity. They were basically a criminal tribe. Most of them were, I guess. And they would raid one another and kill ‘em and take their stuff. And that was kinda the way life was in those days. And so, now, they’re suddenly at war.
Well, how did they fight that war? Yes, there were people who took up swords, but what was the key that they needed for the Lord to do what He was gonna do? What was the key to that victory? Moses sat on a hill with that staff that he had given to the Lord back in the wilderness. And he lifted it up. And every time he lifted it up, the Israelites were prevailing in the battle. And, of course, you remember how his arm got tired. And so, he wound up having to have Aaron and Hur help him hold up his staff.
But here’s a... Whatever God gives you, there is a victory that can be won over every devil on this planet if we will just give our God what we have and let Him work. And we sang songs about that this morning. We don’t have to be intimidated by this world and the way we see things going.
We have a God who resides in us, but He wants us to be His people, to think the way He wants to train us to think, and then just to use what we have to do what He calls us to do in this time and this place, and His kingdom will be built, His purpose will be accomplished. The world may not see it as any great thing, but I’ll tell you, it will matter in eternity.
But you see pictures of this throughout the scriptures. I thought of other scriptures where you remember Elijah was used to call for a famine in the land. And the Lord fed him miraculously by some ravens who brought him food every day. And then, the brook dried up where he was sitting. He said, I’ve called a woman from the nation of Sidon, which was a heathen nation, not too terribly far away. But He said, Go there. I’ve directed her to feed you.
Well, he goes there and he finds this widow out... I think this was the story where she was out picking up sticks. And he asks, “Would you give me a little bit of water and a little bit of bread?” And she says, “I am gathering sticks. All I have is enough for a one cake of, a little bit of flour, a little bit of oil. My son and I are going to bake that, eat it, and then were gonna die.”
Well, now, that was heavenly thinking, wasn’t it? But you know how often we look at natural resources, natural conditions, and that governs our thinking more than we realize. But somehow, the Lord gave her faith and gave him the word to tell her, says, Go, do what you’re doing, but make me a cake first, because this is what the God of Israel says. ‘The flour’s not gonna fail. The oil will not fail until God sends rain.’”
And instead of listening to earthly thinking, in effect, she gave that to God. She gave her limited resources that were just about... I mean she was, I’m gonna die. There’s nothing to look forward to. But she gave what she had to the Lord, did what the prophet said, and exactly what the Lord said took place.
Do you think we’re limited to these earthly things that we think are limitations in our lives? Or can He bring us to a place where we can discern His will and His mind? Move in faith with what we have, who we are?
Did God make a mistake when He made you? We often think so. We think like that, don’t we? Who am I? I can’t do anything. I’m nothing. I don’t have anything. God couldn’t use somebody like me. Yes, He can if we will let Him change us. And we will be willing to just trust in Him to do the changes that are necessary in us and we’ll come to the place where we are so getting more and more in tune with Him we can discern things He wants us to do.
And I’m talking about great things. I’m talking about little things, people we interact with, words to say, somebody to call, somebody to encourage. It can get down to things like that, just things to do that never get any public attention and yet they matter.
I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ve had thoughts come to me many times. The Lord talks about the fact that we’re gonna do the things that He did. We see in the early church the miraculous was just commonplace. Was that just for another age? Now, I know that God doesn’t want a people to suddenly glory in signs and wonders and just have all this miraculous power and oh, more....
It should be just like breathing. God gives gifts of healing, doesn’t He? There are all kinds of gifts that He... Discerning spirits. Do we need that? Do we need somebody who can know what kind of a spirit is behind something that is said and done? Yeah, we need those gifts. Can’t we ask God to fulfill His promise to make those gifts manifest, but to teach us what to do with them and how to handle ‘em in a way that we don’t get carried away with earthly thinking? And see where we need a renewed mind?
Wouldn’t it be neat if you could just have a situation where someone has a need and there’s somebody who has a faith to pray for that and it could just be healed? I mean, I hear about things like that from time to time in our midst. God wants to do those kinds of things. He’s real and He doesn’t just need the special ones to do that. He could do that through you if that’s what His plan is.
On the other hand, we don’t have to compare ourselves with one another. That’s heavenly thinking, isn’t it? No, God didn’t make you like somebody else. He made you you, and He loves you and He designed you to be you, and that’s okay. But what He’s looking for is a transformed you and me, so that He can do exactly what He wants to do in your life and in mine. Praise God! Praise God!
There’s so much, so many examples of this. Of course, you know how David went into the battle. And we see the kinds of things that had happened. I’m in the wrong, I’m looking for a scripture here while I’m trying to talk and... I can’t think and talk at the sa... Whatever it is! All right, well get there.
But anyway, David, what did he have to use to go into a battle? Saul said, If you’re gonna go into this battle, you need some armor. Where does that thinking come from? That’s the world, isn’t it? But David knew that he had something that he had already experienced God’s favor in that he was familiar with.
But he also understood something that we needed to understand: And that’s, the battle is the Lords. Whatever things God puts before us that are His plan and will, He already knows about it. And it’s not your battle, ultimately it’s His. So, all we have to do is use what we have, trust in Him, and then step forward in faith.
David didn’t say, all right, God, there’s the giant Gideon [Goliath!], it’s your battle. David took what he had, used what he had, didn’t he? But he started out in faith. And boy, I tell you, God, God took over.
Look what Gideon went into the battle with. I realize they probably had swords strapped on, but that they didn’t go in with swords drawn. They went in like exactly God told them to do. They had clay pots with torches in them and a plan that made no sense at all from a military standpoint. But they obeyed what God did, what God said, and God got the victory, because it was His battle ultimately not theirs.
We’ve heard these principles many times, but how many of us just hear them and say, yeah, yeah. And don’t really ever relate it to us. Do you not think that you matter, that you are part of this, that God has an eternal reason why you are here? There are things that He wants to do in your mind and in your life that matter in eternity.
The answer is, yes! Does this apply to you? Does it apply to me? Yes, it does. God wants us to grow and wants us to learn. There are plenty of other examples in scripture of the Lord just using what people had.
You had Elisha, came along after Elijah, and you had this wife of one of the prophets. There were these companies of prophets that worked with him. And the wife of one of them was in a bad place. They had a debtor that was about to get ‘em and the husband had died. I guess that was the point. And now, the creditor is coming to take my two boys as slaves.
And Elisha’s answer was, Tell me, what do you have in your house? You see the theme there? What do you have? She didn’t have to go and come up with great resources. It just let’s just take what you have and do what God says with it and God will take care of the problem.
And so, he says, All right. She has a little bit of oil. Go out and borrow every vessel, every pot, everything that you can get ahold of from all of your neighbors and bring them in and then start pouring the oil. And the oil just kept pouring and kept pouring and kept pouring.
Do you see how God can take something that we have that we don’t think anything of or we didn’t think is good enough or enough? God can take it and multiply it and cause it to meet the need. It’s not a complicated thing. We’re the ones who complicate it.
And so, remember how it happened at the end of it. She ran out of vessels finally. And so, the oil stopped. Sell what you have, live off the rest. Everything’s good. And over and over, you see examples like that.
There was a time when a bunch of the prophets were getting together and one of them had a little bit of food. And Elisha says, Set it before them. Said, This isn’t enough. How am I gonna do that? How can I feed all these people with this little bit? And you see a perfect example of the same thing we saw in Jesus later on. He says, Go ahead and serve it and you’ll have some left over. And that’s exactly what happened. They fed everybody. They had a whole bunch left over. And you see the same principle in Jesus.
But all how slow we are to learn. You remember how in Jesus’ ministry, He fed the 5,000. That was the famous one. And there they were, give them something to eat. We don’t have anything. Says, What do you have? Well, this boy has, was it five loaves and two fish? But what are they? But what are they among so many?
What kind of thinking is that? Do we need to learn how to see that God is not limited by earthly limitations? There’s one thing that governs everything. What is Your will? What is Your plan? And Jesus said, Set it before them. Divide ‘em up in group of 50s, I believe in that instance. Set it before ‘em. And they fed everybody. And they had what? 12 baskets left over?
And later on, they come into a similar situation. I think there were 4,000 on that occasion. And Jesus wants to send them away, or not Jesus, but the disciples, send them away, so they can buy food. And He says, You give them to eat. How can we do that? They’d just been through, I mean, just... I don’t know what the timeframe was, but they had watched Jesus multiply the loaves and the fishes and here they are in the same situation, And we can’t do it.
God deliver us from earthly thinking, bring us to a place where we can discern, we can think enough like Him that we can begin to discern His will and His mind. And then, He can give us maybe little things in our own mind. Not prideful things, but little things that matter. And He can take what we have with all of our seeming limitations and do something that is eternal with it. You see the principle over and over again. God pictures it in natural ways in scripture.
But my prayer is that all of us will get the principles involved in this, starting with me. God help us to stop looking at our limitations. Who are we? We don’t matter. I can’t do this. I don’t have that. I’m not smart. I’m not like them. I’m not... Or you go to the other extreme. Look at me. I have an opportunity to do something important. God deliver us from everything except coming to a simple place of doing what He says, trusting Him to do it, using what we have.
And we have a God who’s gonna fight battles that we have no idea. There is no limit, there’s nothing He can’t do. Look at the things He did over and over in scripture. Do you think those days are gone? Do you think that God is still alive with us today here now at the end of the age? We’re gonna have all kinds of things rise up against us. We’re gonna have battles that need to be fought. But boy, I’ll tell you, we got an army. We got an army behind us.
One of the other things I... One of the other stories I remembered was the occasion of Elisha. And I think it was one of the, whoever the foreign king was, the Aramaic army was coming trying to come after the King of Israel. And Elijah kept saying, Don’t go there, because that’s where they’re at.
And so, the Arameans says, All right, who’s the traitor? Who’s giving him information? Said, Nobody is. Elisha’s telling, the prophet is telling the king of Israel what you are saying in your secret chamber. And so, All right, let’s go get him. So, they find out where he is at and they surround the town with the armies.
They wake up in the morning and Elisha’s servant, how does he react? Heavenly thinking? Renewed mind? No. Oh my god, what are we gonna do? Look. They said, Lord, open his eyes. What did he see? Chariots, horses, and chariots of fire. The armies of Israel. There’s more with us than with them.
Folks, that’s true now. There’s a world we don’t see. There’s a world we don’t see that’s real. It may be true that we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and all of that. But that’s not the only army on the field.
When God sent Israel against Jericho, you remember? How he revealed himself to Joshua? And all of a sudden, Joshua sees this figure, knows that there’s something special or supernatural about him and said, Are you for them or for us? Neither. Wait, what? I’m here as commander of the Lords host. I didn’t come to help you, but you have a part in what I’m doing.
And so, as they obeyed God, God took care of the wall, didn’t He? That great wall that they were trusting in, that was no barrier to God. All they had to do was simply do what God says and trust Him, use what they had: their trumpets. And God sent the heavenly host.
Do you believe that host is with us today? Do we have to see that to know that He’s real? The thing is, we have got way too much earthly thinking. And God is seeking to produce if were willing, if we’ll present ourselves and understand what’s going on. He wants to give us a renewed mind.
And the more we have a renewed mind, the more were gonna be able to know what His will is. And then, as we know that, we can step into what our place is, not seeking something pridefully, not trying to make a show, not with anything of this human reaction this human motivation, but just saying, Lord, I’m yours. Youve given me the privilege of being alive right now in this place. You’ve designed it for me. You designed me for the place and the place for me. You’ve given me exactly what I need. All I have to do is give it back to You and do Your will and Youre gonna accomplish that, which is eternal.
Not complicated, is it? Not easy. Everything in us naturally, everything in this world, fights against such a simple thing. But that’s what God is looking for right now. And if we as a company of people do that to the degree we do it, we’re gonna see more and more of what He describes.
Well, back over in Romans 12. We’re gonna see Him. Give us the power to serve one another and to love one another, to love our enemies as He goes on and talks about. All those things that simply cannot come from earthly thinking, earthly ability, they’re gonna come, because He’s put a new life within us. And we’re gonna learn how to live out that life.
Anybody here got some growing to do in this area? But can we not ask God to fulfill this in our assembly, but also in us as individuals. I’ll just say, oh, do it, Lord. There’s somebody over there You can use and I’ll just go along for the ride. No, God’s got a place for you. God, you have come... you, individually, have come to the kingdom for such a time as this.
That’s not a cause for pride, that’s a cause for, Lord, show me your will. Bring me into a knowledge of it. Change my thinking, change everything. Whatever has to change in me, Lord, change it. I’m willing. I need You and I want You and I’m trusting in You.
And tell you, Gods gonna fulfill His purpose. Didn’t He tell us to pray, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,” where? “On earth as it is in heaven”? That’s why we’re here. Because God’s got things that He’s doing here to prepare us for there.
And we’re not here just to mark time and muddle through our lives. We’re here to learn from Him and to do His will. And we’re gonna see Him do things that others would regard as, wow, that’s amazing. No, that’s just normal Christian life. That’s just, God can do anything.
So, He just performed a great miracle. Well, praise God! Lets go on. We don’t have to stop and glory in it and make a big deal. We can praise God and all of that, but we don’t have to bring human thinking into all of this. May God deliver us from that. He is, but are we willing?
Let’s seek God and trust Him to do what He’s planned, what He’s promised to do. He is an awesome God and we have an awesome Savior. To Him be the glory. It’s His kingdom and it’s reigning. He is bringing this to a conclusion. But we are born for this time and this place and you matter. And He cares about you and He wants to use you and me. Praise God!
