Harness Your Mind: Never Fight Your Battles Half-Heartedly

Sermon outline

Spiritual warfare is won with wholehearted focus: choose friends who build you up, keep away from those who cause division, fight with one mind, and harness your thoughts with the Word so you arrive where God intends.

1. Friends who celebrate your victories

   Not everybody will celebrate your victories: some smile outwardly but inwardly find fault with your new car or house, because they don't like your prosperity. The church teaches biblically how to prosper, but it takes patience: he had to wait, and God is not a man that He should lie. Small beginnings are fine, the church's duty is to preach the gospel to the poor, and wherever you are, you are changing, because God is for you.

   “The worth of any friendship can be measured by its contribution to your victories.”

   • Numbers 23:19
   • Jeremiah 1:12
   • Job 8:7
   • Luke 4:18
   • Romans 8:31

2. Mark those who cause division, and avoid them

   Romans 16:17-18 says to mark those who cause divisions and offences contrary to the teaching you have learned, and avoid them. He does not compare the church with others: God calls different ministries to major on different themes, and neither is right or wrong. But there is a doctrine in the house, and those who attack it and cause division are serving their own appetites, often driven by pride or a wish to be in charge, which comes from insecurity. Secure people are not threatened by others but celebrate them.

   Illustration: Avoiding them, he says, means not running to hug them in the car park just to be nice. He himself is not threatened by others' gifts: he will not learn to sing or play guitar, drums or keyboard at his age, but celebrates the gifts God has brought to the church.

   “Insecure people want to dominate you so that it makes them feel good. But secure people celebrate you.”

   • Romans 16:17-18

3. Point 23: Never fight half-heartedly

   A divided country fails, a divided home deteriorates and a divided mind becomes powerless. The prayer of agreement can also mean agreement within yourself, because a double-minded person receives nothing from the Lord. Your battle deserves full attention, so beware of people, even well-meaning ones, who distract you from your assignment, and guard your own heart. Satan is dead serious about destroying you, so become serious about winning: keep your eyes on Jesus, not the storm, remember the rock you were hewn from, and as people of faith submit to God and resist the devil.

   “A divided mind becomes powerless.”

   • Matthew 18:19
   • James 1:7-8
   • James 1:21
   • Proverbs 4:23
   • Matthew 14:30
   • Isaiah 51:1
   • James 4:7

4. Become dead serious about winning

   Years before, living paycheck to paycheck, he was talking with a Christian across his desk when something rose up in him, led by the Holy Spirit; he hit the table and declared he would never be poor again. Nothing changed the next day, but that was the turning point. The kingdom of God has a King, a government and a taxation system, the tithe brought to the storehouse, which blesses the other nine-tenths; these basics are the foundation.

   “It's high time you become serious about winning.”

   • John 17:16
   • Malachi 3:10

5. Point 24: Harness your mind

   Don't let people tell you that prayer, tithing and giving don't work; he has sown his way out of a hole. Get the basics right so you avoid the school of hard knocks, make up your mind that you will overcome, and make your mind your servant, focused rather than running in 14 directions. Fill your mental warehouse with the Word, meditate on specific scriptures, and think on whatever is true, honest, just, pure and lovely.

   Illustration: He recalls Pastor Wesley preaching about the blinkers on a racehorse, which keep its eyes fixed straight ahead.

   “What happens in your mind is likely to happen in your future.”

   • Proverbs 4:25
   • Philippians 4:8

6. A few degrees off course

   Storms and winds blow an aeroplane off course, and a few degrees over hours of flying lands it in another country. In the same way, thinking a few degrees off lands us somewhere God never intended, so we must adjust our minds and set our course for 'a place called there', a land of prosperity, abundance and blessing.

   Illustration: A church member told him the night before that, at the last minute, she had been put on a team of regional managers flying overseas with the company's CEOs, something never done before; they agreed it was the favour of God.

   “We are off course in our thinking, by just a few degrees, we land somewhere else than God intends us to land.”

   • Luke 1:37

7. God can turn anyone around

   Don't be critical and judgemental of people who make mistakes, because they can repent and God can lift them up. Paul persecuted the church until Jesus met him; he was blinded, prayed for, and became one of the greatest apostles, though even the other apostles doubted him at first.

   “If God could turn Paul around, he can turn anyone around.”

   • Acts 9:1-27