“ Loving God with All Your Mind"

The Greatest Commandment: " Loving God with All Your Mind"

Mark 12:28-30

Some of us are just never satisfied. Frank and Mabel had been married for 40 years. Frank turned 60 a few months earlier, and they now were celebrating Mabel's 60th birthday. During the birthday party, Frank walked into another room and was surprised to see a fairy godmother appear before him. She said, "Frank, this is your lucky day. I'm here to grant you one wish—what would you like?" He thought for a moment and said, "Well, I would really like to have a wife who is 30 years younger than me." The fairy godmother said, "No problem." She waved her wand, and "poof"—suddenly Frank was 90 years old. I imagine old Frank was a little bent out of shape by the way that turned out! I have a friend whose favorite expression was "bent out of shape." When he was upset about something he always said he was "bent out of shape" about it, and I recall he stayed "bent out of shape" much of the time.

I. Attitude: The Power of our Thoughts. Mark 12:30 Going back to our Scripture in the Great Commandment we find that we don't have any reason to be bent out of shape. We've been looking at what it means to love God with all our heart, with all our soul, today we're looking at loving God with all our mind. They say that a mind is a terrible thing to waste, and in the mind God has given us a wonderful gift. The word that is used here in the original language Jesus uses the word dianoias.
This noun, dianoias, means thought, thinking. What I found interesting is that this word is similar to another word which looks kind of like it, the for power, dynamis- and it is associated with basically the same idea. What ever word Jesus used, there is no denying that there is power in our thoughts. The thoughts we have basically control our decisions, our rational ability to make choices and to respond to things around us. What's more is we have the ability to control our thoughts- what we allow ourselves to think and more importantly, our attitudes about the things and the people we think about. I want to narrow this down here this morning because I know we don't have a lot of time here today.

The English poet and cleric Thomas Traherne (1637-1674) once wrote: "As nothing is more easy than to think, so nothing is more difficult than to think well." I want us to think about thoughts today, not just any kind of thoughts but the kind of thoughts that motivate us and glorify God. What's more these thoughts are the thoughts that motivate us to fulfill the will of God within us. These thoughts are called our attitudes. They empower us to do and to accomplish what we want to do. More specifically how do we love God with our attitude?

We certainly don't love God by being bent out of shape. You know its amazing I know people who have the intellectual ability that would enable him or her to get into Harvard or Yale or even Oxford if they wanted to be. They have the ability to recall facts and knowledge that would just make you sick. When I was in high school I knew some of these people - they were bright, super-intelligent, studious, smart. They were always the first one to raise their hand when the teacher asked a question, they were always the one making 100% on a test, they were always the ones making straight A's in chemistry and in calculus. When I was in high school we didn't have calculators- we used slide rules. And while we were trying to figure out how to get our slide rules out of the case, these guys didn't need one- they had it all in their heads, and they would make you feel inferior sometimes. We called them nerds.

But you know what? Intellectual ability alone won't help you to succeed and it won't always help you love God. I've known people who were voted most likely to succeed and most studious and you know what? You can't find them today- nobody knows what happened to them. The tragedy is I've known so many so gifted with smarts like you wouldn't believe make a wreck of their lives because they convinced themselves that they will never amount to much or worse yet, were afraid of where those thought would And yet I've known those who had somewhat marginal intellectual or even average ability give what little they had to God and God used them in a tremendous way. That's the power of the attitude. It's the power of not only what we allow ourselves to think about, but also what drive us- what motivates us. On the other hand, those with somewhat limited intellectual ability have been propelled to into greatness because of what, and especially who they allowed themselves to think about, because ultimately

II. We Are What We Chose to Think About. (Prov 23:7) When you think about the mind you have a terribly complex organ in our craniums that commands every aspect of our physical being. Did you know, for example, that the average brain weighs about three pounds – It contains 12 billion cells. Each one of these cells is connected to 10,000 other brain cells, totaling 120 trillion brain connections. Dr. Duane Gish has observed that "the human brain is the most complex arrangement of matter in the universe."Some have compared the brain to a sophisticated computer, but technology still has a long way to go before it can duplicate the brain's capabilities. The brain is not only the most complex mechanism in the world; it is the most influential organ in your body. It accounts for your ability to think, remember, love, hate, feel, reason, imagine and analyze. Everything we see, hear, touch and smell is recorded on the lobes of the brain. Your brain elevates you high above the animal kingdom – It literally sustains your life. It also houses your intuition, your conscience and your sexuality. It both houses and actually constitutes the mind.

    Proverbs 23:7 summarizes so well the over-arching significance of the mind as far as God is concerned in this poetic declaration:- For as he thinks within himself, so he is. – Proverbs 23:7a (NASB) We may rightly conclude that the human mind is the single most important entity in Creation – for as it goes, so goes the person and the society in which he/she lives. Who and what we will be then must have its origin and sustenance in the mind. What we sanction or suppress mentally determines whether we take the high road less traveled or the low road which is far more popular.

We could look at the mind in all kinds of different ways. We could look at intelligence and giving God all of our intellect- as if He really needed that. He's got more intelligence than we ever thought about having. I mean the smartest guy in the world doesn't even come close to God's intellect- not even close. He's not even on the same planet, the same roadmap. God doesn't need our intelligence- I mean we need to give our intelligence to Him but it's not like He needs it. In our mind we could talk about not just intelligence but rational abilities, decision making, our resourcefulness and we know all this comes from God anyway so why does He need that? No what I believe Jesus is talking about here is not just the brain processes and the things which we can think up, the very reason we do or do not chose to think at all and this is our attitude, friends.

Its all about attitude. God can give me all the intelligence in the world but if I don't have a loving attitude, a good attitude, one that uses that thought to the glory of God its not going to mean a thing- not if I'm bent out of shape all the time. Here is a smattering of wry observations on life and work: Attitude = The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese. Borrow money from a pessimist. They don't expect it back. If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried. Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it. The sooner you fall behind the more time you will have to catch up. If at first you don't succeed, then sky diving isn't for you.

III. We Can Choose the Attitudes that will express our love to God. (Romans 12:2) Many people think that attitudes and moods are things that are thrust upon us, that we are passive and therefore must respond to them. Attitudes come about by our choice. Don't speak of being in a bad mood because of what has happened to you that day, as though you couldn't help it. You can. Its what we choose to think about that motivates us and gives us a thought life that glorifies God, and therefore exemplifies a mind that loves Him. That's what Paul tell us in Romans 12:2 And be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind- that you may know what is that good, acceptable, perfect will of God."

Christ spoke to hundreds of people, just like the ones He spoke to in our text today, whose minds were blinded by lies of their own making, what they chose to think about so that they refused to see what He wanted them to see. Its not that they were stupid, they were blind. Paul did as well. That's because their minds were not transformed, they were not renewed by the Power of the Holy Spirit. Its only the Holy Spirit that can renew your thought life from thinking about wickedness and turn it into godliness. The Holy Spirit can renew our thought life and bring it into subjection to Christ. I had someone say to me on more than one occasion, "I can't stop looking at pornography on the internet." I said yes you can- You look at it because you want to. Nobody's holding a gun to your head and making you look at it. The same way with cursing. Cursing and vulgarity are nothing but the expression of impure thoughts placed in your mind by Satan. They are Satan's words, and every time you emit them, you invoke not the power of Christ, but the power of the devil, did you know that? I know people who say, "I can't stop!" Yes you can, because you can choose what you say and what you look at and what you think about because Scripture tells us in 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, ⁵ casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, Bringing every thought captive. That carries with it the idea of a policeman arresting somebody. With the power of the Holy Spirit when you go in there armed to the teeth and arrest that evil thought, that impure lust, that silly musing, that clever rambling and hogtie it with handcuffs and throw it back into the pit of hell where it came from! If you don't, sooner or later that thought will pervade your subconscious and work its way out into our attitudes and eventually into our actions. That's why Jesus equated sin not just what we did, but also what was in our thoughts. Matthew 5:28

"Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is lovely; whatever is admirable -- if anything is excellent or praiseworthy -- think about such things...And the God of peace will be with you" (Philippians 4:8-9). What do you have in your mind that keeps you from loving God?