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The transformational power of the Spirit

March 2, 2017 By John Yeats

As followers of the Lord Jesus, there is something we must believe. It is part of the package that became a reality the moment we surrendered our lives to Christ. Here it is: “The Holy Spirit that caused Jesus to rise from the grave is the same Holy Spirit that lives within every follower of the Lord Jesus and is transforming us by the renewing of our minds.”

Because of the Holy Spirit within us, none of us can afford to harbor things in the mind that are not compatible with what God thinks, and especially what He thinks about who we are. Remember, He has thoughts about you. If you are His, you cannot afford to ruminate on the condemnation that was yours before you met Christ. You were a sinner. You were justifiably condemned, but you were bought with a price. You were born again—transformed into something brand new with a mind that is being renewed.

Jesus died for your mind. But the mind must be renewed to embrace the divine perspective. We need renewed minds to understand who we are in Christ. I am a child of the king, I am bought with a price, I am adopted in His forever family. I am forgiven and cleansed by the power of the blood of Jesus. My behavior may not have caught up with all that I am in Christ, but that doesn’t change the truth. I am His and He is mine.

We must rise to what is written about us: “As a man thinks, so is he” (Prov. 23:7). We must think about what the Holy Spirit thinks. How about allowing that to rumble around in your mind—your renewed mind? (Rom. 12:1-2).

That’s why we must have revival in the church. A culture of revival where our minds are so sensitive, so tender to the Holy Spirit that every personal agenda we have is but dung so that we might attain Christ’s mindset.

A culture of revival must start with God’s people. In Acts 4, Peter and John said to a lame man in front of all the religious sophisticates of their day, “Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have I give unto you, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.”

There are plenty of beggars in our culture, spiritual cripples, begging, pleading that someone would boldly, courageously, authentically testify of Jesus of Nazareth.

The kingdom of God is about building a transformed community of people with renewed minds who think with His perspective. And don’t you think His perspective visualizes the lost family in the mobile home park? Don’t you think His perspective yearns for that single mom in the projects to discover His redemptive love? Don’t you think our God sees the man in the 10,000 square-foot house who has lost his marriage?

Don’t you think His heart’s desire is for His children to rise up from the wastelands of condemnation caused by religiosity and march to the high ground of possessing the significance and security that He gives by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ?

I heard SBC President Steve Gaines say this week that if you love someone, you talk with them, and if you love someone, you talk about them. When our minds are renewed, our love is for the Lord Jesus, our passion is Jesus, our conversation is about Jesus.

That’s why the Lord is after your mind. Your mind is like the piece of fine furniture that the Master craftsman wants to shape. When you meet God at that desperate time where you have no other place to turn and you exchange your life for His, His word, His perspective, His love permeates your thought processes.

The most desperate need is for men, women and students with renewed minds and filled with the Holy Spirit to go into the workplace, the school house, the state house, the crisis pregnancy center, the apartment complex, the feed store, the hospital. To go there with something silver and gold can never buy, but such as we have, we give in the name of Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus is more interested in changing this culture than in getting people in the seats of our church houses. If we think that our mission for the kingdom of God is to get more people to come to our churches, our thinking has corrupted and such thinking must die. Our mission is seeking lost people and making disciples, Great Commission disciples that reproduce more Great Commission disciples. If we are on His mission, there won’t be enough buildings to hold all of those seeking the living God.  

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