Video Transcript: Set Your Mind on the Spirit

Now let's stand together and say Psalm 1.  If you know it, don't look at the screen.  If you don't know it, you can read it along with this lesson.  “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.  But his delight is in the law of the Lord.  And on his law, he meditates day and night.  He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, and whose leaf does not wither.  Whatever he does prospers.  Not so the wicked!  They are like chaff that the wind blows away.  Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous, for the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.”

Set your mind on the Spirit.  On Pentecost, we celebrate something that happened, that people didn't make happen in and of themselves, but that God made happen.  And He sent his Spirit in power, He sent His Spirit to live in us, and to make us strong, and to focus our minds on him.  But it can be dangerous to think about Pentecost in the wrong way, as just something that you're kind of there and then the Spirit just sweeps in with wind, and fire, and the rest just kind of happens.  

Now, there is a tremendous truth in that view of things that the Spirit is the life and power of it all.  But it would be a mistake to think that the Spirit’s work is just an automatic thing because the Spirit is not just wind, the Spirit is not just fire, the Spirit is not just power.  The Spirit is a person, the third person of the Holy Trinity, who unites us to God the Father, and God the Son, and because the Spirit is a person, nothing is automatic with persons that you just kind of have ‘it’.  He lives in you, and He interacts with you if you're a Christian at all.  If you're not a Christian, you don't have the Spirit of God, but if you are a Christian, the Spirit of God lives in you and you can grieve the Holy Spirit, you can stifle the Holy Spirit, you can focus on other things than the Spirit within you.  And the Bible warns and speaks of such things.  And it also talks of course, about setting our minds on the Spirit.  And so today I want to think about what it means and how to go about setting our minds on the Spirit.  

Now Jesus compared the Spirit to water.  Psalm 1 speaks of being a tree planted by streams of water and that flourishes as the roots drink in the life of that water.  Jesus said to a woman at a well, “If you'd asked me, I'd give you living water, whoever drinks of the water that I give them, will never be thirsty again.  The water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”  Jesus said a little bit later, “Whoever believes in me,” as the Scripture has said, “out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”

Now this he said about the Spirit.  And so when you read Psalm 1, or when you read many of the other Old Testament passages about the life giving power of water, and comparing God to a river, Psalm 46, for example, “there is a river who streams make glad the city of God.”  That kind of language of a river, or “with joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation” in the book of Isaiah.  When it's speaking of a river or of a well, very often that's a reference to the life giving power of God's Holy Spirit.  Or Ezekiel, I believe it's chapter 47, where the water in that river just keeps getting deeper and deeper and deeper and giving life to all around it the farther it goes.

Once again, an Old Testament picture and prophecy of the Holy Spirit.  And Jesus makes that clear when he speaks of being the one who gives living water and of the fact that the Spirit is what he means when he speaks of those rivers of living water.  And this is just what Christianity is:  to be alive with the Spirit of God, to have the life of God in your heart and soul, to have the Spirit of God making you His temple.  

There are all kinds of references in the new testament to this.  I'll just highlight a couple here: “…his Spirit who dwells in you,” from Romans 8:11, the same chapter we read a moment ago; or “…being strengthened with God's power through his Spirit in your inner being.  Or, “…we all with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.  For this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”  We’re transformed by beholding the glory of Jesus Christ, and that happens as the Spirit shows us more and more of the glory of Jesus Christ, and notice that it comes from beholding the glory of the Lord.  

What does beholding mean?  It simply means seeing or looking upon.  You don't see things if you're not looking, or if you're looking at everything but, and if you want to be transformed from one degree of glory to another, you need your attention focused on the Lord.  And that means setting your mind in tune with the Holy Spirit of God.  

If you wonder why your life is not being transformed, or why so much of the New Testament sounds almost weird and strange to you… it doesn't just talk about eternal life somewhere in the future.  It talks about having the eternal quality of life already now, of being filled with joy unspeakable and full of glory now, of the peace that surpasses understanding now, of being transformed from one degree of glory to another to another now, and seeing real change in your life.  

Be very careful about that little bumper sticker slogan, ‘Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven.’  Now, that's true; they're not perfect; and they are forgiven.  But if that's the sum total of your faith, you do not know New Testament Christianity.  New Testament, Christianity is Christians may not be perfect, and they are forgiven, but they are changing.  And they are being transformed from one degree of glory to another.  And we need to understand how that kind of transformation occurs because in so much of the church today, it is just not happening.  

We need to be very honest about that without being judgmental, because a good deal of the judgment may well fall upon ourselves.  If we look in the mirror, we may see that some of it's not happening.  At any rate, we need to understand that there is a very large gap between what much of the life of the Christian church today looks like and what New Testament Christianity and Spirit filled Christianity looks like.  And be honest about that gap, rather than pretending it's not there, or making excuses for it.  

Our lives should be characterized by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit and by the fruit of the Spirit, and by this transformation.  What does Psalm 1 say?  And what is Romans 8 say?  Well, Psalm 1 says that “…the person who delights in the law the Lord and meditates on it is like a tree planted by streams of water.”  Romans 8 says to “…set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”

In that particular part of the world, water was especially rare and desperately needed.  There are many desert areas and dry areas where no tree can grow.  And a water supply is extremely important.  And a person who is drawing from the Spirit and has the mind set on the Spirit is drawing on the water that enables you to flourish.  And you can't without that.  There's this huge contrast between the tree that's by the streams of water that's bearing its fruit, the fruit of the Spirit in its season, who never withers but whatever he does, prospers.  And this same person is the one whose mind is set on the Spirit, and that mindset on the Spirit is life and peace.  

What's the contrast?  Well, I don't know how well you can see that.  That's modern equipment there but an ancient term is chaff.  Sometimes the littler kids don't really know what chaff is.  Chaff is kind of the yucky stuff that comes when you harvest grain.  Here it's coming through a combine.  In olden days they would beat on the grain and throw it up in the air and the grain was heavier - the good grain.  And the chaff is that kind of light, gross itchy stuff that blows away in the breeze.  

Now, if you don't want to be the light, gross, itchy, bothersome stuff that gets blown away, then don't be one of the wicked, because that's what Psalm 1 says you're like if you're not planted by the streams of water.  You're like that chaff.  Nobody likes chaff.  You want to get rid of it.  You can't eat it.  If you get it on your skin, it's itchy.  But fortunately, it's also light.  If you're chaff, you're a lightweight, and you get blown away.  Basically, that's what it means to be chaff in Psalm 1.  You're a lightweight, you don't amount to much, and you get blown away.  Not a nice picture.  

Romans 8 just summarizes it very bluntly:  “to set the mind on the flesh is death.”  The flesh is earthly life, maybe even physical life cut off from reference to God.  And that is death.  So when we talk about setting your mind on the things of the Spirit, what I've just highlighted is the first question that we want to answer.  Why should we set our mind on the Spirit?  Why?  Well, because if you do you live, if you don't you die.  Okay, not too complicated.  You perish forever.  You cannot stand in the judgment or in the assembly of the righteous, because the Lord blows away the wicked.  That's what the Bible says.  And, on the other hand, he causes the righteous to flourish in this life, and to flourish forever.  

So that's why Set your mind on the things of the Spirit.  Now, how do you do that?  There are a number of ways but I really want to focus today on simply time taken as an individual, preferably each day to get your focus.  And then let that spread and be the springboard for what goes on throughout your day.  

We've talked before about Paul's call to pray without ceasing.  And if we want to pray without ceasing, then we also want to set our mind on the Spirit without ceasing, and have our minds thinking about God throughout our day.  But in order for that to happen, we need also to have pattern and discipline times to just get our minds and our hearts in focus.  

And here's just a brief step by step explanation of a good way to do this in your own personal, quiet time it's sometimes called, maybe even before number one, I'll just say get quiet.  Find a place without distractions, and do what it takes to kind of clear your mind of distractions if you can.  Maybe just sit down, chill out, relax a little bit, take a few deep breaths, ask God to be with you, and to make himself present to you and to help you sense His presence.  Then read the scriptures.  If you're setting your mind on the Spirit, you need to know that the Spirit directed and carried along holy men of God to write these scriptures.  And if you want to get in tune with his mind, then you read the scriptures.  

The next thing you do is you meditate on what you've been reading.  And sometimes what you'll do is meditate on a particular part of the passage you were reading.  Something will strike you and you'll say, “Wow, I think that's for me now,” because the word of God is living and active says the Bible.  It's not just that thing written long ago.  It's living and active and the Holy Spirit will apply it in particular ways to people in your own situation.  And so he'll help you that day to hear the part you needed most. 

Sometimes you have to be a little cautious about just going to your favorite verse.  And you might say, yeah, he's really speaking to me through that verse.  And, you know, you’re always kind of struck by your few favorite verses.  That could be a hazard.  But ask the Lord to really lay on your heart things and very often when you're reading, you'll find him really impressing a particular verse or a particular fact about a passage.  

You might read the story of Jesus walking on water and then inviting Peter to walk on water.  And you might not be struck by this particular verse that you're going to memorize.  You might just say, Wow, that was a tremendous step of faith he took and he blew it when he lost focus, and then just meditate on the need for faith and keeping your focus on Jesus.  Other times, it might be just a sentence.  And you say, I've got to memorize that and I've got to think about that all day, or maybe all week.  But you spend time in your devotional time meditating on it, just getting it on your brain and on your mind and then letting it go throughout the day.  

And then respond.  Don't be in too big a hurry.  Sometimes we read the Bible.  We know when you have devotions, you read the Bible and you pray.  So you read the Bible, you pray, you say, whew, that's done, now I can get on with my day.  That's not always the best way to benefit, to take some time to let the word soak in through meditation, and then respond to what the Lord has really laid on your heart and pray in response to the scripture, and make it a conversation.  

And then the fourth thing is, at times, you might want to make a record of that.  Write down some of the thoughts that the Lord has given to you, as a record of how he's working in your life.  And sometimes you can go back and look at that and test whether it really was the Spirit and remind yourself of things that the Spirit was showing you that you maybe haven't acted on or rejoicing and things he showed you, that really did make a difference in your life. 

Now, today, I want to focus especially on the second and the fourth of those.  In our messages on Spiritual disciplines, I've said quite a bit about reading scripture.  And of course, over the 10-year life of this church, we have strongly emphasized the daily reading of Scripture as an individual, with your spouse and as a family.  But I want to focus especially not so much on Scripture reading or prayer, even though they're hugely important, but hey, I just did three sermons on prayer and now I'm going to focus on a couple of other aspects of the time that you spend with the Lord.  I want to focus on meditation, and then on journaling, the second and fourth of these parts of your daily time, but I present them as four because I think that it's helpful to keep them in that sequence as your time with the Lord.  

What is meditation?  Well, when we talked about it, briefly, in other messages, I mentioned the quote from Rick Warren, “If you know how to worry, you know how to meditate.”  Because if you're a worrier, you just keep going over the same old, same old over and over again.  You kind of get in this cycle where you think about it, and you think about and you look at it from this angle, and you look at it from that angle, and you kind of obsess over it.  

Now, meditating is the good kind of worrying.  Sometimes we say when a dog worries a bone, it's chewing on it, and meditating is chewing on something, to dwell on it, to keep thinking about it to run it through your mind over and over.  

Don Whitney in his book, Spiritual Disciplines of the Christian Life, that we've made available in the lobby, he says “meditation is deep thinking on the truths and Spiritual realities revealed in Scripture for the purposes of understanding, application, and prayer.  So understanding is just thinking about it some more, so you kind of get a handle on it, so that where there's something in the Bible you didn't read, you think about it a little harder, and you begin to understand it better.  You also think about it for application.  You say, what does that mean for me here and now?  And then also for prayer.  God has spoken to me. What does he want?  And how is he prompting me to speak back and converse with him?  

Meditation is a way of focusing.  Bruce Demarest says “meditation refocuses us from ourselves and from our world so that we reflect on God's Word, His nature, his abilities, his works.  So we prayerfully ponder, muse and chew the words of Scripture.”  

The goal is simply to permit the Holy Spirit to activate the life giving Word of God.  It's about getting in touch with the Spirit and really activating the Word of God in your life.  It's setting your mind on one thing and getting your mind off of something else; setting your mind on the Spirit, and in getting your mind off the flesh.  It's a way of refocusing, whereas Romans 12, would put it “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice to God.  Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  And then you can test and approve what God's will is.  You can begin to understand God's will and renew your mind when your focus is on something besides just the world around you.  

Now, a couple of Puritan writers had some valuable things to say about meditation and some of the mighty Puritans who served the Lord most effectively were people who really understood and practiced meditation.  Thomas Watson said, the reason we come away so cold from reading the Word is because we do not warm ourselves at the fire of meditation.  We whip through the passage because we know we're supposed to whip through the passage, or are supposed to get it read, and then we shut the Bible and get on with things.  And we don't warm ourselves at the fire of meditation.  Thomas Brooks said, “they usually thrive best, who meditate most.”  So you need time during your special time with the Lord and then time throughout the day to continue returning your mind to the things that he's been showing you.  

Now, if there was any doubt of that, I'm not going to quote any more Puritans at this point.  I'm going to just look at some of the passages in the Bible.  I’ll just invite you to read some of them with me.  I'm not going to comment in great detail on most of them.  But I just want to show you how big meditation is in the Bible.  And I want to remind you as we go through these, that I'm just taking a little itty bitty sample of the Bible passages that talk about the value and importance of meditation.  

Let's read this one together.  Joshua 1:8, “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it.  For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.”

Notice the progression.  You meditate, and as your mind gets fixed on certain things, it starts controlling who you are and how you act.  And as that happens, you find God blessing what you do and giving you more and more success in his ways.  

Psalm 63: “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you, my soul thirsts for you.  Because your steadfast love is better than life.  My lips will praise you, my soul will be satisfied, as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips when I remember you upon my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night.”  Now, if you're a person who can identify with those first words, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you, your love is better than life.  If that calls to something deep within you, then pay attention to the last part, “I meditate on you.”  If you're hungry for God, if you're thirsty for God, if you're desperate for God, if you desire him deeply, then meditation is one of the ways to find satisfaction for your soul.  

Thomas Watson again, whom I quoted a moment ago, he says, “the first fruit of love, (that's love for God) is the musing of the mind upon God (musing is thinking about).  “The first fruit of love is the musing of the mind upon God.  He who is in love, His thoughts are ever upon the object.”  

You could probably ask Rachel and Sam now what are you guys thinking about quite a bit?  Well, if you're getting married on Saturday, you're thinking an awful lot about wedding details, I suppose, but also about the person you love. 

“The one who's in love, His thoughts are ever upon the object.  He who loves God is ravished and transported with the contemplation of God.  God is the treasure, and where the treasure is, there is the heart.  By this, we may test our love to God.”  Do you love God?  Do you love of God?  Well, you want to know how?  You might say, yeah.  Or say no.  Here's the test.  

By this, we may test our love to God; what are our thoughts most upon? What do you think about all the time?  If you think about God, once in a blue moon, I have news for you; you don't love God.  You don't.  If you loved him, you would think about him a lot.  

Now, some of you may agree with that; to others that may sound rude or sound like bad news.  It's a fact.  By this, we may test our love to God: what are our thoughts most upon?  Do we contemplate Christ in glory?  Oh, how far are they from being lovers of God who scarcely ever think of God?  I believe it's Psalm 10 where it says, “In all his thoughts, the wicked, there's no room for God.”  He just doesn't think about Him.  

Psalm 119, let's read.  There's 176 verses on the Word of God in that Psalm.  It's big.  One big long meditation.  It's another one of these acrostic Psalms, where it goes through the whole Hebrew alphabet, from the first letter to the last, all 22 Hebrew letters, and it gives eight verses to each one of those letters.  So the first eight verses of Psalm 119 start with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet.  The second eight verses start with the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet.  That's how you come up with 176 verses; 22 x 8.  Anyway, we're not going to read all 176 verses, but it was one way he had of meditating on the value of God's Word in his life was to just go through the whole alphabet and come up with eight verses on each letter of how much God's word meant to him.  We'll read just a few.  

Psalm 119:11, let's read it together.  “I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.  I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.  I will delight in your statutes.  I will not forget your word.  Make me understand the way of your precepts and I will meditate on your wondrous works.”  And some more from Psalm 119.  “Oh, how I love your law.  It is my meditation all the day.  Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies.  For it is ever with me.  I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation.  My eyes are awake before the watches of the night, that I may meditate on your promise.”

Now I just want to point out, highlight a few things.  

-  I've stirred up your word.  Memorization.  It is not just something you do to be able to perform.  It is something you do in order to fight.  You fight the sin within you, or like Jesus, you fight the devil coming against you when you have God's word stored in your heart, and you can say, “it is written.”  When you're faced with a particular situation and you know God's word, it helps you to fight off the enemy, and to fight off the evil in your own heart and in your own life.  

-  There's delight here, and that's the same language of Psalm 1.  He delights in the law of the Lord and that's what makes him meditate.  I won't forget; I'm going to understand and meditate, and notice how he loves God's law.  And he says, This is what makes me smarter than my enemies.  

As I mentioned a moment ago, that's how you fight off Satan and how you fight off temptation, how you fight off the hostile things of the world that are against God.  You get smarter than your enemies.  You also may understand more than your teachers.  That's actually my prayer, that a lot of you will get a lot smarter than I am.  That a lot of you younger people will get a lot wiser than your parents, not because I will want to be against myself or because I want your parents to be mental midgets, but because once you're in touch with the Word of God, and in touch with the Spirit of God, there's really no limit to the wisdom you can gain, except for what God is pleased to give you.  And he's pleased to give you just about everything.  

The limit is how much do you want to meditate God?  How much do you want to know Him?  And as you pursue God, you may well surpass those who set you on that path in the first place.  And so there's that language again of day and night and of meditating on God's word. 

Psalm 143, let's read these verses together.  “I remember the days of old.  I meditate on all that you have done.  I ponder the work of your hands.  Teach me to do your will, for you are my God.  Let your good Spirit lead me on level ground.”  So if you don't want to get tripped up, if you don't want to fall into all kinds of booby traps, and step on all kinds of landmines, and if you want God's good Spirit, the Spirit of Pentecost, to lead you on level ground, then meditate on him and on God's will. 

We, at Christmas time focused on Mary's meditations, Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.  It's not just an Old Testament thing to meditate.  The mother of Jesus spent a lot of time meditating on events in her son's life, and what he said and did.

Colossians, the Apostle says, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth.”  It's easy to have your mind focused on the sports, on the news, on the movies, on what you're going to do next, and to have almost your entire focus, be horizontal.  And if your life is hidden with Christ and God, as Colossians says, then you set your mind on things that are above not on things that are on the earth.  You let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.  That text was the very first text that we talked about and meditated on at the first hymn sing in May of 10 years ago when the kind of the seeds for this church were planted.  “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.”  And part of that is reading the word every day, but part of it is just mulling it over, thinking about it, meditating on it.  

These words of Jesus in His Parable of the Sower, what does he say about the good soil?  He says, “The seed in the good soil, they are those who hearing the word, hold it fast, in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience.”  There were others you know, where it just gets snatched away, or where the seed is shallow.  What meditation does is it deepens and it holds fast to the seed of the Word and gets it deep into your heart.  And then it bears fruit with patience.  

Jesus, in another place says, “If you abide in Me and My words abide in you,” … now how do His words abide in us?  Abide means stay, live, stick around, not go away.  And so we stick in Jesus, or stay in Jesus, or live in Jesus, and His words live in us, then ask for whatever you wish and it will be done for you. 

By the way, that's the key to prayer.  Some people say well, that means that whatever I asked.  Jesus said he was going to give me whatever I asked and so why am I not getting what I asked?  Well, that is a hard question.  And I don't have time in this sermon to go into all the difficulties of unanswered prayer, but I will say one thing.  It may be that His word is not abiding in you sufficiently so that you're in tune with him.  Because the more you're in tune with his mind, then the more your requests are aiming at things that you already know are God's will for you.  And so when you ask them, of course you're going to get them because you know He's already wanting to give them to you.  

“And by this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit.”  Notice again, that’s Psalm 1 language; bearing fruit, and it comes through abiding in His Word.  “You bear much fruit and prove to be my disciples.”  

So what does meditating do?  Well, as you meditate on the Bible, the Spirit shows you application to life events.  So part of meditation is thinking about words of God in the Bible.  And the Spirit helps you to think about what's going on in my life that this ties into.  And so by doing that, Christ enters more deeply into your life, as you meditate on the Bible, and as He applies it to your life, and Christ is more and more entering into your life.  

Now, the flip side, or the reverse direction is also true as you meditate.  Sometimes in meditation, you don't necessarily start by thinking about the words of the Bible.  You may be before God in prayer and meditation, and you're thinking about a difficulty or a challenge in your life or an opportunity, or how you want to deal with your children, or about a big decision that you need to make soon.  And as you meditate on that, then the Holy Spirit can bring truths to your mind that your mind has already been furnished with.  He can bring Bible truth and say, this is what applies in this situation.  

And so by doing that, you're entering more deeply into Christ's life.  You start out by thinking about your life, and you're doing it in the presence of God, and it gets caught up into Christ's life.  And very often, the Bible talks in both of those ways.  You'll notice Paul's letters speak again and again of being in Christ.  And they also speak of Christ being in you.  And meditation helps that traffic to go both ways catching you more and more into Christ, and Christ coming more and more into you. 

So setting your mind on the things of the Spirit, you start with reading the scripture, and then with this meditation, this mulling it over, this thinking it over, that we've been talking about, then responding in prayer, or in song.  Again, that's one of the great things about memorizing hymns or some great contemporary music of praise to God is it gives you some more words to praise God with.  And so that can be a guide for your prayer in response to the word.  

And then I want to talk just a little bit about the value of journaling and the impact that that can have in your life, and what that involves.  Before I say what it is or what good it is, you might say, well, I don't read much about journaling in the Bible.  No, you're just reading a whole bunch of journals.  That's what an awful lot of the Bible is.  

When you read the book of Job, what do you think that was all about?  It was about a guy who had a whole bunch of really bad stuff happen to him.  And then he thought long and deep and hard and agonized over it and said, I can't make any sense of this.  I've got to hear from God.  And my friends aren't helping me a bit.  And so he wrote down what his thoughts were, and his words were.  The words of his friends were written down.  And finally God spoke.  And God's words were written down too.

Now our journals are not going to be have the level of authority and direct inspiration for all ages that the journals of the Bible have.  But nonetheless, the model of when you go through something long for God and remember what God shows you is there.  

Many, many of the Psalms are important as journals of prayer, and of struggle, and of joy, and all the different aspects of a relationship to God.  That's why the Psalms are so valuable.  You read some of those Psalms and--Oh, I'm so mad!  I wish you'd break the jaw my enemies.  I wish those Babylonian babies would get smashed the way our babies got smashed.  You hear people just saying what's on their heart no matter how raw and nasty it is sometimes.  You also hear them say, you know, praise the Lord, praise God and his sanctuary, praise him in the firmament of his power.  And you hear them praising God when things are going well. 

You've got a guy who's struggling with insomnia, and he can't sleep, and he's being hunted by his own son.  Of David's journal while he was on the run from Absalom.  And that by the end of it, he says, Well, I'll lie down and sleep in peace for you, oh, Lord, make me to dwell and safety.  

And you can read the Psalms and many of them have just one little line above them.  David when he acted like he was crazy He after they were trying to kill him.  David, when he was being hunted or whatever those superscription are, it gives you kind of just a brief account of the setting where this little prayer journal came from.  

Ecclesiastes is a journal of midlife crisis.  You might think that's trivializing it.  But midlife crisis can be pretty nasty.  You know, you've lived a certain way, you've maybe even believed certain things about God like Solomon did, and then you just lose your way.  And everything seems vanity.  And so he writes down his thoughts while he's going through all of this.  And by the end, he says, “Now, it's all been heard here is the end of the matter, Fear God and keep His commands for this as the whole duty of man for God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it's good or evil.”  It took him a while to get there.  

And there's some of Ecclesiastes, if you take Ecclesiastes and just read it and say, Okay, I'm gonna read that verse and apply it to my life, maybe you will go far wrong.  Because at one point in his journal he says money is the answer to everything.  You know, you can buy off a politician, you can buy your way out of this, you can pay for everything.  Well, yeah, but that's not a supreme revelation that you should build your life upon.  It's a cynical observation of somebody in his journal.  And as the journal unfolds, you'll learn more about how to struggle through that process and where you need to end up.  

Jeremiah, part of it is God's word to the people, but you'll read big chunks of the book of Jeremiah where Jeremiah is upset that he's picked on so much that he feels like God has kind of misled him or failed him.  He speaks of his own struggles.  It's partly his journal.

Habakkuk.  Lord, why do you tolerate wrong?  And then he records his own prayers.  He records God's answers.  Paul shares an awful lot about his personal struggles.  We're heading into the book of Acts; much of the book of Acts is written by Luke.  The whole book is written by Luke and some of it is written as an eyewitness while he's on journeys with Paul.  

So again, if you say, well, why are you going to talk about journaling?  The Bible doesn't say, Thou shalt Journal.  Well, again, just look at what the Bible is for a few minutes before you say, why would you write any of that stuff down?  Now, journaling, for some people, it may be an everyday thing like keeping a Spiritual diary or a Spiritual inventory.  For others, it may not be as frequent as daily, but you pause from time to time to write down what God is showing you, what God is helping you with, things, you still want to make progress in, matters in your family perhaps.

I found it very helpful sometimes to write down goals and objectives for my family, for my church, for myself, and then go back and look at them later on and take inventory and say, Well, how are we doing?  Did I miss something in goal setting back then, and do I need to add some new ones?  Were some of those dumb ones that I need to scratch off?  Are there are ones that we need to really get back to and focus on again.  

And so there's a variety of ways and things you can record in your journal, it may just be big events in your life.  But some of the benefits are these:

One is you can just track God's activity in your life.  Sometimes when you're living from day to day, don't ever get it where you can't hardly remember last week or last month.  And you know, it's just… maybe you got a better head than I do… but I have that; I don't know about you.  But you can kind of blunder your way through day after day, week after week and not really have learned a whole lot from that bit of life you were muddling through, unless you took time to pay attention.  And then unless you have a lot better head than I do, writing it down from time to time, because I don't have a photographic memory.  I have a superb forgetter.  And so, in order to fight my forgetter and make up for my lack of a good memory, sometimes I need to write some things down to keep myself on track and to remember things that I discovered that were valuable. 

Another way you're tracking what God's been doing, and when you go back and look at your journal from time to time, you can see, you can sometimes see a flow that you wouldn't have if you hadn't been writing anything down.  

If you pray about things, you will sometimes go back and then say yeah, I prayed about that and here I see how God answered that.  Or I see how he chose not to, or how he answered in a different way.  But if you never write down your prayers, it's quite easy to forget what you prayed about six weeks ago, or what you prayed about four months ago.

Another thing in addition to just journaling.  Part of it can be your prayer list.  Who or what are you praying about right now?  It's easy for example, even with a notice that appears in the bulletin or in the email to pray for somebody.  You read it, you pray for him, and that was that.   That was your first and last prayer for them.  But if you have it written down, and when you go to the Lord for your devotions that day and you have some things written down to pray about, then all of a sudden, you're not forgetting what you're going to pray about.  

As I said, already, it's helpful in sometimes writing down goals that you believe God is laying on your heart and then later on going back and looking at those and seeing how you've been doing, and what kind of progress is being made.  

Here's another benefit - getting more realistic and knowing yourself.  Sometimes things that are just kind of vague and are in your mind, just jump out at you and are kind of brutally honest with you when you actually write them down.  You might have kind of an uneasy feeling… I kind of been wasting a lot of time lately, been watching too much TV and spending too much time on the internet.  If you wrote down in your journal, watched TV four and a half hours today, and then it was two hours on Facebook - six and a half hours down the tube.  Okay, then it's staring at you from the page.  And when you read that again, tomorrow, you say, I think I might want to dial that back.

Or, it may be something else you're struggling with.  And you're not writing this for publication, you're writing it for yourself.  And when you see it written down on the page is looking right back at you, it has a way of getting your attention in a way that it might not otherwise do.  

Another aspect that journaling can help with is to help you stay focused.  Do you have an easy time just concentrating for 10 minutes on any one thing and just sitting there thinking about it, and focusing about it, and letting it stew and sink in?  If you have a hard time with that, sometimes writing focuses the mind.  It helps you to stay with it and pay attention to it more than just thinking about it.  So it can be a really big aid to meditation. 

Sometimes you have an impression, or you feel led in a certain way.  Writing it down can help make it clearer and firmer.  And sometimes you say, you know, I thought I felt I was being guided in this way, but when I write it down and really look stupid.  And it maybe was stupid.  You know, when you when you actually had to put it into words and make it concrete, you'll recognize it as baloney.  But at other times it will have, you'll say That's right.  And that's clear.  And I'm holding myself to that. 

Jonathan Edwards, one of the great leaders in American history and one of the great leaders of the Great Awakening, when he was just a young man, I believe about 18, just wrote down a whole list of resolutions and kept going back to them again and again, as things that he was determined to follow throughout his life.  George Whitfield, another of the great leaders of the Great Awakening, along with Edwards had a list of 15 questions that he would ask himself every day as part of his meditation.  

So this writing, this clarifying of what you're going to think about and what you want to focus on, can be very helpful.  And as I said, remembering.  If you've got a world class forgetter like I have, then you need some help remembering something.  You know, to do a sermon, you know, for many years I would preach without notes, but I would have them written down and I would prepare in that way.  And that's fine.  But a year later, if you asked me to preach that sermon again, and had no notes from it, I couldn't remember hardly a lick of what I'd said.  

That's not because I didn't believe it, but you just kind of forget and so early in my ministry, I would think oh, you know, I know exactly what I'm gonna say I'm thinking about it, I've got it figured out and I had weaned myself from notes so that I could preach more directly to people because speech was my worst grade.  Now all that was fine.  And it may have helped me to improve as a speaker a little bit, but I found that I was such an expert forgetter that even when I knew I was going to get up and preach without using the notes, I was going to make myself a lot of notes anyway, in case I ever had to preach on that passage again.  Because all my study and all my thinking on that passage, or at least a big chunk of it, would have evaporated on me a year later if I hadn't written it down. 

Now, a lot of you aren't preachers and you say, Well, yeah, preachers probably should keep a little record so if they ever preach on a passage again, they'll have something to say.  But the challenge is that even if you're not preachers, you are forgetters.  And so the value of writing down some of the discoveries you've made in your time with God can be very, very great.  

And a final blessing of journaling that I want to mention here is simply that it can support other disciplines.  It can help you in your prayer life.  It can help you in your meditation life.  It can help you in your reading of the Bible.  It can help you if you say you know I want to do some fasting for a while.  And if in your journal you just write fasted today.  And if you've gone in your journal for eight months, and there's no fasting entries, you say I had intended to do some fasting and to focus myself more on God, and I just haven't done it.  

Now, if you don't do that and fasting was just kind of one of those vague, ‘ahh, that'd be a nice idea some time,’ or ‘I'm going to spend a day away from everybody else in quiet, just studying and thinking and praying.’  You tell yourself that but if no entry in your journal ever says that, then you know it's not happening.  

And so a journal can also be a way of just holding you and tracking you.  Is it meant to live in?  Is that what the Bible means about set your mind on the Spirit?  I thought that setting your mind in the Spirit was life and spontaneity and power and miracles and joy and all of that.  

Well, it is.  But, if you think that neglecting all of this and that setting your mind on the things of the Spirit is just kind of one of those automatic things that happens, you are deluding yourself.  If you watch professional athletes, you say, Man, would that be great to do one of those 360s in the air and slam it in reverse?  Do you really think that time you saw them do that on TV was the first time they ever did it?  Do you really think they did that without constant weightlifting and building up the springs in their legs and all the other practice that it takes to have that kind of power? 

It takes disciplines and setting your mind on the Spirit is empowered and motivated by the Holy Spirit of God living in you, but the Bible also shows us how you go about doing that.  You set your mind on Him.  And you do that in a structured and disciplined way.  

Even on the day of Pentecost, it happened while they were praying that the Holy Spirit came upon them.  But quiet yourself.  Read the Scripture daily.  Meditate on those truths and applications, then respond in prayer or in the words of a song, and either daily or at least from time to time record the insights and events so you can see record of the Spirits activity in your life and continue to grow in His grace.  

Again, let me remind you of the consequences.  If you want to be a lightweight, who gets blown away, set your mind on the things of the flesh, because that is death.  If you want to flourish, if you want to live and grow and bear good fruit and live forever, set your mind on the Spirit because to set your mind on the Spirit is life and peace.  

I want to ask Jim Martin to come up here for just a few moments.  Jim has been studying and practicing some things in the whole area of Spiritual Disciplines.  And so I knew I was going to be preaching on this and thought I'd seen a little of what Jim had been up to, so I just wanted to ask Jim to share for a minute.

All right, good morning.  Pastor David asked me to share and, and even as he's speaking, the Holy Spirit's kind of working me over here.  And so I want to say, you know, first off, there have been different seasons in my life for journaling.  And there was a season where it was just kind of an annual thing or a semi-annual, where I'd write down some of the major events that the Lord was doing in our lives and in my life.  

And then there was a season as I went through the Spiritual Disciplines course where it was day in and day out, just journaling and spending time with the Lord that way.  And then there's kind of the season after that course, where it's, you know, here and there.  I'm journaling throughout the week or throughout the month.  And I just want to start out with that because of all those seasons I think the one that really, really I saw the greatest value and benefit in was the season where it was day in and day out.  

And so the Lord's working on me right now to make sure that I'm doing that day in and day out.  And if anybody here is in that spot where and the Lord's working on them, and you just want to get together each Sunday here and as an accountability to say, Hey, how was your Spiritual discipline of journaling this week, I'd be more than happy to be a partner with you on that as well.  

So, but with the journaling, you know, when I first thought about doing some journaling years ago, it really was about the major events and already what Pastor David shared in regards to you better either have a journal, or you better have a great memory.  And I often do forget and I imagine as I get older, I'll continue to forget.  So figure it should be written down somewhere.  

And I remember reading Joshua, Joshua chapter four, and how they were crossing over the Jordan with the Ark of the Covenant and, and the water was dried up there for them to cross over.  And the Lord told Joshua to send out twelve to gather the stones and to build this memorial.  And I thought I better have something that reminds me of what the Lord does and what he has done in my life.  And so for me that, I guess that little memorial was jotting stuff down.  And so I would always write that down to see from one year to the next where the Lord's moving.  

And then you get to the Spiritual Disciplines course, where it was day in and day out.  And that really helped out in a couple areas.  First, and helped out in my time with Angie, and then also in our family devotions, as well doing the journaling because during that course, we had to do what was called like a S-O-A-P exercise.  And I’ve got a copy of this if anyone wants to see it.  But S-O-A-P was just each letter was - S for scripture, O was for observation, A was for application, and P was for prayer.  

And so every morning, I'd get up.  And we'd get up pretty early, because I knew it had to be a discipline, it wasn't something I was just going to do, and so getting up each morning, I'd have to get up a lot earlier for work.  And we'd spend time reading that day's scripture that was outlined for the family, as a couple, we would do that.  And then we'd spend some time just in reflection, meditation of what the Lord was sharing in that scripture for us.  And then, after that, maybe write down some of the things in this journal.  And then we go into prayer.  

And so not only did it kind of deepen our walk together, but then what happened was, instead of having this routine prayer, and sometimes I get in the habit of finding myself praying about the same things over and over again, here, now we're taking a certain scripture that we're reading, Lord, what are you speaking to me about in that scripture?  How does that apply to my life?  And then praying back to the Lord and talking with him.  And the communication was just new and fresh every day with the Lord.  

And now I've got this, the certain passages that are meaningful to me, and that I'm in conversation with the Lord and my wife, now I'm carrying that with me all day.  And all day, I'm going over that verse and over that verse and over the verse and looking for what the Lord's doing with it in my life, and in the lives of those around me.  And by the time we got back together, and Angie would do this, too, by the time we get back together, later on for family devotions, it really livened that up.  And it was not just something that we did as a family, but we kind of see what the Lord was doing in the scriptures and how he's working in our lives. 

So, and that kind of leads me to the last part of word journaling, where I like journaling, as well.  Yeah.  Also going back to Joshua, chapter four, where Joshua tells him, you build this memorial, so that later on when your children ask, you can tell them.  And I thought, well, you know, let's, let's keep a journal here.  I can't think of anything that would be greater on later on for the kids, you know, when they're out of the home, or I'm no longer here, as they're walking through different seasons in their life, to maybe pick up one of my old journals, or to pick up a Bible where I've written in and to see the things that I've gone through, or see the things that Angie has gone through that they maybe can't understand right now, but to see how the Lord has walked us through it.  And so I look at journaling from that aspect, too.  So that's really all I wanted to share this morning.  But I really would encourage you to  journal.  So thank you.

Let's pray together.  Father, we thank You that You have sent your Spirit.  We thank you for the enormous, unthinkable privilege that the very third person of the Trinity lives in our hearts and lives and connects us to Son into the Father.  We thank You, Lord, that we may live in you and you live in us.  We pray, Father, that you will, more and more, set our minds on the things of the Spirit and connect us to our Lord Jesus Christ.  For without him we can do nothing.  Help those of us Lord who are practicing Spiritual Disciplines in our life, to be encouraged and to continue more and more to walk with you and to find you blessing and enriching us.  Help those of us, Lord, who have been living careless and undisciplined lives and not setting our minds on the Spirit to hear from your word today, a call to leave aside the empty way of life that makes us chaff and instead, Lord, focus on you and find in you all that we need.  We thank you for our Lord Jesus Christ.  And we pray that every day to live is Christ for us.  We pray in His name, amen.