Jesus Taught Us How to Think. Do you think as He does?

Jesus Taught Us How to Think. Do you think as He does?                                    Kelly Durant

 

Mark 4:2 And he taught them many things by parables, and said unto them in his doctrine

 

2. In a group training we had to prepare leaders a few years back we had the privilege of having a person who had a degree in management techniques. Her name is Pat Forrero and she had a lot of experience with the Detroit factories, having been a liaison between the workers and the management. In one class she wrote a statement, something like this that a person at the workplace might say, “I killed my boss and put his body in the refrigerator!” 

 

She asked the group, “What will you answer your friend?” Many said, Yeah, I’d like to kill him too!”, Some said, “Yeah, he deserves to die for the way he treats us!” And actually no one took the sentence serious at face value that it was time to call the cops! She made a point, that many times we do not make our brains process the seriousness and gravity of what people express. We must process, analyze, and react to what is being said.

 

Why am I bringing this up? Because very few people process in depth what they are thinking. Often our minds are simple and we don’t want to compare one thing to another because it takes brain work. But to just go with the flow, like a cork on the water, will always put you the place of the ignorant who usually end up in danger or being taken advantage of.

 

3. Most of us are familiar with these verses, but can you pinpoint a moment in time when you made the switch from thinking one way to thinking in the new way? Romans 12 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

 

So, what does a renewed mind look like? It would be one that has absorbed all of Jesus words in the gospels and applies those precepts, parables, and wisdom as a filter to discern and perceive all current things happening in our world.

 

A mature, holy, loving, compassionate, new creature in Christ will reveal that they have the same character and reactions as Jesus had. For example, Jesus highlighted that the ones who were supposed to know God (the Jewish class in his day) were not always the ones that were obedient, compassionate, & caring. The Good Samaritan brings this out as the hero was a Samaritan, a group of people hated by the Jews, but obviously not by God because he was deemed to be a lifesaving hero. 

 

4. There are ways in Jesus’ reactions we must consider, and these reaction reveals His mindset. He had compassion on sinners, tax collectors, and prostitutes because they had contrite hearts recognizing their sins, being sorry for them. If someone is repentant and sorry, we can see why God’s grace appears to bring them forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing.

 

It seems like Jesus had love for everyone, for the children, for women, for the outcasts. But who did Jesus have disdain for? For the scribes, Pharisees, and hypocrites! The false leaders, being blind and leading others to be blind is something highly offensive! Hypocrites are leading others to hell!

 

Jesus became furious with them as they had transformed the worship of God into a Satanic traditional ritual with no heart and soul killing anyone’s interest in wanting to know the true loving Father. It angered Jesus and it should anger us too!

 

5. Another time that Jesus was so upset he because violent, as that was the only way to stop what was happening, was when he went to the temple and they had turned it into a market for exploiting money out of those who came to worship God. 

 

He overturned the money changers, that shows He was at war with the exploitive, false system of religiosity. Matthew 21:12 Then Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. 13 And He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of thieves.’”

 

Jesus, having the nature of God as presented in the Old Testament, was loving, always doing miracles to alleviate suffering, but for those inflicting suffering (and in the name of God!) His only expression was wrath. Keep that in mind.

 

6. Do the majority of those in society think like Jesus does? In the past, when the nation was more Christian, and 90% went to church it can be statistically proven we had fewer crimes, more sanity, and healthier communities. It is sad that the world’s systems are so anti-Christ, and being taught values that are diametrically opposed to God’s values.

 

I suggest you might research what we call the ‘dumbing down’ of the education system in America is all about. On purpose the text books highlight certain issues, while ignoring major ones that have much more relevance. Shockingly, we have discovered that since the 1940s, the education system has been more about indoctrination than the education of reading, writing, and arithmetic. 

 

Our children are taught evolution as fact (it cannot have facts with no evidence), and that some people are permitted to be exalted more than others. In the name of equality, certain minorities have privileges, and bullying, not doing schoolwork, and promoting political agendas put certain weak-minded folks in a protected class of their own. No wonder kids hate school, it is an oppressive system of hypocrisy. 

 

7. The only way we can survive not having our minds explode over all the hypocrisy in society is to have a solid foundation in the Word of Jesus Christ. Isaiah 26:3 You will keep him in perfect peace,
Whose mind is stayed on You, Because he trusts in You.    Psalm 119:165

Great peace have those who love Your law, And nothing causes them to stumble.

 

Jesus gave us this: John 14:27 Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

 

To have the mind of Christ do what you know to do and that is to ask “What would Jesus do?” Do you have the doubt on something, search it in scripture. Do a Bible study! It is not hard to find the will of God on decisions, thinking, and solutions, the Holy Scriptures have all the answers in them.