The Mind of Christ
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SESSION 3
In this session we are looking at the mind of Christ. In particular I want to talk about reframing.
Any artist will tell you that framing a painting requires as much skill as painting the picture itself. An unsuitable frame ruins the picture no matter how good the painting is. A great frame can turn a good picture into a brilliant one because a great frame makes it pop.
The way we think about something frames the way that we see it and dictates how we interact with it in life. A wrong frame means no breakthrough.
Now we are learning that there is no breakthrough without follow through. Follow through is where we build the frame that contains the picture of ourselves, so that allows us to partner with who God is for us. You can hear a great message and be really stirred by it and respond to it in the moment, and you can get a breakthrough in the moment, but unless that breakthrough is followed through in terms of changing our thinking and our perception, we will not keep the breakthrough that we have had.
Two Battles
There are always two fights over anything. There is one battle to take ground and another battle to hold that ground. There is one battle to get free, and another battle to stay free.
Many people do not realize that there are always two fights over every issue. We win the battle to get free, but we lose the battle to stay free. The second battle is designed to establish the victory of the first one. It is not that the enemy is coming back in and somehow there is a second attack that happens because I have broken through and now the enemy is against me.
The issue really is God wants the second battle, because the second battle establishes the victory of the first one. No breakthrough without follow through. The second battle is designed to empower you to break through, to stay free. It is designed to create that frame, that way of seeing yourself that “now that I am free, this is who I really am.”
So the second battle is designed to stop you from defaulting – that means going back to a previous place that was negative. So we are going to talk about reframing today.
Reframing Our Thoughts
We need to reframe our thinking into an alliance with the mind of Christ. The renewal of our thinking is the essence of our transformation.
Romans 12:2 Transformation comes by the renewing of our minds. Once your mind has been changed, it needs to go on that renewal track until that thinking takes hold of us in such a way that it becomes who we are. We cannot go back to a previous time because we cannot find the door.
We need to reframe our thinking into an alliance with the mind of Christ.
Renewal of thinking upgrades our identity in Jesus, and our keeping the upgrade depends on three things.
- First of all receiving God’s perspective of who we are in Him, so that your vision about yourself changes, and your vision about God changes. That is why it is so important that you understand who God really, really, really is. Religious people do not understand who God really is, so they make God in their image. That is why whenever you hear someone spewing out words of judgment, you are listening to someone who does not understand the heart and the nature of who God really is.
The question you have to ask yourself about judgment is, was Jesus judged enough for sin. If Jesus was not judged enough for sin, there is not a single person in this room who’s saved.
The second question is, was Jesus punished enough for sin? Yes. Okay we’re getting better.
The third question is, did the Father pour out every last ounce of wrath, anger and indignation upon Jesus? He has not got any left then. What that means then, is that scripture says there are two days of judgment,
-
- One on Calvary, on Jesus, which was judgment on Christ for all the sins of mankind
- The second Day of Judgment will take place once the earth has been wrapped up in a ball and stowed away in a closet in Heaven. We are all standing before the judgment seat of God, and then the books will be opened.
So between those two places of judgment, one that happened 2,000 years ago, and one that will happen in Heaven and not on the earth, between those two places of judgment, there is no place for judgment in this life. Otherwise, Jesus is not the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot have your Bible and eat it as well. What does that even mean? You cannot have both ways – either Jesus has been judged for sin, in which case we are all free, or He has not been judged for sin, in which case we are all in trouble.
We need to get our stories straight about the gospel. When you hear people judging people in the world for sin, you are listening to someone who does not understand the gospel. You are listening to someone who is double minded about what Jesus did and does not understand the sacrifice of Jesus. You are listening to someone who is double minded and a double minded person is unstable in all their ways. If you are unstable in this most important matter, then there is something else wrong about your spirituality.
If we have the mind of Christ, He is not in two minds about anything. He is fully focused. The Father knows exactly what Jesus has achieved and the Holy Spirit’s role is to take that achievement of Christ and bring that in creating freedom for all of us and making sure that all of us know what that means to be absolutely, fully and completely free – to be abounding in freedom, to have an abundance of freedom, to have a fullness of freedom. You cannot have a fullness of freedom if you are in two minds about whether the sacrifices of Jesus really worked or not. This is not me just saying! It is in the Bible, and that is the Lord saying it. Say that again.
- Keeping the upgrade that God wants for us, staying a GameChanger, means that we receive God’s perspective of who we are in Him, and that we adjust our thinking in line with His thoughts over us.
- Thirdly we use the same language about ourselves that He uses. We use the same language toward Him about ourselves in prayer and in worship that He uses over us in teaching and in the prophetic. It is a language of confession, declaration and proclamation that expands our personal territory in the Holy Spirit.
Our problem is that we have grown up with the world’s system of perception. We have grown up with their thinking and we have grown up with their language. We may have received more input from the world, the flesh and the devil than we have from the Kingdom.
If you are listening to religious teaching that is pretty much a given. Even language that we have learned from religion is not compatible with how God thinks regarding life in Christ. Religion calls us a sinner but God calls us a saint. Religion focuses on the old man and trying to change its behavior. God focuses on the new man and transforming our thinking about who we are in Christ.
be a company of people with
a Heavenly mindset doing
earthly good.
When we connect with Jesus, we come under a mindset from a completely different realm. The mindset from religion is drawn from the world around us. The mindset from Christ is drawn from Heaven, because Jesus came from Heaven with Heaven’s mindset to teach us how to think properly. He came saying things like, “You have heard it said, but now I say.” He came to teach us a language of Heaven here on earth. He came to teach us how to be a company of people with a Heavenly mindset doing earthly good. He came to teach us how to think, how to see, how to speak, how to stand, how to walk, and how to act in line with how Heaven would. Let me read something from the Bible. You ready? You’ve got your seat belt fastened? Your tray stowed in the upright position and locked?
Those who are according to the flesh, set their minds on the things of the flesh. But those who are according to the Spirit, set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace. Romans 8:5
Everyone in this room has a mindset. Everyone. We have to make sure it is the correct one. Because the mind set on the flesh is hostile towards God, for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so. And those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Verse 14 says, “All who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.”
The word flesh there is the Greek word “sarx”, and it means human nature in all its frailties and passions. It means the natural attainment in thinking, reasoning, and logic and rationale that prevents us from experiencing God or moving in faith. It means that the circumstances of life around us are larger than the life of God within us – the flesh.
We cannot know life and peace in God if our natural man controls our lifestyle and controls our thinking. Because when your mind is set on the flesh, you are vulnerable to worry, to fear, to distress, to fretting, and to torment. All of those things are an escalation of negativity. The flesh is vulnerable to the external world where the enemy and opposition are prevalent.
Stress is always an inside job. Stress is not caused by an external touching you. Stress is caused by your perception of what is happening. People say things like, “she really annoys me.” No she does not! You chose to be annoyed. Get over your bad self. You could have chosen love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, grace, or mercy. You could have chosen all those things but you chose annoyance? You chose anger, seriously? And now you are blaming someone else for that choice? What is going on there? What is going on? That’s not true.
Logic and rationale are the world’s way of thinking.
They are not the Kingdom’s way of thinking.
Nobody makes us angry. We choose to be angry. The reason we choose a negative is because we have not actually really worked our self in the place where Jesus is a present reality on the inside of us, so we default according to circumstances, events and people. Here is the thing, we think that is normal. Beloved, it is abnormal. It is not normal for a believer to not believe. It is not normal for us to be fearful or anxious or worried. When you have Christ within you, when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, when the Father’s love has overwhelmed you, it is not normal to be caught up in all those things. These areas are where we are to grow up into all things in God.
Here is the thing, too. The natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God. What does that mean? It means that if you are going to have a mind set on the Spirit, you have to understand where to draw the line between logic, reason and rationale, and wisdom and the mind of Christ. Particularly if you want to be led by the Spirit you cannot be led by the Spirit and be logical. Because that actually isn’t logical. Logic, reason and rationale do not belong to the Kingdom of Heaven, they belong to the world around us. They are good, but they are that not that good.
The language from the thinking of Heaven comes from the mind of Christ and the wisdom of God so even a look through the Old Testament says that Joseph had more wisdom than all of the wise men – all of the philosophers in Egypt. He became a Prime Minister, why? Because he could interpret dreams. Does anybody fancy putting a President into the White House because he could interpret dreams? You are laughing because it is unheard of, but it is in the Bible. There was a culture there that valued wisdom above intellect.
We have a culture that values intellectualism above wisdom. Anybody who moves by faith is intellectually suspect in our culture because we think that intellectualism is the highest point of man, but scripture says it is not. It is wisdom.
Daniel was a man who understood the ways of God and the mind of God and he had a way of thinking that was far superior to anything in Babylon. He was constantly promoted because he was seen as one of the wisest man in the land. Why? Because he had a wisdom that transcended anything that could be found here on earth.
I think wisdom is the party animal of Heaven. It is a way of thinking so brilliant, so profound it changes everything. Did you ever think that your way of thinking could get you a miracle? Did you ever think that your way of thinking could turn a circumstance on its head and make it bow the knee to you? Did you ever think that there was a way of thinking in Christ that could turn the tables on the enemy with ease?
That there is a way of thinking in Jesus that could release the favor of God into your circumstances?
There is a way of thinking that enables you to overcome with ease in all of life’s difficulties. There is a way of thinking so powerful, so profound that it changes everything around you. It changes the landscape of your life. It changes all of your relationships. It puts you into a place with God so amazing that you would not recognize yourself. It is called the mind of Christ. You see His way of thinking all the way through the gospels. The mind of the Spirit lives in the life of Jesus within. The Kingdom of Heaven is now within us in our reborn inner man of the spirit. And the inner man only lives in the Presence of God.
Soul vs Spirit
I wrote a book called Towards the Powerful Inner Life that really tells the story of the difference between soul and spirit. It tells how the soul is the outer man, and the outer man of the soul is what connects us with the world around us. The inner man of the spirit only lives in one place, and that is in the Presence of God. That is why it is called the inner man. Your spirit is the secret place where God’s Spirit mingles with your spirit. All of your anointing is going to come from within. It is not going to come to you externally. It is going to come from within to the outside.
Your spirit rules your soul, and your spirit ruling your soul overcomes your circumstances.
Here is the thing, if you are living in your soul, then you are going to be touched by the world, the flesh and the devil. You are going to be touched by situations. You are going to be easily subdued. You are going to be easily overcome. You are going to be anxious. You are going to be worried. You are going to be fearful. You are going to panic. You are going to tend towards doubt and unbelief because your soul is being affected by the world. The reason it is being affected is because we do not know that our inner man of the spirit is more powerful.
Your inner man only lives in the Presence of God.
One of the things we are practicing is how to step back into that inner place of the spirit where God lives. Our spirit man is just in the Presence of God. It is not touched by the world around us. Our spirit man knows how to think.
The inner man only lives in the Presence of God.
Soulish Christianity says that knowledge is a thing of the mind, but in the Spirit, knowledge is an affair of the heart. In Soulish Christianity, what we are saying to people is, “I have heard it in my head, but now I am waiting for it to make the 18 inch drop into my heart.”
Here is the thing, God never speaks to your head; He lives in your spirit and He speaks to the inner man. The mind of Christ comes from within and explodes into your conscious thinking. God does not speak to your head and then actually try and put your heart into order with your head. He puts your head in divine order with your heart. The inner man of the Spirit rules so when we step back into our spirit we hear the words of God in our heart.
The Bible talks about the eyes of your heart being enlightened. The inner man can see what God is seeing. Why? Because he lives in the presence of God 24/7. He is not touched by the world around us, so he is not touched by logic, reason, or rationale. He knows that intellectualism is good, but not as good or clever as wisdom, because God is much too clever just to be an intellectual. He is wise.
What we are learning is to be wise in the ways of God. That means we understand how God sees, we understand how God thinks, and we understand how God likes to do things. That is what wisdom is. In that place – that inner man of your spirit – there is no fear. There is peace because you are living in the rest of God. You are living in the Presence of God.
We are living from the inside to the outside. We do not go looking for clues. We do not go looking for God out there. We go looking for God in here because this is where He is.
Ebb and Flow
There is a quiet place on the inside of you. There is a Psalm 91 place on the inside of you, and we are practicing living there and being still in that place. I practice my peace every day. What does that mean? I practice being restful. I like to live in rest. I like to move in rest. I like to flow in rest. I do not have a schedule to my day. I have a rhythm. Rhythm is about ebb and flow. You cannot be in a constant move of the Holy Spirit because for every flow of the Spirit there has to be an ebb. What you do in the ebb time is just as important as what you do in the flow time.
The Bible says that we can be fruitful, but then we have to be pruned. Being pruned is fun. Being pruned is great for us because you only get pruned back to Jesus. Pruning means that you are about to have an experience of God so amazing it will make you even more fruitful later on. Pruning is good. The brilliant thing about pruning is sometimes God gives you a time out so that you can just be with Him and you do not do ministry.
You get to choose. You can think from your experience of the world around you, or you can think as a Citizen of Heaven living here on earth.
Sometimes, though, you get pruned in the middle of busyness. God says to do ministry but do not think about it too much – think about this, and we will make sure that works but this is what you enjoy. This is what you and I are doing together and this is what I am being for you. That is just what you are doing while this is going on. You can work together and that is pretty fabulous. Whichever way God does it you know it is going to be great.
To become a mature son of God we have to be led by the Spirit from the inner man so that we are ruled from within. And that reframing – putting in the right frame around that picture of ourselves – guarantees a transformation because it renews our mind. To become spiritually minded we must begin with a different appraisal of events. Let’s read 1 Corinthians 2:6. Listen to this. This is brilliant. I wish I had written it myself.
Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature; a wisdom, however, not of this age nor of the rulers of this age, who are passing away; but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory; the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. I Corinthians 2:6-8
If the devil had known that Jesus was going to be crucified on a tree he would have chopped down every tree in Israel.
Reframe Your Thinking
But just as it is written, ‘Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him.’ For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God. I Corinthians 2:9-12.
What is the spirit of the world? Logic, reason, rationale, intellectualism, philosophy. The spirit of the world is contained in the way in which they think about things and the way in which they view things. The world is a problem solving universe. Heaven is not, and the reason for that is that there are no problems in Heaven. Jesus came to the world with the language and the thought practices of Heaven and He came talking about possibilities. He never talked about a problem, because Heaven does not view things as a problem. It only views them as a possibility. Jesus came saying, All things are possible. All you have to do is believe. He did not say, All problems can be solved if you think right. He said everything is a possibility and you get to believe. In other words, you get to trust, you get to see things before they are created. You get to believe in stuff.
Logic, reason, rationale never goes down that road. We have received not the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God so that we may know the things freely given to us by God. What does that mean?
In every situation there is a gift – every circumstance has a gift. Why? Because all the negative is designed to showcase what God is doing. That means every circumstance has a gift. So we have received the spirit of the world that we might know what is freely given to us by God in the situation that we are in. (It is a game-changing thought because it changes the game)
...which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised (discerned). But he who is spiritual appraises (judges) all things, yet he himself is appraised (judged) by no one. For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ. I Corinthians 2:12-16
The Law of Spiritual Appraisal is that we never deal with a negative thought, we replace it with the thought that Jesus is having instead.
Appraisal means to evaluate the worth and the significance and the status of the thought you are having.
Do you ever think that you need to think about your thinking? Really, that is what we are doing. We are evaluating our thinking. Is this Jesus?
Set your mind on things above not on things on the earth. For you are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God. Colossians 3:2-3
You have to think from a completely different realm. We are not conditioned any longer to think in the way the world around us thinks. We are a new creation and all the old things have passed away. Everything has become new and all those things are of God. We are thinking from a completely different realm.
Appraisal means to set a value on thinking properly. What does that mean?
We do not deal with a negative because a negative thought came from your flesh. It did not come from the Spirit. So if all your thinking has brought you to a place you do not like, have another thought. That is what repentance means – think again.
Okay, that thought did not work, so have another thought. Is there a better thought out there than the one you just had? If your first thought is a negative, there is definitely a better thought out there, because that thought did not come from the Holy Spirit. It came from the flesh. It came out of your soul. It came out of your panic, your fear, your unbelief, your doubt, or your mistrust. It came out of somewhere negative. That is why it is negative. We do not deal with the negative, we find a better thought and we have that one. You are breathing out there, right? These lights are pretty bright. For a frozen moment I thought you’d all deserted me and put a cardboard cutout in your place. And you’re out there having a drink or cup of coffee or something. Negative thought. Thank you, exactly, finally somebody gets it.
thought and exchange it
for a better thought from
the life in the Spirit.
You understand though that we have been marinated in the way the world thinks and it is second nature to us to think that way. Here is the one thing that is better than second nature, and that would be God’s nature. We are learning how to think like Jesus thinks.
You understand how important it is for us to tread on a negative and not deal with it and not associate with it? Do not take it into your house. Do not let it have a spare bedroom. It is not a lodger. It is not your friend and it is not to be a member of your family. Just because it has been around for a long time does not mean it is your second cousin twice removed.
We exchange a negative thought for a better thought from the Spirit and we deal with that. So repeat after me, I should never deal with a negative thought. I can ignore it and exchange it for a better thought that comes to me from the life in the Spirit. I have the mind of Christ.
Negative thinking is caused by a negative picture. So the mind of the Spirit reframes that thought into a much better picture. The reason you think negative is because you are not seeing something. When we reframe, what happens is that a new picture pops out. That is what I should be seeing. That is what I am going to focus on.
Reframing is about changing how we picture things. Our thinking – if it is rooted in the old you – can become a stronghold of the enemy that makes us captive to perceptions that impact negatively on our emotions. Do you want me to say that in English? Our thinking, if it’s rooted in the old can become a stronghold of the enemy that makes us captive to perceptions that impact negatively on our emotions. You want me to do that again? Our thinking, if it’s rooted in the old can become a stronghold of the enemy that makes us captive to perceptions that impact negatively on our emotions. Or I am going to read it to you as the Bible says it and I am not repeating this. I am going to give you a reference so you can read it well for yourself.
Though we walk in the flesh we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh for they are divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. 2 Corinthians 10:3-4
We are destroying speculations. Speculations are wrong thinking. Speculations are where we believe the worse thoughts rather than the best. Speculations are lines of thought that lead us down lanes of negativity into distress, into grief, into despair, into unbelief and so on.
We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God. 2 Corinthians 10:5
It is talking about knowledge by experience. Your thinking can talk you out of an encounter with God. Your thinking can talk you out of a great experience in God because your natural mind does not understand what is going on.
This is the thing about your natural mind, it always wants information. Your spirit does not need information. Your natural mind wants details. We want to know what is happening, what is going to happen, what is the result of this thing, how do we do it, all this stuff before we even do something.
The Bible says,
Trust in the Lord with all your heart. The heart is the inner man. Trust in the Lord with all your inner man and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your path. Proverbs 3:5-6.
If logic, reason and rationale was the way in which we should go, we would not need faith or trust. The Bible talks more about faith and trust than it ever does about logic and reason. In fact, the only time He talks about reason is when you have sinned. Then God says, okay, now then, let Us reason together. And then He tells you something that your reason cannot cope with –
Let us reason together though your sins be as scarlet, I will make them white as snow. Isaiah 1:18.
What, really? I will just turn red into white and it will be cool. That is not logical. That is God’s way of reasoning. Right?
What does this passage mean? It means new-man thinking destroys fortresses, destroys speculation and anything contrary to the brilliance of God, anything contrary to the nature of God, which is love, joy, peace, kindness, grace, and mercy.
Reframing our Thinking
- creates a new powerful focus,
- gives us a new positional stance, and
- creates a new language for prayer and proclamation.
New thinking
So what we are learning with new man thinking is
- how to take thoughts captive to obedience,
- how to take thoughts about yourself captive to your real identity not your old one, taking thoughts captive to the new man not the old one.
We are learning how to take thoughts captive in a way that means we partner with God. We learn how to stand with God. Our best thoughts lead us into an agreement with God and provoke faith to rise up and occupy that situation in a totally new way. That is powerful GameChanger thinking.
The Holy Spirit searches the depth of God in order to reveal to us what to see, what to think, what to speak. We have received the Spirit of God so that we can know what God has freely provided for our current circumstances.
You were just 1/8 of an inch away from a brilliant thought. You are so close that you could touch it. It is on the inside of you. The Kingdom of Heaven is within. That means there is a realm within that allows you to access the brilliance of Heaven in the circumstances of life. Oh wait.
There is no point, honestly, in being a Christian if you cannot see and think like God. If we are made in the image of God, it means that the way you see, the way you think, and the way you speak is exactly the way that Jesus would if He were living on the inside of you.
Do you understand the extent of our double mindedness here? Christ is in you. That means there is a Kingdom on the inside of you and revelation comes from the inside to the outside.
Revelation is not a bolt from the blue outside. It is a turning on. It is an opening up of space in the inner man when God shows you exactly what you have on the inside of you. Christ in you the expectation of something glorious happening. It is in the Bible!
You cannot come into a habitational context with God and still be living from a visitational culture. Do you want me to say that again in English? You cannot come into a habitational context with God and still be living from a visitational culture.
and godliness is already
on the inside of you.
The Bible says you are a new creation. What does that mean? It means anybody in Christ is part of a race of people never seen in the earth before Jesus.
There have been two creations in earth. 1 Corinthians 15 talks about the first Adam being a living soul who was born into the Garden of Eden; the second Adam, Jesus, is a life-giving Spirit. In the old covenant they had a visitational relationship with God so they had to go to the temple to meet God. God could come on them. God could lift off them. They could sin and God’s Presence would leave. They could be rebellious and He would exile them and so on and so forth.
Visitational relationship with God, the Spirit of God, could come on you and anoint you for something and could lift off you. Jesus changed all of that. He came to bring in a much better covenant, and in this covenant the reason why you died is so that you could be born again.
We died to the visitational covenant. We died to the old man of sin. We died to the old way of perception and thinking. We died to the ways of the world. We are in the world but we are not of it. We have died to the ways of the world. We have died to the philosophies of men. We have died to logic, reason and intellectualism. We can still use them; we are just not governed by them.
Now we are born again by the Spirit. Now we are born again, and God now lives on the inside of us. He has said I will never leave you or forsake you. That means He is with you even when you are being stupid. He is not leaving. He is here to stay. He is not a house guest. He is family. He is Dad and you are the children. He is not a house guest. He has not got His bags packed in the hallway just in case you say something that offends Him, and then He is leaving until you put it right, and then He will come back. If that is all God was doing, he would be endlessly shuffling in and out of your home and nothing would be achieved. But He is saying,
Now We have come and made our abode in you and We are teaching you from the inside how to be like Us.
I think that qualifies as good news. Now we are a new creation, never seen in the earth before because before Jesus, everyone had a visitational relationship with God, but this new creation is the second Adam – people who are born again – now have the Presence of God on the inside of them, that makes us a whole new creation. All the old – that means all – everything is gone. There is nothing left. It is all gone. All the old things have passed away, everything has become new and all those things are of God. This is where life begins for us. This is where everything starts for us.
Soulish Christianity has us working on through all the old stuff; but real life in the Spirit understands where the point of demarcation is. Life in the Spirit understands where I can step from visitation into habitation. It understands where I can step away from the old and just focus on the new; where I already have the mind of Christ.
I am just learning how to use the mind of Christ. I already have a way of seeing in God. I am learning how to grow my sight. I am learning how to see more. I already have a language of God and I am learning how to use it. I am learning the vocabulary of it.
All children are born with a language on the inside of them. They just learn the vocabulary as they grow. What we are doing, everything we need, everything that pertains to life and godliness – it is already on the inside of you. What we are learning is how to grow into it.
You do not become a new person by changing your behavior. You discover the person you already are in Christ and you behave accordingly. Your new nature is already in place. We are learning how wonderful it is. We are learning the mindset of it. We are learning the language of it. We are learning the perception of it, and GameChangers understand that, that is the game. That is the game.
You are moving into fullness in Jesus. You are moving into abounding love. You are being overwhelmed by grace and mercy and kindness. You are moving in the Fruit of the Spirit. You are understanding that the most powerful forces in the universe are actually present in your life and nothing can overwhelm you. We are learning – GameChangers are learning what? We are learning how not to be overwhelmed and we are learning to overwhelm ‘stuff’ ourselves.
We have received the Spirit of God so that we can know what God is freely providing for our current circumstances. Now we can explore the stance in our circumstance. What is the stance you are going to make in the situations in your life?
A GameChanger knows how to stand. They know what their position is. They know what their placement is. They know the stance in their circumstance, and that is what they are focused on. They are not focused on the event. They are focused on the life.
What if frustration is designed to point to an upgrade?
The natural mind, with its reliance on logic, reason, rationale and intellectualism cannot understand the language of trust, seeing in the Spirit, or walking by faith. Logic requires information. Trust requires a promise. God will always make you a promise because His language is the language of promise. Our thinking must be spiritually appraised. The mind of Christ appraises things differently because it never deals with the negative. It turns the negative into a positive and deals with that. It turns a negative into a possibility and hangs out with it. That natural mind leaves us stuck in places. It leaves us feeling powerless and frustrated. Too much pastoral ministry has people trying to work on their negativity rather than replacing it with something better.
Being a new creation means we do not have to work on the old one. I cannot say it enough times. You are crucified with Christ. When He died, you died. He did not just die for you, He died as you. We are not subject to old man thinking. What if the new man in Christ has a completely different appraisal of your circumstances? When we change the frame of our thinking, we become free to have a fresh encounter with God. That is spiritual appraisal.
I was talking to a guy who was having difficulty working with some people who were putting a blockage on ideas, and how to move forward in this company that he was a part of. His question to me was, “Graham, how do I deal with the frustration I feel towards those guys and try to resolve this problem?” That is old man thinking right there. We do not deal with frustration. We are dead to it. There is no frustration in Heaven; therefore, there is no frustration in you unless, of course, you want it.
Come on! You cannot deal with a negative by itself. Let us turn that thinking into something else. If you are in Christ and He is in you, is He frustrated? I do not think so. Can frustration therefore be a legitimate emotion for a believer? No. It does not do anything. It does not achieve anything. There is no frustration in Heaven.
Frustration says this, “There is an obstacle in my way that is too big for me to overcome. I am stymied. I am blocked. I am in no way through, and it is their fault.” Heaven would never admit to being stymied, blocked, no way through. New man thinking destroys all blockages – anything raised up against the knowledge of who God really is and what He is like.
that elevation in our vision
is now a possibility.
Here is the spiritual appraisal. I said to him, “What if frustration is designed to point you to an upgrade? What if every negative has to have a possibility next to it? What if frustration is designed to point you to an upgrade? What if the Lord wants you to see the upgrade that is possible that takes you to a higher place, not engage with the frustration that takes you to a lower one? What if you can get a better idea by being elevated above the obstacle so that you can see something that is more brilliant?”
An obstacle comes and it parks itself right in front of you so you cannot see over it. What do you need? You need to be lifted up in your vision so that you can see over it, above it, and beyond it. What would that look like? What if the Lord allows the obstacle because it is His way of saying, “Are you ready? I am just going to lift you up. I put this in front of you as a sign to you that you need an upgrade in your vision and that is exactly what I am going to do.”
New man thinking, a few months later.
When we are used to dealing with obstacles, a new man sees an obstacle and gets really excited. Why? Because we know what obstacles are for. Obstacles are here to tell us that elevation in our vision is now a possibility; that God has got designs on us; that He wants to show us something more and take us into a higher place. Therefore, the new man sees that obstacle and problem and promptly turns it into something else. “That obstacle is here because God is doing this.” That is spiritual appraisal.
Come on! Spiritual appraisal. Thank you! That is why we can rejoice always, because in the new man we know how to turn something negative into something amazing. We know how to pull down fortresses. We know how to destroy speculations. It is part of our DNA in Christ. Instead of dealing with the frustration, we use it to go to a higher level of vision and see something better. So when I prayed for him, I said, “You know, here is the thing now, get excited about this situation. I am going to pray for you. God is going to connect with you and you are going to see something bigger than you have ever seen before.”
A couple nights later, he had a dream and in that dream he got a blueprint from God and some ideas. He gets up in the middle of the night. He draws it all out. He goes to those guys and he says, “What about that?” They looked at it and they go, “That is brilliant. That is absolutely amazing! Where did you get that from?” “From my new man. When my old man realized that I am just caught here, I am stuck – when I realized that I am living in my old man, that is why I could not see this thing. When I stepped back into my new man that is what I saw.” So he gives these ideas to these guys and they put it into practice. They build this thing and it works. He gets a bonus and a promotion. Now he has a place on the creative design team. Because God is still creating, right? That is pretty fun.
Spiritual appraisal means you look at everything through the mind of Jesus and the thought patterns of the Holy Spirit, because that is the only way to think. Thoughts that come from the world, the flesh and the devil could be negative, judgmental, and/or destructive. They stir up our emotions of anger, worry, pessimism, guilt and so on.
Let me just say again. I do not tire of saying this. We never work on a negative thought. We exchange it for a better one. It is called repentance. Think again. The reason you feel like that is because your thinking is all mixed up. Have another thought.
That is why a GameChanger makes war relentlessly on negativity. Reframing is a key that unlocks and looses situations in people. The world has a thought process based around problem solving. The Kingdom has a thought process based around possibilities – all things are possible, only believe. What you see in Jesus empowers you to believe what He is believing.
In Christ we have a “newness of life” frame.
When we frame something as a problem, we are removed from faith and wisdom, and our language inhibits us. As I said in the previous session, Moses had a problem frame about his speech impediment, and God reframed that whole thing by giving Moses a new picture of himself. “See I have made you as God to Pharaoh.” And God does not have a lisp! That is a spiritual appraisal.
When God shows you something about yourself, a spiritual appraisal is necessary. You must change your thinking, perception and language. When our viewpoint is the same as God’s thinking, our language causes us to rise to a new level of power, authority and anointing.
A prophetic frame gives us a more dynamic outcome. What are the things that God has said to you? We have to see it. We have to embrace the new thinking that is present within us. You all have inheritance words. All those words are designed to change your thinking, perception and language. That is why it is going to be so much fun for you to get in the way of God and start thinking the way that He does.
In Christ we have the “newness of life” frame that you see in Romans 6 – that we are released from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of Light. We are walking in newness of life. Everything in your thinking should emanate from newness, not from oldness. You are new. Think new.
Our difficulty often is that we want new but we think old. If you want new, if you are new, you have to think new. This is why we need to encourage one another.
We get to picture Jesus within. How would He see our circumstances? How would He engage with us? He said about Himself, I am the way, truth and the life. John 14:6. All of those have a powerful view of the Kingdom and our place in it.
Every situation has an outcome that pleases God.
Galatians 2:20 says,
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I that live, but it is Christ that lives in me, and the life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God.
I live by faith in the fact that Jesus is inside me and He is showing me how to think, how to perceive, how to speak into my own circumstances by the power of the Holy Spirit.
A problem frame means that we only see what is being done to us not what God is doing. He puts a fault into our picture so that we default to a lesser place. If we are going to be present-future with God, we need to develop the art of framing our lives prophetically and aligning our way forward with what God has spoken over us.
That is why we have the Bible. The Bible is about story and journey. It is about the story of mankind walking with God. It is about the journey that God wants us to take with Him in the course of our life. The Bible says that God is involved in every single thing that happens. That in every circumstance of life God has placed something in that situation. There is going to be a blessing for you that is going to bring favor to you – that is going to cause you to see more, that is going to cause you to have an upgrade, that is going to teach you how to be victorious, then how to overcome, and then how to be more than a conqueror. The Word of God says that everything in our life is designed to empower us to become Christ-like. What would that mindset do for you?
Several years ago, the Lord said to me, in one of my devotional times, He said, “Graham, what would it take for you to believe that I am unceasingly magnificent towards you?” I kind of like – that blew all my light bulbs.
We are still having a conversation about that, and every so often I get into situations and I just go into my quiet place and all I hear is this whisper, “Unceasing magnificence, unceasing magnificence,” and He makes me stop and He makes me close my eyes and just say, “All right then, lay it on me. I want to see this the way you see it. I want to understand majesty. I want to experience majesty. I want to become intimate with majesty. I want to see the sovereignty of God.”
God has thoughts about you that are designed to transform you and make you like Jesus. He likes to put words in our life that give us a context for that process. He loves to speak to us and show us who we are in Heaven, how we are known in Heaven. So if currently you are a wimp and you receive a word about becoming a warrior then you have to change your perspective and mindset about yourself, which means you have to leave the place of wimpdom. All your life’s circumstances are training you to become a warrior. You are on a journey that is changing from wimp to warrior and that journey can only be successful if your thinking about yourself gets reframed, your perception about yourself gets an upgrade, and out of your innermost being your language about yourself towards God changes to reflect the way that He speaks about you. That is a GameChanger process.
GameChangers do this for themselves. Here is the thing about GameChangers that makes them incredible – this is why we are going to change the world from this room. Let me say this again, let me say this again. Do not clap yet, I haven’t said anything brilliant. This is why we said you are the first of the first. We expect to change the whole of Aglow from people in this room. If you learn your lessons, some of you are going to find yourselves on apostolic teams teaching this course all over the world.
Understand this – you are here by our choice. You are here by design. We invited you because we see something in you that is ready for an upgrade, that is ready for such a major way of thinking that out of this place are going to become warriors and champions and GameChangers – people who will change the world and rule in that world that we change.We are going to, at the very least, we are going to change the face of Aglow internationally. At the very least, 17 million people are going to get an upgrade from you. Listen, you are not going to get an upgrade from Jane and me. You are not getting an upgrade from the International Board or the U.S. National Team because we can only be in so many places at once. If it is left to us, it is going to be a really slow process.You are here because you are GameChangers. When you change your own game, it makes you fit to change the game of anybody else. Out of this room are going to go apostolic teams all over the earth to change the face of Aglow forever. We are going to renew ourselves. We are going to reinvent ourselves and you are a part of that process, so you had better learn your stuff.
Seriously. What we are doing here is designed to dramatically change who you are. We are changing the very landscape of your life. And I am afraid that we are not going to allow you to default. We are not going to allow you to default. If we have to strap you down and take those brain cells out and put some new ones in and give you some electric shock treatment and read the Bible to you endlessly, that is exactly what we are going to do.
Here is the thing, no chance of that happening because we believe we chose the right people. We believe we chose people who are good and who now need to become great. There is a spirit of excellence in this room and you are it.
In every region, honestly, we expect a return on our investment. We expect to see every region come up to a higher level. We expect to see every Lighthouse switched on to the new man. We expect people to be thinking differently, seeing differently, speaking differently, standing differently, worshiping differently, because you are there. GameChangers!
Hey no pressure, but you had better be good. No pressure, but you had better be magnificent. I think Jesus deserves that. The future that God has for you demands a fresh perspective. That future demands a new mindset in the language in tune with what God sees over you. You must explore the mind of Christ. You have to understand, beloved, that the mind of Christ is the most astonishing, the most profound, the most brilliant, the most amazing way of thinking ever and you have to be captivated by it. You cannot just visit it; you have to be captured by it. You have to be captivated by that way of thinking. You have to want it with every fiber of your being, and you have to practice it relentlessly. You have to practice it with delight. It is an enjoyable thing. It is a delightful thing. So you have to become passionate about thinking like Jesus.
And if you have friends, make yourself, make your thinking accountable to your friends. Let your friends make themselves accountable to you for their thinking. So you help each other. You do not spot the flaw in what people are thinking and jump on them, “Ha! That is a negative!” That is not what we are saying. Do not go all evangelical on me. That is not what we are saying.
This is what we are saying – that when you hear somebody say something that is not in line with who Jesus is for them, you just say, “Hey man, sweetie, that is not you. Which self is talking? That is not you. That is not the real you, the true you, the new you.” Or, even just saying, “Hey what if there is a better thought than that? Let’s have one right now. Let’s do it right now. Let’s have a good thought right now. Let’s train ourselves in the art of thinking brilliantly. Let’s train ourselves in the mind of Christ. Let’s renew our thinking. Let’s be renewed in the spirit of our mind. Let’s encourage each other, let’s bless each other. Let’s provoke one another to think amazing thoughts. Let’s try and think of the best thought possible, that Jesus would think. And let’s believe Him for something really big. Believe Him for something outrageous. Believe Him for something that you will need faith to believe for.”
Let’s pray.
You are going to put everything down and, if it helps you, stand up and let’s assume the position, sit down and assume it. I do not care as long as you are not sitting on your brain.
I want you to understand why I am repeating certain things constantly. It is because I am brain washing you. I do not like what you have been washing your brains in, so I am washing your thinking, renewing your minds by constantly saying, “It is about thinking. It is about perception. It is about language.” All upgrades can only be kept when those three things change.
So, let’s assume the position.
You know one of the great things about us is that we should be a people who is always ready to receive, always ready to receive something new from God, because you understand that He is always ready to give something. He always comes with a gift. Take the gift of Him. Take it. You are going to need it.
So, Father, we thank You for the incredible gift of the Lord Jesus Christ. We celebrate His sacrifice. Lord Jesus, we thank You with every fiber of our being, for going to the Cross, for being separated, for being ruined by sin. We thank You that You took everything about us that was negative, unwholesome, sinful, vile and rotten, all negativity, all fear, all low self-esteem, all doubts, all unbelief, all worry, fear, panic, the whole nine yards, You took everything on Yourself to set us free from the law of sin and death, and to bring us into the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. You came to put Your life in us that would totally rejuvenate who we are and turn us into different men and different women. And nowhere is that more important than in our thinking.
How we see You is vital. How we see ourselves is vital. And You have been kind enough to give us Your mindset that we might think like You. So right here, right now, we say, we accept. We accept the mind of Christ. We accept that the eyes of our heart are being enlightened. We are being opened up by revelation. We accept that a GameChanger has a way of thinking so extraordinary, it changes the game everywhere. In every nation with every people group, in every circumstance, there is a way of being from Heaven to earth that changes the very landscape of our lives. Nothing will be impossible for us as we pursue the mindset of the Spirit that You want us to have.
We thank You for the challenge right now. Set your mind on things above not on things on the earth.
Holy Spirit, I thank You for Your genius in these matters. And I ask for an outpouring of Your passion, of Your grace, of Your wisdom and revelation, to empower us to live in alignment with Jesus, to empower us to think differently, and to reframe the picture of our circumstances so that we can move beyond those circumstances into the resources and provisions of God. Thank You that You are our personal tutor in this whole process, and I ask for an outpouring of Your Presence in our hearts and lives that we may, even by the end of this year, be radically different people – GameChangers who change the game for Jesus’ sake.
Amen.
