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Challenging our thinking toward more Spirit-oriented study & worship

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Some people’s understanding of God keeps growing; their vision of the kingdom of God becomes increasingly richer. They don’t mind being stretched and having to think things through. We can become Spirit-oriented thinkers if we ask the Spirit to help us as we approach Scripture or even the newspaper opinion page or a magazine that stretches us.  We can seek guidance, asking, How does this square with what I already know or think? Is my thinking straight here? Is there something here I need to learn? You can always tell such truth-seekers because they connect the dots between two things that seem to be opposites. They see what others miss, such as when Dallas links a thoughtful, studious approach to life with worship of God. Many people concentrate only on worship or only on study to the exclusion of the other. In contrast, study and worship should flow together. Students of God remain humble when they worship, and worshippers who also study worship with substance and truth
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From stinking thinking to thinking straight & well

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CRUCIAL ROLE OF GOOD THINKING The prospering of God’s cause on earth depends upon his people thinking well. Today we are apt to downplay the importance of good thinking in favor of strong faith, and some, disastrously, even regard thinking as opposed to faith.  They do not realize that in so doing they are not honoring God but simply yielding to the deeply anti-intellectualist currents of Western egalitarianism, rooted, in turn, in the romantic idealization of impulse and blind feeling found in Hume, Rousseau, and their nineteenth- and twentieth-century followers.  They do not realize that they are operating on the same satanic principle that produced the killing fields of Cambodia, where those with any sign of education, even the wearing of glasses, were killed on the spot or condemned to starvation and murderous labor.  Bluntly, to serve God well we must think straight. Crooked thinking, unintentional or not, always favors evil. To take the information of the Scripture i
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Reading goal checked off or meet and know God now?

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To read certain verses to fulfill a Bible reading system is not to take the Scripture in, to dwell upon it, to ponder its meaning and to explore its implications. Often, it’s an effort to perform, to check off one more thing I need to do today to be a decent Christian.  This explains why many folks know a lot of Bible trivia but do not meet God when they open the Scripture. To dwell, to ponder, to explore means reading slowly and wondering what life, reality, or even I personally would look like if this passage were really true. It means asking, What is God saying to me today?  TODAY’S EXPERIMENT - Read the following slowly: “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3:1-4, NI
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Retaking our toxic thought life

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INFORMATION AND THE ABILITY TO THINK - Two other factors in our thought life can be used by God to break the power of the toxic system of ideas and images that make us dead to God. These are information (or facts) and our ability to think—to connect things in our mind.  After God has implanted new life from above in us by Word and Spirit, we must take the initiative in progressively retaking the whole of our thought life for God’s kingdom. Failure to know what God is really like and what his law requires destroys the soul, ruins society, and leaves people to eternal ruin: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge,” and “A people without understanding comes to ruin” (Hosea 4:6,14, NRSV).  This is the tragic condition of Western culture today, which has put away the information about God that God himself has made available. Spiritual formation requires thinking. The gospel of Jesus repudiates false information about God and the meaning of human life, and it works to und
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INFORMATION AND THE ABILITY TO THINK - Two other factors in our thought life can be used by God to break the power of the toxic system of ideas and images that make us dead to God. These are information (or facts) and our ability to think—to connect things in our mind.  After God has implanted new life from above in us by Word and Spirit, we must take the initiative in progressively retaking the whole of our thought life for God’s kingdom. Failure to know what God is really like and what his law requires destroys the soul, ruins society, and leaves people to eternal ruin: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge,” and “A people without understanding comes to ruin” (Hosea 4:6,14, NRSV).  This is the tragic condition of Western culture today, which has put away the information about God that God himself has made available. Spiritual formation requires thinking. The gospel of Jesus repudiates false information about God and the meaning of human life, and it works to und
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Distorted images of God

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Carefully placed images persuade us to forgo thinking and accept ideas we might normally question. For example, putting the flag of one’s country on a product or event aims to brand it as good and wholesome when it may not be. Images that seem benign in movies may also “teach” an idea that, if we thought about it, would appall us. But we unthinkingly accept the idea because we like the image.  TODAY’S EXPERIMENT - Consider your images of God. While Scripture puts forth images such as breath and wind and fire and cloud, be honest with yourself: What really comes to mind when you think of God? For many, God is a benevolent giant who is too busy for them, a clever boss who pulls the rug out from under them just when they thought they knew what was going on, or a hard-nosed teacher who demands much of them. Give some thought to what ideas drive your images of God. What do you routinely think about God (even though you might never tell anyone at church)? Finish this sentence: G
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Replacing/transforming our destructive ideas & images

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IMAGES: IDEAS PICTURED - Closely associated with governing ideas are images, which are concrete or specific as opposed to the abstractness of ideas. They are laden with feeling. In recent history, hair (long, short, skinhead, green, orange, purple) has provided powerful images of conflicting idea systems.  In many churches today, the services have divided into traditional and contemporary, so that the guitar and pipe organ are no longer just musical instruments but powerful symbols. Such divisions are not unimportant or sinful, but one does have to understand what drives such divisions in order to act responsibly in relation to them. Jesus carefully selected an image that conveys himself and his message: the cross. It presents the lostness of humans as well as the sacrifice of God and the abandonment to God that brings redemption. No doubt it is the all-time most powerful image and symbol of human history.  Ideas and images can be a stronghold of evil in the human self and
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