My sermon today - just you know, getting into the word - I really believe that the Word is timely. Not only for the time that we are going through as a church, but where the world is at. Because the world is changing to me, so fast. I look at like where we are and how things are in the world and to me I’ve only been on this Earth for 35 years but to me it seems like things are just changing so quickly. I mean maybe we can ask somebody like older than me, someone whose like way older than me, like Dwight – he might be able to tell you like it's always been that way. But for me, I look at it like you know in the small time that I've been here things are just transforming. Things are changing so quickly - like the world in our country is moving away from so many ideals and our morals that we’ve held kinda in the past - people are moving away from that so quickly. How people think - just everything is transforming and it’s becoming different than what it once was.

So I think for a while when the church was you know - even if you have a certain amount of people moving away from the church, there was a morality in this country. But now we’ve even moving away from that. So what is that doing? That's widening the gap so much between the world and the church, right? As the world continues to change there should be more of a distinction between the world and God's people. Right? As the world continues to transform, as the craziness we see in the news and some of the stuff that people are trying to pass and the agendas that are so much being driven in this country - that is going to happen we all know that, but that should cause more of a distinction with the church, not less. Right, there should be more of a distinction every time that one of these agendas is pushed more, you should stand out more than you did yesterday. You should look more different than you did yesterday because the world is moving away from God but we don't, right? We stand on God, we stand on His truth, we stand on what He teaches us in His Word.

So with the Christian, the way you talk the way you live your life even your thought life should be more and more different. There should be a greater distinction of how you live. So my question today is when you look at how the world looks at things compared to how the church looks at things, whose perspective do you see things from? Whose perspective do you stand on? Are our minds so conformed to the likeness of God that we see everything from the spiritual perspective? When we go through life - it could be normal everyday things it doesn’t even have to be church things – but is your life so transformed and your mind so transformed that everything you do and whatever you see it all is coming from a spiritual perspective. Or are we still kind of living in that world where we still see things from the world's perspective?

So my verse today is Romans 12:2. It says, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is - his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

"The godly perspective says – ‘No, I might not be perfect but every day I'm striving for perfection in Christ Jesus."

So the first thing I want to talk about today is how our perspective needs to change. Right? Us as a church - again the world’s going one way, we should be standing on God, standing on really the foundations of what built this country and standing on really who we are as God's people and as that starts to go away our perspective needs to remain on Christ. You know, being shrewd in the world doesn't mean that you see things the way the world sees things. It means you maybe know how to maneuver it, but you know that God's truth. You know God's Word and we stand on that. And you think like a perspective change is such a little thing - like you know, ‘Kris, how can that have – like that’s not going to have a major impact,’ right, but there really is. The church cannot function with people who are seeing things from a worldly perspective. Right, what does a worldly perspective do? It makes you stop praying when you don’t see the result right away. It breeds doubt with every bad report that comes. It’s centered around self, how you are affected and impacted rather than the Kingdom of God. It twists the Word of God to fit a worldly view. It puts the worldly logic above faith and it refuses to acknowledge and condemn sin. Right? Those are - you guys look at that list -those are major things and the church can’t run under those type of things. Cause we look at even how to acknowledge and condemn sin right.

If you're looking from a worldly perspective what does that say? Well everybody is a sinner, everybody has sin – that’s a very logical thing right. So we just got to accept everybody and we just gotta kinda love everybody and everybody’s going to continue to sin we just gotta love them through it. That's a logical, worldly perspective being brought into the church. That's a problem. Because the church – what does the Word say? The Word says that Jesus Christ is perfect. And the one from the spiritual perspective says what; I am constantly striving for God, I am not perfect but God is making you – that’s what I hear, right you hear that all the time – I’m not perfect right, so I should be able to continue to sin. That’s a worldly perspective but the godly perspective says – ‘No, I might not be perfect but every day I'm striving for perfection in Christ Jesus. He lives inside of me, He is transforming me. It is His power, not my flesh. His power is greater than my flesh and it will overcome my flesh and I believe in the power of God to come in and do a transformative work – I’m not going to stay the same, there’s no excuse for sin in my life because God is greater, because God is higher and there is a worldly perspective and a godly perspective and we have to look and say ‘Where are we coming from’ every day of our lives.

"A godly perspective means that you have the mind of Christ that is unpolluted from the things of the world."

This worldly perspective cannot be present in the church. When we have the minds of God all of a sudden we pray without ceasing - somebody who hears the word of God and obeys. Someone that knows that God can turn everything around in a second, one who moves with the Spirit regardless of how illogical it might be or how crazy what He’s asking, you move in the Spirit of God because you are trusting that He has the outcome in His hands. The church cannot exist in the same ideologies as the world, especially in the direction that the world is going. It will stop you from doing the work of God and it’ll stop you from seeing God's miracle work in your life.

So we look at that verse it says, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world.”

Your minds right, are meant to be separate. The definition of holiness is to be separate right, to be set apart for God. “Do not conform to the pattern of this world.” God is calling even your mind to be separate - even how you reason, even how you think, even how you, you know work through things in your mind. God is calling you to take that from a spiritual perspective, to be different, to be set apart. A godly perspective means that you have the mind of Christ that is unpolluted from the things of the world - and that's what it is, it's a pollution in the way of thinking, it’s a lower way of thinking. It's a lower reasoning that takes place in this world. But God is calling you to be higher, to think things through like God thinks things through, to reason like God reasons, to have faith like God has faith, to be able to speak and be able to think like God does.

There’s a pollution that comes into play in the minds of the world that they kind of twist things to mean something then they are, but God is calling you to stand in truth – to be unpolluted from the things in the world and being able to see from a spiritual perspective.

Colossians 3:2 says in New King James, “Set your mind on things above, not on things of the earth.” Let me explain to you, it’s a deliberate decision not to think like the rest of the world. It’s deliberate – you have to be deliberate in it, right. I’ve said this a hundred times I think I say it every time I preach - nothing is going, there’s no lightning bolt that’s going to come and hit us and we’re going to be completely different. There’s an active participation that takes place, right. You have to be purposeful in what you do to not think like the rest of the world. It’s something you must set your mind to and stand on the truth. God's desire is for Heaven to come down to Earth. And how does that happen? It starts right here in the minds of the Christian, of the minds of God's children. For us to stop catering to the flesh and instead allow God's truth to come in.

And there's a deliberate thing that takes place. You have to be willing to say, ‘No.’ Something comes up and you have to purpose yourself to say, ‘God, what does Your truth say about this? God, what does Your Word say about this? God, who do I know You to be, who have You PROVEN Yourself to be in my life and how does that apply to what is going on in my life?’

There's a deliberate action that takes place to be able to transform your mind to not accept the pollution of the world, to not accept worldly reasoning and worldly logic and instead rise above it and have a higher thinking. Have a heavenly thinking and be able to stand and say, ‘No God, I'm going to stand on Your truth today.’

You know I think about even stuff like prayer, you know if we take prayer from a worldly perspective you know we kinda like check it off the list, right? It becomes a you know - I gotta pray about something and we do it and that’s the end of it. But what happens, right? What happens if things don't go at first the way that you want them to? And we begin to - are you going to just back down and say, ‘Oh, well I prayed about it’ you know or are we gonna say, ‘God, I know You to be true. I know You to be a deliverer. I know God that You come in and You have delivered me before and I know You can do it again. God I know You're powerful and Your power stands above everything in this world, it doesn't matter what it is. So God I’m gonna continually pray until You tell me to stop, until You call me to stop, until You say enough is enough. Even if it goes my way I’m gonna continue to pray about it until You say that it is done in the heavens and it is done on the Earth.

That verse continues it says; “…but be transformed.” Right, but be transformed - have your mind transformed. No longer looking like the world, no longer reasoning like the world, no longer looking for answers like the rest of the world does, but be transformed to have the mind of Christ. And how do we do that? It says by the renewing of your mind. That word renewing, it means like renovation – it’s a complete change for the better and I think sometimes with renewing we tend to think of it like we gotta do it every once in a while, it has to be like you know like your feet getting dirty type of thing, you gotta wash them every once in awhile. But God – that’s not the same word that He’s using here for renewing. He's talking about a transformation, He's talking about a renovation. He’s talking about like you watch one of those HGTV shows and it's a mess when it first comes in but then – you know I watch the beginning and the end, I just fast forward through the middle because I don’t care, right. I just want to see how it looked before and what it looked like at the end. They don't ever look the same, it’s completely different. People walk in shocked right, because it looks nothing like it did and they can't believe it. You know, how did they get the end product from what it was in the beginning?

You see that's how I want my life to be, that’s how I want my mind to be. That is what we should be praying for. For God to come in and renew our minds, that we look and say, ‘I don't know how I got from who I was before to who I am now but God praise You. Thank You Lord that You have done such a transformative work.’

And it's to make it – right, that's how God does it. He renovates it to make it godly, to no longer think lowly thoughts like the world but a higher reasoning like God. That every – you know Jessica says this all the time to the youth group kids. She talks about taking every thought captive. And that’s what we have to be. We have to take every thought captive and make it subject to the Word of God. And it takes participation, it takes activity, it takes us to buckle ourselves down and say that ‘I am not gonna be like the world’ and I tell you as the world continues to go the other way, if there's ever a time it is now to say ‘God, I need to rid myself of all worldliness. I need to rid myself of all things of the world because God I need You to come in and I don't wanna look like the rest of the world the way they’re going because they're heading for destruction. But God I want to remain in Your truth’ - and that takes a godly perspective.

I think about – God was speaking to me as we were in the beginning - you know the worldly perspective would look at a Zoom meeting and be like, ‘Aw, we gotta do Zoom. Aw man like I’d really like to see everybody.’ Or maybe they’ll think about the benefit, ‘Hey I don’t have to get my kids ready’ or whatever like ‘It’ll be a nice easy morning’ right? That’s like the worldly perspective, it’s talking about you and either how you're let down or how you're happy about it, it’s about your kingdom. But God was speaking to me in the beginning and saying you know the godly perspective, you know what that is – and He was beginning to tell me what He was doing - is that God is coming into each one of your homes you know, we don't necessarily get that when we’re meeting together. But instead we’re - God is moving something and taking something that the enemy meant for bad, and He’s turning it for good, that God would be able to enter into your house. You see the godly perspective looks at it and says” ‘God, this is an opportunity. I’ve struggled before, sometimes it's hard to get the worship in my house, sometimes it’s hard with my kids. Sometimes, you know, it's hard to get them into the Spirit of worship or to get Your Spirit into my house. But God this is an opportunity right now for You to come in and invade my house, for You to come in and leave Your imprint on my house. For You to come in and speak truth and Your Word to go in and Your life to come in. God I open myself up to this opportunity, God I can't let this pass by because my kids lives are on the line, my house is on the line, my husband, my wife is on the line – Lord this is the opportunity, this is the moment that I've been waiting for. God come in my house, come through the computer screen God and come and invade my house and leave Your Spirit in my house today.’ That’s the godly perspective. Right that’s the godly mind that begins to work and ask God to come in. There is an active war that takes place in the mind and we must be ready to get in and go in and claim victory over it, amen.

You know the world for me this is something - and the reason I’m even preaching about it - is because it’s something that God had to do in me first. Right, I am a very logical person. You know I’m taught to be logical at work right – what’s the most likely thing that happened here, you kind of take the evidence and you try to piece it together – just based off of logic and making it work. The logic in the worldly thinking teaches us to -you know, what is the greatest probability of getting what you want? What is the most likely outcome? What is the most logical choice? And we make our decisions and we base our thinking based off of that type of logic. And we fall into this so often. So much so that, you know somebody tends to make a logical argument we tend to take it at truth, right at face value. Somebody comes to you and you can use logic to pretty much justify anything. And people come with these logical arguments - and we go back to the whole ‘I'm a sinner, no one’s perfect so we gotta excuse sin’ - that type of logical argument, as soon as someone brings something, the world just accepts it as truth and we got ‘It’s logical, It’s logical so it must be truth’ so much so that the world has almost weaponized logical thinking to be able to push these hidden agendas that we see going on so much, right? I see it - if you flip on the news and there's someone giving some type of theory, some type of thing that they're pushing to our kids, some type of nonsense and it's so - and because they can make a twisted logical argument then all of a sudden everybody’s like ‘Yeah that's true. We gotta accept that, I believe it too.’

The church must stand in truth. The church must stand in the truth of God because what is God about? He’s not a God of logic. He's a God of faith. He’s a God of absolute truth. He’s a God of sacrifice. He's a God of love. None of those things are logical. Love is not logical, it makes you do crazy things. Sacrifice, putting yourself down is not logical. Faith, read the Bible, read Abraham, read about some of the stuff that the people - David going to fight Goliath. There’s no logic in any of that. Absolute truth is definitely not logical but God stands on all those things. He has a higher way of thinking. I don’t want to think of it like ‘logic is higher’ no, God's thinking is higher, God's ways are higher and we have to raise ourselves up to be able to say ‘God, I want to stand on Your truths. God, I want to live like You live. God I want to love like You love, it might not be logical but I’m gonna sacrifice myself to raise up another because that is what You have called me to.’ Lord Your truth is the only truth in this world and we need to be the ones to say, ‘God I’m gonna stop reasoning and thinking like the world but God, I’m gonna stand on these things, these ideals that You call. Cause we’re gonna miss out if we’re constantly thinking like the world and taking things from the world's perspective, we will miss out on God's working in our lives and our families.

You know I had a DWI recently at work and the guy was a .34 – so if guys think of what the per se limit in New Jersey is .08, twice that is .16, four times that is .32, this guy was a .34 so he was pretty pickled. So I get him out of the car and I go through the regular things that I do and one of the things, he's having a hard time standing but I still have to run him through the tests. So I said “Okay, we’re gonna do that one leg stand test” – you guys ever watch “COPS,” you guys see that right, raise one leg off the ground. And I'm kind of facing him straight on and he begins to do it and it was unbelievable, he raised his foot right off the ground and it was perfect and there is no sway and I couldn't believe it - it was like watching a ballerina or something like he was just perfect, toe pointed I couldn't believe it right. So I’m looking and I’m like “How is this possible? I know this guy shouldn’t be able to even stand and he’s doing this.” And my partner kinda looked at me and smiled and he’s like “Yo, come here” and I had to shift my perspective, I had to move over and I saw that he had his hand behind his back on the car kinda holding himself up, right. And I couldn't see it from where I was standing, I needed to move my perspective to see the truth.

Guys my point to that is to say this, we need to shift we need to move to see the truth of where the world is. We can't see the truth if we are looking from the world’s perspective. There's a lot of things that are going on that are hidden behind the back. There’s a lot of things that go on that we don't see. You need to move your perspective. You will never be able to know the truth of God if you are looking at things from a worldly perspective. We need to shift it, our perspective. Move up to Heaven, move where we stand, move into the heavenly realms and begin to see things from a godly perspective. Begin to see the truth from a godly perspective. And I tell you when you move, when you stop thinking and reasoning like the world you will see things shift and you will begin to see the truth of the world and in your family like you never saw before.

"Once we take on that godly perspective it begins to change how we live."

We look at something as simple as prayer, your motivation and how you're praying and where that prayer is coming from matters. If you're just doing it to check it off the list - you can always say like ‘Hey, I lifted it up in prayer,’ right? That’s a worldly perspective but God is calling you to move your perspective, to see prayer as a weapon. To see it as something that can move the heavens, to see it as something that can turn the ear to God to what's going on in your midst. That God will begin to bring His hand down from Heaven as you begin to pray, that God will take Heaven down and invade Earth and He will begin to do a work in your house in your life in your church – He will begin to do amazing things when you begin to lower yourself down and pray. That is what God wants us to look at, He wants us to take the godly perspective from things and stop looking at it from the worldly.

Otherwise right - and it's a logical thing to say ‘Yeah you know, I prayed about that’ and to check off the list and that it's a one in done thing. But God is not looking for that, He’s looking for God's people to be kingdom-minded people - to have godly minds and to stop taking things from the worldly perspective and instead start to stand on what God and His truth and His love and His faith and all the things that are illogical but that God continually triumphs through, amen.

"Our decisions, the decisions that we make in our lives, they need to come from that godly perspective."

So once we see that our perspective needs to change, then we can see that our perspective needs to change how we live. Right? Once we take on that godly perspective it begins to change how we live. We need to be ones that speak the truth of God. The world has a perspective that they take every argument on, we need to be ones that take everything from a spiritual perspective and begin to bring and have Heaven invade Earth and that happens from us. The world is devoid of a godly perspective. The world is devoid of a man or a woman who is willing to stand up and begin to think like God thinks, and begin to reason like God reasons and begin to speak truth into this world.

This - I just see this reasoning being weaponized to change how people think and to excuse lawlessness and to excuse sin and excuse so much stuff because people can explain it away with logic - but God's people need to stand up and begin to speak truth.

Our decisions, the decisions that we make in our lives, they need to come from that godly perspective. Things as simple as where we’re going on vacation, where we’re gonna allow our kids to work in the summer, how you should be running your home. I understand that there are normal answers, there are worldly answers, there are worldly reasoning that we can use to come up with answers to every one of those questions but my prayer today is that you would begin to stand up and take a godly perspective to the everyday life things that we do in every aspect of your life. All of – there’s a lot of great prayers in here, there's a lot of great people in here that begin to speak and pray and give great perspective of what God’s speaking in the heavens. My prayer today is that you would take that and move it into your everyday life, to everyday decisions, to everyday things that God is calling you to.

How will this affect my children in the future? How will God be exalted by this decision in my home? What standard am I setting for my household to be an example to my children, and to my neighbors and all those who see me?

You see these are the type of reasoning questions that we should be asking ourselves. There's a normal way to do it – there’s a worldly way to do it, we can justify it, we can logic it away, we can talk about how the rest of the world does things and what the rest of the kids are doing. And what’s normal inside of this world and we can pretty much justify anything. Or we can stand on God's truth and His Word and begin to say, ‘God speak truth inside of my heart. I know You to be a deliverer. I know You to be truth. God You have not moved away from my family so God my family’s not gonna move away from You. We’re gonna pray about – we’re gonna seek You and we want Your name to be exalted in our lives so God, speak truth inside of my heart.’

I think about even how we face hardships in this world. God is very clear about how we face hardships and what He says in His Word. Our perspective must be one of God's. What does He say in His Word, that we share in His glory through our trials. First Peter 1:13 in King James says, “Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” I love that verse, gird up your loins - like come on, be sober minded, stop thinking like the rest of the world. Hardships might come, decisions might come, but gird up the loins of your mind. Stand strong be in truth, set your hope fully on Jesus Christ - in the hope that comes from Him and let everything come out of that. Let every reasoning, let every decision, let every thought come from that verse from that type of mind, from having that type of reasoning, from having that type of godly perspective.

You know I think about again, just about looking at hardships. I’m not saying that trials aren’t gonna happen but we have an advocate to go to - we have someone that we can stand on and continue to speak of the goodness of God. For one without hope, every hardship is a tragedy, but for the saved – right what’s the worst that the world can throw at us, death – even in death we have hope.

Hardships should not cause depression and hopelessness, it should cause steadfastness and perseverance because that is where the godly mind, that's where the godly reasoning comes in. Or how we raise our families is another one. Things like: ‘what school do I send them to, what type of friends do they have, am I being too stern, am I being too soft, do I let them go where they want to go to work is that okay? Is it okay where they’re going on the weekend where they’re hanging out with they’re friends, Lord is that all right? What are they gonna do for college?’ Look those are all tough answers that we as parents all throughout need to answer every single day. And I know there's a worldly answer for every single one of those questions but as godly people we need to have the mind of Christ to take things from a godly perspective. If the statement “What the rest of the world does” even plays into the equation, then we’re missing it. We’re missing it. Right, that’s a kids favorite line. Right that’s 101, teenager 101. What is the first thing you're gonna hear back is, ‘Well all my friends do it.’ I’ve heard Maya say it about 5-6 times a day, right. ‘All my friends do it,’ right. So when we look at how – I just saw Dwight look at Maya and be like…- so when we’re looking at that right, that is the worldly perspective (sorry Maya) that is the worldly perspective.

God is calling us to have a godly perspective. Right, we know where the world’s going. The world’s heading for destruction. If not now then later in eternity. God is calling for us to be separate! The world is not going well, I don't know if you’ve turned on the news, I don’t know if you’ve seen how things are going. I’ve never seen anything like it where the result is bad, but we say that - the way we’re thinking is good. Crime is increasing and murders and all this violence that is going on but we continue to say, ‘No it’s still okay. We gotta continue to do things the way that we’re doing them.’ That's not good. People we need to have a godly mind to be able to stand up on the truth.

I think about even our purpose, right? When I ask you, you know what your purpose is in life. Right, that needs to come from a place of God. And I was thinking about this – me and Jessica were talking about it - if God reasoned like the world reasons, I never would've been saved. Right? I think some of us can probably say the same thing. He would've looked at me and said you know, ‘He's too far gone. There's no hope, it's not worth it. He brings no value.’ Because that would be how the world reasons but praise God that we do not serve a worldly God. But praise God we serve a God who has a higher thinking. Whose thinking something that the world is not, who thinks not like the world but has a higher reasoning and He saw a purpose in saving each one of us. He saved me for a purpose.

If I asked you today what your purpose is in life, how would you answer? The worldly answer is very elusive, it changes by the day. But God has an answer as well. You were saved for a purpose, you were saved to love the Lord your God and know no God besides Him. To make him known to a lost world and to enter into Heaven hand-in-hand with Him and to save the rest of your family.

Like that is the purpose that God has called us to. That is the godly reasoning. That is the godly mind. That is the godly perspective He took when He looked at me and when He looked at you. Praise God we do not serve a God who reasons like the rest of the world because there would be no hope for me if we did. But God saved us for a purpose. Our purpose needs to come from a godly perspective.

You know I was reading an article the other day from this Puerto Rican guy, he’s 113 years old. Oldest guy in the world you know and pretty with it for being 113 – and they asked him about what he kind of saw and looked back at his life and what he remembers. And you know what he said was, “I remember my young years and serving my family and raising up my brothers. I taught them the difference between right and wrong. I cooked them food. I developed them into the men that they are…” and he said at the end “and plus, you know the Spirit of God lives inside of me.” You know these are the things that stood out to him when he looked back on his life because he was looking from a godly perspective. Those are the things that mattered. It wasn't his boat or car or how much money he amassed, the wealth he did, you know whatever. None of that mattered. What mattered to him was his family and how he raised them in Christ. How he served them and the fact that God lived inside of him. That was his purpose.

People of God, children, teenagers - your purpose is in Christ. It’s not to work, it’s not for me to be a cop, it’s not for you to be a doctor or whatever you are, it has nothing to do with any of that – that’s just so I can put food on my table. God has called us to be higher. He has given me that job to provide for my family that I might serve Him. That is a gift from Him and my life is gonna go back that I might serve Him. My purpose is not one of the worldly perspective, my purpose is in Christ. We need to live our lives from a godly perspective. I tell you, our lives will always reflect our mindsets. That’s just the truth. Our lives and how we live will always reflect the mindset that you have. If it's worldly then it’s always gonna look worldly - our decisions, how we speak, what we allow to go on in our lives. They will always be worldly if our mindsets are worldly. But if they’re godly, if they're from a higher perspective, you will see that your lives will reflect it. You will not always take the easiest path out, you will not always rush into the decisions of this world but you will strive to remain steadfast in the truth of God. And it will be plain to see from the outside.

So our perspective needs to change how we live. And finally, our perspective, it needs to be proven. Our perspective needs to be proven. And let me open by just saying this - every seed that is planted will one day bear fruit. Every seed. It doesn't matter what it is, every seed, every decision will one day bear fruit that we will see. Good or bad. The mindsets that we have will bear fruit and be shown for what it is. If we have set our minds to be set apart from God, if we have trained ourselves to discern the will of God then our actions are going to reflect it.

And the same can be said if we’re operating from a worldly perspective. In either case those mindsets, they affect our decisions. And our decisions are seeds that are going to bear fruit - if not right away, you know if not you know this day or the next day, it's going to bear fruit eventually. It might take a while, but eventually the fruit of those decisions will come to be seen. What does the word of God say, “A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.”

Our godly mindsets, they must be proven. Otherwise it's just talk. What is it that separates you from the rest of the world? When you choose to stand on God, when you choose not to act like the rest of the world and exalt God in your life then God in turn exalts you and sees the fruit in your life.

"My prayer today is that everything in your mind, every reasoning, every perspective that you have would be from God."

I was reading a testimony from this guy and he had a really serious illness and he ended up you know living, but his brother – they interviewed his brother - and his brother said, ‘For his whole entire life, I had really looked at his religion like a crutch. Like I thought he was using it as a crutch to get through life. But then this illness struck him and I saw the peace and the joy and the steadfastness that he had. I saw that regardless of what was happening, regardless of the report, he continued to stand on God and His love and His truth.’ So, this brother saw the mindset that he had and he was quoted by saying, “In that moment, I realized I needed what he had.” And the brother had invited him to church a million times but that day he invited him again and the brother said yes and he went with him and the Pastor did an altar call and he was the first one up on his knees, you know ready to receive the Spirit of God, begging to be forgiven.

You know I look at that right. It was the jealousy over the fruit that really caused him, it was - his mindset had been proven and that proof is what made this guy jealous to want what he had. And he strove for it and he found it. You know God - the world is jealous when we prove the results of our faith, the results of our mindset. Our mindsets affect our decisions, our decisions - our seeds that will one day bear fruit. My prayer today is that everything in your mind, every reasoning, every perspective that you have would be from God. That we would have the minds of Christ and all our decisions would come from Him.

We must be kingdom-minded. We've all heard that a million times right – kingdom-minded, it's a very Christianese word. But when you actually look up what kingdom-minded means, whose kingdom are you concerned with? When you're looking from a worldly perspective, you're more concerned about your own kingdom. The most important thing is preserving your own kingdom and it becomes like a greed type of thing where you're focused on getting more. How can I expand my borders? How can I get a bigger house? How can I get new cars? How can I become more rich or more influential? But a godly perspective is concerned about the Kingdom of God, about putting God's house first. And in turn, God blesses us.

I can tell you that, you know as I have emulated this Christian walk after my Pastors and you know, really seen what they've done and then tried to emulate the same thing in my life - I tell you that that is one truth that I don't think could ever leave me. What God – if you concern yourself with God's Kingdom, God concerns Himself with you. And you will see God exalt you, and you will see God continually do things that you never thought before.

You know, as long as your heart isn’t - you know it’s not a slot machine type of thing – but as long as your heart is to serve God and to see His Kingdom come and to see His Will be done and to see His house be established, you will see that things just work out and God just does it. And God does it inside, it’s not your heart's desire, it’s not fulfilling you, but yet it’s just being done on the outside because that's what God does, because that's who God is. And that is contradictory to how the rest of the world lives. When you begin to concern yourself with God's Kingdom, when you stop looking at soccer as the most important or practice or Sunday mornings being your own and you begin to exalt God and make His house the primary house and make His house the most important, you will see that your own house will be uplifted.

And why is that important? Because that proves that God is true. That proves to the rest of the world that God is true. And the rest of the world sees the results of your mindset. The rest of the world sees things when you know, when you say ‘Hey I can’t go to soccer today because I gotta go to church,’ the rest of the worlds gonna look at you like, ‘Are you kidding me? Look, there's 30 other people on this team and they're all here at practice but you’re not?’ And you say, ‘Yeah you know I really think that God has called me to be in church’ or ‘Hey, this is just what we do, like it’s really important to my family, this comes first, this is priority.’ Okay, you know people will usually say ‘Hey, do what you wanna do, that’s on you.’ But then when things start - when your house begins to be established and your family is together and they’re worshiping and the rest of the world is going off doing their own thing, separating from their families, you know call ‘em once a week type of thing. And they're going through all the hardships and the turmoil of the world, yet you and your family are standing on the truth and you and your family are together and God is doing new things in your household, and God is exalting you guys - that proves God to be true. And that's one of those things, right? The perspective that we take needs to be proven. It needs to be proven, it can't just be in words. And as God's children, God will never allow your kingdom to prosper on your own. He just won't do it. Why? Because it’s a violation of the First Commandment. Right? He will not go against His own Word.

We can’t be established in our own thing. People who are established in their own, and doing their own thing, that's great for them, I'm happy for them – but it’s outside of God. God's people will never be able to establish their own kingdom above God’s because it’s a violation of the First Commandment. And this is something that the universal church struggles with. Their prayers are always a constant like “name it and claim it.” My prayers are about me, my prayers are about my own life, my own house and making things better for me. That’s all about your own kingdom - what does the Word say, “seek ye first the kingdom of God and all of these things will be given unto you.”

And you can look through the Word and see this happen over and over again. I think of King Saul when it came to the Amalekites right. What did God tell him to do through Samuel? He said ‘Hey, go - wipe them off the map, there can’t be anything left. This is what I’m calling you to.’ And he goes and what does he do? He doesn't kill all the people, he saves some of the sheep – the best sheep for himself. If you read the Word it says he like exalted an altar to himself for this victory and he keeps the king, Agag, he keeps him alive and kinda parades him around as a sign of his victory.

And I look at that. You know that was a very - and he “logic’d” it away. He had a very logical standpoint. ‘Samuel, I kept these sheep for God. Of course I wanna keep the best sheep. Of course I want to do this, it’s for God so I can sacrifice him.’ And it was a very logical argument and thank God that Samuel wasn’t logical. He just said ‘What’s obedience but to listen to God? Is God concerned about sacrifice or is He concerned about you being obedient?’ That is a godly perspective, and we look at the results of what happened because of his disobedience. He erected an altar for himself, his mind ends up starting to deteriorate. He was removed from being King. He couldn't sleep at night, he started to have all of these delusions and even the Amalekites they later returned and started to take the women and children as slaves. Why? Because that easily could have been avoided if he had just obeyed the Word of God. That is the fruit, right? We can see the fruit of his mindset. We can see that he had a worldly perspective, a logical perspective and the fruit that came of that.

But then I look at David. David who - we can go through a million different stories - but David was one who said he looked around and saw the palace that he was living in and said, ‘God, how is it fair that I'm living inside of this palace when You are the true King and You have nowhere to be worshiped and a temple to be worshiped in as You deserve.’ And he didn’t – God didn’t ask him for that. God didn’t put it inside of his heart, that was his own godly perspective, that was his own heart that was rising above, that wanted to give God a place to be worshiped. And God ended up saying “No,” right? He said, ‘No, stop it,’ like ‘Enough, I get it your heart is godly but no, I’m not calling you from that.’ But what was the result of his godly mindset? God said, ‘David, I’m gonna establish your throne forever. No one will sit on the throne unless they are from your line.’ And we look at Jesus all the way down to Jesus where He still sits on the throne of God, coming from the line of David because a man decided to stand up, to not think like the rest of the world, to not reason like the rest of the world, to not have a heart like the rest of the world, to not try to excuse everything like the rest of the world but to stand up and say, ‘God, I want to have a heart like You. I want to think like You, I want my perspective to be from You.’

The verse continues on at Romans 12:2 by saying, “Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is…”

The truth is, you cannot know the will of God if you’re operating from a worldly perspective. If your mind is thinking like the rest of the world, if your reasoning like the rest of the world, we cannot know God's will. First Corinthians 2:14, New King James says, “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

If you have a hard time discerning the will of God, ask God today to transform your mind. If you're unsure of His will, if you don't know the next step, if you're you know - the Word says that His Word is a lamp unto your feet – if that has not been illuminated to you, then I tell you pray, pray to God and say, ‘God transform my mind. Take out the worldliness in me God. Let me think like God. Let me reason like You. Let me take things from a godly perspective not a worldly one because there will be no world left inside of me. God take the world from me this day because I want to know You and I want to know Your will.

Set yourself to no longer be run by the world's reasoning and instead stand on the Word of God. Consult Him in every manner and think about what you know to be true about Christ.

You know I think this is what causes so much confusion in the church. I think a lot of people know there's a godly answer to the questions that they face. Right, they know that there’s at least supposed to be – it’s elusive, but they know it's out there somewhere. And because they have spent so long operating from a worldly perspective they cannot discern the will of God. They cannot understand it, because why? It’s like a foreign language. So what do they do? They pick the logical choice because the logical choice is easily justifiable and you can easily explain it away, just like Saul. But God is calling for us to no longer be people of logic, to no longer be people of thinking and reasoning like the rest of the world but instead come to God.

"God's church must be holy."

I tell you this, when you start to choose God, you’ll understand true logic. Like when you start to reason like God and think like God, you'll find that the world's logic is not logic at all, it's actually nonsense, and you’ll find that it doesn’t even make any sense. And you’ll start to look at it like ‘That doesn’t even…’ – I listen to the news sometimes and I’m like ‘That doesn’t make any sense. What they just said makes zero logical sense.’ But the world's mind is so twisted and so turned and thinking and reasoning like the world – again you can justify anything in this world. God is calling you to have godly minds. Then you'll know true logic, then you'll know true thinking. Then you’ll have a higher thinking and start reasoning like the Spirit of God and believe me, it makes a lot more sense.

God's church must be holy. They must be set apart, training our minds every day to have the minds of Christ. To walk in this world with spiritual eyes, not worldly eyes. To see this world from a godly perspective and let go of this worldly way of looking at things. And to let these seeds take root and display a fruit of godliness in our lives, right. My last point was that it must be proven. It must be proven. And that’s something that people don’t like. People don’t like proof, they like words, they’re like ‘Yeah, I believe. Yeah I think the same way you think. I believe the same things that you believe.’ But when we start to talk about the proof - the proof is in the pudding, right? Like we can look at it and say, ‘Hey, let's look at our lives. Let's look and see what our worldly perspective compared to our godly perspective. Let’s see that mind of Christ and let's see the results of what it has done’. I’m not saying there’s not gonna be hardships, I’m not saying there’s not gonna be trials - but I can tell you, just like that guy in that story I told you about, you will stand on God's truth. You will have a mind of Christ, you will not think like the rest of the world, and you will see the result of your faith.