Sermon highlights from Relationship Reset Week 4. Sermon by Pastor Mike Adkins; notes compiled by Dan O’Toole.
Big Idea:
- If You Want to Reset Your Relationships, You Have to Reset Yourself.
Week 4 Main Scripture:
- Colossians 3:9-11
Setting Your Mind on Things Above
In Colossians 3:2, Paul challenges us to lift our gazes out of the circumstances of our lives and focus on God and the things that make us more like Jesus.
One of the best places to start is with Philippians 4:8-9. Turn your mind to whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, or praiseworthy.
Not all earthly things are bad. We still need to focus on our jobs, families, and daily responsibilities. But Paul calls us to turn our minds away from malice, anger, hatred, lustfulness, greed, and foolishness.
The Brain is the Tool the Mind Uses to Exercise Its Will.
Your mind is the spiritual component of who you are, your soul. You are more than the sum total of the parts of your body. You are more than just a brain.
The mind tells the brain what to do, and the brain sends signals to the body to execute the necessary functions.
What is Mastery?
Mastery is Effortlessness in Accomplishing a Goal.
Because your brain is a tool, you can train it. We learn through repetition. Think about how you trained your brain when you learned how to tie your shoes. What may start as challenging or confusing can eventually become second nature.
Part of discipleship is realizing that God has given you the ability to change your brain and behaviors so that you can become what he created you to be.
Self-Discipline & Pre-Decision
You can’t rely on motivation to create new pathways, thoughts, and behaviors. Motivation fades.
Discipline requires making a choice over and over.
When you pre-decide your decisions, you don’t have to wait until the moment of temptation to be overcome by your choices. Why deal with temptation down the road when you can deal with it right now?
If We’ve Been Healed, Why Do We Still Struggle with Our Worldliness?
When Paul tells us not to lie to each other, in Colossians 3:9, he’s calling us not to lie with our lives.
Jesus bore our sins in his body on the cross so that we might die to sin and live for righteousness.
By his wounds, we are healed. (1 Peter 2:23-24)
When we have lived so long in our old lives, we keep living out that broken identity because we forget that we’ve been renovated, restored, and healed. If we’ve trained our brains one way, over years or decades of repetitive behaviors, we can’t expect to untrain ourselves over the course of a few days.
What if we woke up each day reminding ourselves that we have been healed and are being healed?
Putting on the New Self
Being a disciple is different from being saved. Salvation is an eternal gift from God through Christ. Discipleship is the work of dismantling the old patterns and striving to become more like Christ.
Being renewed in the knowledge of the God who created you is not just about reading your Bible more and memorizing more scripture. When you know something as truth, you must practice it.
When we don’t walk in our renewedness, we walk in our oldness.
In Galatians 5:16-18, Paul encourages us to walk by the Holy Spirit—the Spirit and our sinful nature, along with its desires, conflict with each other.
Surrender makes a difference in our spiritual life. There will always be a part of us that struggles, but there is also a part of us that is constantly growing and learning how to lay down our lives.
There Is No Division in God. His People Should Be the Same Way.
There is no conflict inside of God. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit always exist in perfect unity.
The church is supposed to be one-hearted. When people from various backgrounds come together, many things could divide us, but we were called together to unite around Jesus.
Catch up or rewatch the full messages from our Relationship Reset series here.
