In this sermon, the speaker discusses the importance of renewing our minds and the battle between the flesh and the spirit. He references Romans 8:5 in the Amplified Bible, which highlights the need to set our minds on things that gratify the spirit. The speaker emphasizes the significance of being mindful of what we expose ourselves to, particularly through television, as it can influence our thoughts and beliefs. He encourages the audience to focus on biblical examples such as the parting of the Red Sea and Jesus' teachings to guide their thinking.

I'm continuing our sharing on pleasing God's heart by presenting Romans 12, 1 and 2. And will you open your Bibles to Romans 12, 1 and 2? I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service, and be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. I have been blessed and renewed by just the study of this. I told you the first week we started on it to please view these verses as though you had never heard them before, because we're so prone to get stereotyped in our thinking and think, oh, yes, I know exactly what that means, and I walk in and blah, blah, blah, and we don't really listen. And the Holy Spirit continues to reveal truth to us about Scripture, even if it's one that we've heard over and over. Someone said to me this week, you know, I never thought about presenting my emotions to the Lord before. Remember, we talked about presenting our bodies, which means our entire self, our physical body, our mind, emotions, and will. And I think that God is speaking to each one of us along the line of especially the mind, emotions, and will, as well as the physical body. And this one said to me, you know, I'd never thought of presenting my emotions to the Lord before. And she's been having kind of a struggle that way. And so she said, I just presented my emotions unto the Lord and said, Lord, they're yours to control. And He's worked a wonderful work. And it's true. When we bring anything unto Him and say, God, it's yours to work with, it's yours to control, He will do it. Last week, we studied verse 2, the seven words, be not conformed to this world. Don't be squeezed into its mold. Don't be fashioned by its ideas and its moral pressures and all these things. And we talked about there are two kingdoms, the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness. Satan is the prince of the power of this world. We are not talking about the sphere, the globe, or the world that God created with the beauty. We're talking about not sphere, but atmosphere. And we are not to be conformed to the atmosphere of this world, which is controlled by Satan, who is in rebellion against God. This world is called evil in the Bible, the one that I'm referring to, the moral world. And John says it is fading away. The Living Bible, 1 John 2, 16, by way of review, characterizes this world thus. For all these worldly things, these evil desires, the craze for sex, the ambition to buy everything that appeals to you, and the pride that comes from wealth and importance, these are not from God. James 4, 4 tells us if we're a friend of the world, we are not a friend of God. I hope that has stayed in your mind this week. 1 John 2, 15, if we love the world, the love of the Father isn't in us. If we love all this stuff that the world is promoting and putting out and saying, this is life, then we don't have the love of the Father. In the Living Bible, in 1 John 2, 16 or 15, it says, Stop loving this evil world and all it offers you. That's about as plain as you can get, isn't it? Stop loving this evil world and all it offers you. This morning, we're going to the next thought in this verse 2 of chapter 12, and I love it. Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. The reason these scriptures are so important for us as women today is because of the world's terrible pressure and pull on us. I believe we're aware that in our time, the concentration is on women to alter their role as set forth in God's Word. One thing about it in these last times, it's becoming clearer, isn't it? There isn't that kind of intermingling of the world and the church. There's a, to me at least, it's very clear the world is here, the present evil world and God's people are walking this way, and there's a great delineate separation or whatever between the two, and I think we as Christians that are being transformed by the power of God see it much more clearly than ever before. TV, movies, magazines, lectures, all are encouraging women to abandon their home, husband, children, moral values and find happiness. Gloria Steinem will be at the University of California at Irvine this week. I am so angry, and although I do like Ronald Reagan, his daughter, Maureen, who is very much for the ERA, will be on Orange Coast this afternoon, I think, and then a big thing on holistic healing, and I'm going, Lord, they're getting to every campus. In the United States, Jane Fonda, I don't want to get political this morning, but I am. I don't want to. I guess I do want to. But, you know, these people are getting on every campus, are the Christians. We've started our bus to the high schools, and Brian, my son-in-law, is on the bus, and he's coming home so excited about what God's doing. You know, they won't let us on campus, so we've got this bus that goes to the high schools, and the kids are invited on the bus to hear about Jesus. Now, just bless your heart. Pray for that bus ministry. Pray for Brian. Pray for the other ministers who are manning the buses. And pray that the young people will be drawn to the buses to hear the word of God. But there is this pressure on women, and these women of the evil kingdom are getting around, it seems to me, much faster and much more effectively than the women of God's kingdom. That's one of my main purposes for the class, and the only reason I speak away from Calvary is I've got a message from God for women and how God wants women to live, and I want to proclaim it as far and wide as quickly as I can. The time is short, and we need to know what kind of women we ought to be that will bring joy to the heart of God. Please be aware that these women, these leaders of the feminist movement, are humanists. They believe that life begins and ends with us as individuals. Now, remember that they do not believe in eternity. They do not, and you can check any of their records, you can read any of their books, Betty Friedan's, anybody else's, and you will know, you will pick up the humanistic philosophy. If I thought this life were all we could have, if this was it, we probably would all live differently. But there's an awareness in our heart of eternity, and may God keep that awareness before us. This certain percentage of feminists who are humanists want to bring a whole new society, and only by chaos and confusion in this one will that be accomplished. And, of course, breaking up of the home is the easiest way to accomplish it, as the homes go, so the nation will go. And unless we are under the control of God's Spirit by presenting our entire self to Him, we will be under the deception of this present evil world. It is very, very deceptive. Therefore, be transformed, be changed by the renewing of your mind. Transformed, in the Greek, is a word which we, in English, call metamorphosis. And whenever we think of that, I always go back to biology in high school, and what do you think of the most for metamorphosis? What? Sure, the caterpillar and the butterfly. That word always seems to denote that or connotate that to our thinking. Be transformed, be changed by the renewing of your mind. Metamorphosis. Caterpillar to butterfly. I think that we as Christian women ought to put up someplace, in a secret place in our house or an obvious place, a picture of a caterpillar and a picture of a butterfly. Wouldn't it be a good idea? And God wants that transformation to be at work in our life. One is earthbound, the other is freed, has wings. And I don't know about you, but I'd much rather look at a butterfly than a caterpillar. Wouldn't you? Much in every way. Transform, the same word in Greek, was also used for Jesus in Matthew 17, 2, where Jesus was transfigured before them. The Amplified Bible of Matthew 17, 2 says, And his appearance underwent a change in their presence, and his face shone clear and bright like the sun, and his clothing became white as light. That is what transfiguration meant for Jesus. Transformation should have somewhat the same effect in our life. We should be changed, so that the world looking on can see something of Christ in us. We are supposed to be changed from glory to glory into his image. And if we're transformed, we become the representatives of God that we ought to be, and we are living pleasing to the heart of God. Some sort of change is to take place in our lives as Christians that is as dramatic and real as that witnessed to a few chosen disciples on a mountaintop. And the Bible tells us it is to come about by the renewing of our minds. Now, this is really interesting to me, because I thought, you know, why didn't God say in his word, you will be transformed by going to the mountaintop to a women's retreat. After all, Jesus was transfigured when he went to a mountaintop, and it was just, you know, with a few disciples, and it was, you know, you've read about how marvelous it was, just those marvelous inner circle Christians. Well, you know, I'd like it to work that way, wouldn't you? And there is transformation that takes place in our lives when we go up to the retreats and we're with just Christian women loving Jesus and in the word all day long and manage to pray and seek him and receiving all these wonderful things. But this is not the transformation that God is telling us to, through Paul, telling us to have. I love this mountaintop experience. I enjoy it. But he didn't say you're going to be transformed by going up to the mountain. Now, in the Old Testament, there was a man named Naaman, and he had leprosy. Leprosy is a symbol of sin all through the Bible. And Naaman was told to go dunk in the muddy Jordan seven times, and the leprosy would be gone, and there was a visible sign of the healing. Now, a lot of us, as much as we hate muddy water, would prefer to go dunk in Jordan seven times. After all, that means a fun trip to Israel and, you know, and wouldn't you like it, you know, the trek to Mecca that the Muslims have to make? Well, we'd like to have maybe a trek to Israel and visit all these places where Jesus might have walked and the tomb and all those things, and it would be a marvelous excuse to get to Israel, to go dunk in the Jordan to get rid of all of our sins and all these other things and be transformed. But God didn't say that's the way transformation was to come about in these scriptures. It's not by some great ritual, but simply by renewing of our minds. And in the long run, it's much harder than going to a mountaintop or dunking in the muddy Jordan. It really is. Because it takes a cooperation with the Holy Spirit in working. Renew means to make new. To make new. Begin to think the thoughts, have the desires, values, imaginations, dreams, meditations, intellectual pursuits and reasonings God desires us to have. Very different from the world. Very different from the world. We're told in Philippians 2.5, and please write this scripture down if you're taking notes. Let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus. Let his mind be in you. And if you can contrast it with the world's mind, it is so different. The mind of the world is being glorious, self-seeking, envious, competitive, after all kinds of lusts and things that do not please the heart of God. The mind of this present evil world is so different from the mind of Christ. What do we see in Philippians 2 there? As you read the description of Christ's mind in those verses, and I wish you would, and we're just going to touch very lightly for a moment. You see an attitude of humility. The opposite of self-seeking and competitiveness. Willingness to be a servant. Obedience unto death. We see it is very alien to the mind of this age. Okay, mind regeneration is the work of the Holy Spirit. And it is accomplished as we present our entire self, as we're told in verse 1 of Romans 12, to God. Regeneration of the mind is accomplished as we present ourselves to God, our entire being, our physical body, and our mind, emotions, and will. Out of that mind renewal does come a transformation. Something happens to you when the Holy Spirit regenerates or renews your mind. All of a sudden, you hate things you once loved. When you were born again, this should have happened to you, and it usually does. Our appetites are changed. The things we once loved we now hate. But as the works of the Holy Spirit, or God's working in our lives, there is, I didn't say that right, as the Holy Spirit works in our life to regenerate it, and He does His part, so there is a part for us to do. There is, as I said before, a cooperation on our part. For instance, in Colossians 3.2, it says, Set your affection on things above and not on things of this earth. That word affection in my King James Bible in the marginal reference says, Set your mind on things above. Now, the Holy Spirit gives you the power and the ability to set your mind on things above. But you have the choice. We choose whether we want to set our mind on things above or whether we want to fantasize and think about the things on this earth. Oh, if I just had this. Or if I just had him. Or if I just had that. You know, our minds thinking on the things of this earth. Because of this power of God within us, we are not slaves of our passions, nor are we chained to the world anymore. We've been set free from the world. And we are not under its control. We can choose. Remember I said the mind not renewed is self-seeking, competitive, envious, backbiting, malicious, conceited, vain and full of lusts and many other things. If you did your graph or your description of the ideal woman in the world, these are the things that she is. These are the things that she thinks about and wants to become. But it's not enough to just be set free by the power of the Holy Spirit from that control or to be renewed in our mind. We must submit ourselves willingly to God and refuse as children of the light to allow our minds to be conformed or shaped by this world's fashion or this world's thinking. So transformation comes through the renewing of our minds, not through mountaintop experiences and not through rituals, not through other ways except by presenting our bodies as living sacrifices unto God and having our minds renewed. Why do you suppose that God chose this particular way of transforming us? Well, first of all, in Proverbs 23, 7, it says, For as he thinketh, it's talking about a person, for as a person thinketh in his or her heart, so is she. For as a woman thinketh in her heart, so is she. And this particular proverb is referring to an evil man. And it's admonishing the man filled with God's wisdom not to have anything to do with him because it says, For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he. What you think upon, you become. For instance, if you think bitter, mean thoughts, you become a bitter, mean person, don't you? Have you ever started out a day all cheerful and happy and one of those mean thoughts came in your mind and all of a sudden your whole countenance was changed and you passed by a mirror and here's this angry, grumpy, mean-looking woman staring back at you and where did she come from? It's because she thought it in her mind and then pretty soon her face began to reflect. Then pretty soon if the phone rings, it reflects in her conversation on the phone. Have you ever been really happy in your marriage and you just adored your husband more than you ever have before and somebody called you up and they were so angry with their husband they couldn't stand the shoes he wore and all of a sudden, by the end of the conversation, you don't like your husband very well either? Has that ever happened to you? It's strange. What an effect the unrenewed mind has on other people. And as we think, so we are. Our influence is very strong. Whatever we think, we're going to put off on other people. That's why God in the Scripture and Proverbs reminded or told the man who's walking after godly wisdom not to be with this evil man because the evil man's influence that he thought in his mind and then became a part of his behavior would rub off on the godly man. We become what we think. Secondly, because sin, the original sin began in the mind, it was conceived in the mind of Eve, then was worked out in her behavior, we have to keep our minds under the control of the Holy Spirit. Now, in our age, the appetite or the desire might come from some stirrings in the flesh. For instance, I get hungry. My stomach starts doing funny things and it tells me, it relays a message to my mind, I'm hungry. But the decision of whether to eat or not comes through the mind, doesn't it? Now, I can give in to my stomach and, you know, sometimes we have false appetites, don't we? Have you ever been hungry when you knew you really weren't? You know, and you go out and you have this chocolate and, you know, when you're not really hungry and, you know, you do the craziest things, but the decision is made in the mind to do it. We could say no to our appetite, but it is amazing how often we don't. Now, the appetite can begin in the flesh, but the decision is made in the mind. With Eve, it was conceived in the mind. Sin, I believe, was conceived in the mind because she was in idyllic surroundings. Satan just talked to Eve. He planted a bit of doubt in God's goodness and integrity. And I go back to this and back to this and back to this because there is a little bit or a lot of Eve in every one of us. We are deceived by the same things Eve was deceived by and I keep wanting to stir up your remembrance to be aware of that. If the world has consciousness raising groups, how much more we should have spiritualness raising groups in the body. Okay, I think when Eve started in her dialogue with the serpent, she probably was just kind of, Hey, this is no big deal. I can handle this. Can't you kind of, you know, he's hanging from a tree. What's he got, you know? And, you know, I can just visualize her in my imagination. A little conversation with the world never hurt anyone. She could handle it. But how often we think just like that as we indulge our minds and thinking into just a little dialogue with this present evil world. It's movies. It's TV. It's books. It's all this stuff. Oh, you know, it's okay. I can handle that. It's not going to plant anything in my mind. And I'm too wise for that. The unrenewed mind. Do you know this encounter with the serpent that caused agony to God's heart? The crucifixion of his son. Our paradise lost is recorded in the King James Bible in just 128 words. If you take shorthand, you know, 128 words is not all that fast. Most of you in your second year of shorthand try to get up to 120 words and then you push on to 140. Nobody is talking terribly rapidly at 120 words a minute. So the conversations recorded probably didn't take a minute. I read it just for kicks to see how long it would take me to read it. You know how long it took me? The account of Satan's talk with Eve that brought all this into the world? 35 seconds. That's pretty thought-provoking, isn't it? 35 seconds. Her conversation that brought us all to that place of sorrow and suffering, a curse. I feel that one of the curses of our life as we see... Now, I happen to be very much in love with my husband. I don't consider it a curse. But a lot of women are under the curse of this. That her desire would be towards her husband and he would rule over her. And I see so many women still in love with their husband and they cannot... whose husband walks off and leaves them and they are still under the control of that desire towards that man after he's long gone and married somebody else even. It is a part of the curse. It really is. And I feel that 35 seconds it took me to read of her conversation with Satan. It doesn't take hours to move us in conformity to the world system. Only moments to plant a seed. And I think that is scary. When we consider how much we indulge ourselves into worldly things that we're programming into our minds. I'm really crying to you this morning. Watch carefully what you select on TV. I think that it is one of Satan's major tools to get to the minds of Christian women. I really do. And Christian men too. There are good things on TV. Be very selective. Be very selective. Don't let Satan plant this stuff in your mind through that method. One of the reasons why our lives cannot be transformed if our minds are not under the constant influence of the Holy Spirit by our deliberate yielding them to God as living sacrifices, we can't be transformed as long as our minds are under the control of this world or under the choice of choosing to think as the world thinks. And as trite as it might sound, it is a sacrifice to give up some special yummy TV program for Jesus. Because you know it might have an effect on your mind that wouldn't please His heart. It is. It's a sacrifice. I think we've all experienced it or gone through it to some degree. Something was on and you thought, oh, boy, I'd love to see that. And yet the review in the TV guide or the review in the paper says, uh-uh, there's stuff in that that you shouldn't be seeing, you shouldn't be viewing, you shouldn't be programming into your mind. And we, oh, just a little bit, it's okay. You know, and the seeds are planted and they do bear fruit. Okay, the third reason why I believe that God chose renewing of the mind for our transformation is, as I said in the beginning, as Christian women, we are well aware of the assault on women's minds. This is the method that feminists are using to entrap us. The Christian Reader, a little magazine I picked up at The Village for September and October of 1980, the issue, has an article on most of the current women's magazines. The Ladies Home Journal, McCall's, Good Housekeeping, Women's Day, Red Book, Cosmopolitan, Ms., and I forget what other magazines. And it tells how they are being used to shape our thinking on abortion, divorce, living together, pushing situation ethics. In other words, there is no right or wrong. It depends on the situation. The Ladies Home Journal had a bunch of angry feminist stages sit in in their office, and these feminists demanded changes to the feminist viewpoint, and I'm quoting right now, on virtually every subject from politics to textbooks to nuclear energy to sex and the family. And that reminds me of Cosmopolitan. You may have heard about its big survey of 106,000 women. I was interested in this article in The Christian Reader to know that Cosmopolitan has a circulation of 2 million, and McCall's and Journals and those other magazines have circulations of from 5 million to 7 million. And I thought, oh, praise the Lord, at least there are 4 or 5 million women that are not subscribing to this Pardon me. But the Cosmopolitan survey came out with these statistics, and I'm just going to give you two of them. One of their statistics, and this is how they're trying to shape your mind, is that one out of every two married women has had an affair. It's not true. It's absolutely not true. The second statistic was that 41% of those women who had had an affair while married said it didn't affect their marriage. Isn't that malarkey? And worse? It's stupid. Okay. Helen Gurley Brown, the editor of Cosmopolitan, did concede that if this poll or if this survey were taken by some other magazine, the statistics would be different. Because, you see, she says, we are trying to reach the 18 to 34 age group women, and they are the ones who read our magazines, and they're the ones that like this lifestyle. Okay, the women that answered that survey, I would never answer a survey like that, unless I wrote, Jesus Christ is Lord, and I pronounce judgment, or something, I don't know. You know, I mean, why should a woman expose her intimate life with her husband to anybody? I think it is terrible. I think it's sick, and I think it's disgusting. What you do in the bedroom of your home in a love relationship with your husband is nobody's business, and especially not a rotten magazine like Cosmopolitan. Right? Let's clap for the Lord in that. It's true. This is truth. But the problem is, young people between 18 and 34 read it, and some sweet little gal who's never had an affair with anybody, all of a sudden thinks, well, I'm not with it. Maybe there's something lacking in me. Maybe I'm not as sexy as I ought to be. If I were, maybe the guy next door would like me, or something. They're pulled into this, and then they go to the next statistic. Well, 41% said it didn't hurt their marriage. And then they go on the statistics. Some even said it helped their marriage. Oh, boy. You see how the world is presenting, how these deceptive tactics are coming in, and there are women who are buying this and believing it. And women of God, we have to have our minds renewed. There are Christian women who would believe that because they have not presented their bodies, their minds, soul, and spirit as living sacrifices unto God, and they are open to deceptive statistics of the world. And other than the evangelical churches today, where do we hear anybody speaking about morality, about walking with Jesus, about that's false, that's deceiving, it can warp you emotionally? I have heard some psychologists and some psychiatrists who were not evangelicals say that women cannot live the way they're trying to live today, that ultimately it is extremely damaging to the psyche. Okay. TV programs on Channel 28 and 50 this week tried to convince us that we are shaping our boys and girls into the role models they are by the conditioning. You know, they say we give girls dolls and we give boys trucks and therefore boys become macho and girls become nurturing. That is not true. God created us to be nurturing. Women bear babies and they feed their babies at their breasts. That is nurturing. The woman was meant to do this. God created her to do this. But can you see the work of the world again? Oh, the men should nurture the children. Now, I happen... Really? That's ridiculous. I happen to have Chuck, a marvelous dad, especially with babies. He would, you know, pick him up, and his dad was the same way, and pick him up and carry him around the house, and my boys are the same way, and changing a diaper was no big deal to him, and, you know, whatever. It just didn't bother him. Give him a little bottle of water or whatever. My husband was happy to do it, and his dad did it, and my boys did it. They were nurturing fathers in the sense that they took part in the development and raising of their children, and I am for that 100%. But I do not believe that the men are supposed to stay home and let the women go out to face this jungle of the world while the man stays home and takes care of the children. Now, there are cases of sickness or some sort of infirmity, and there are times when a man can't get a job and he's forced to stay home for a little while. But I haven't met one man yet. Now, I know there are some, and I'm not condemning them, but I haven't met one man yet that would rather stay home because, as Dr. Jobson says in his film on What Every Wife Wishes Her Husband Knew About Women, that men were created by God to go out into the world and work and support and protect their family. If we go back many, many years ago, even in America, the Indian men went out hunting and fishing and all those things while the women stayed around the wigwam. We see it in...we saw it in New Guinea where we were there. The women gardened and all this, but the men even walked in front of the women with their machetes, ready to fend...the women had to carry the big burdens. I didn't like this too well, but they did, because the men had to have their arms free to stop any animal or any person that would try to molest or to kill or in any way injure the wife and the children. And I believe that that is God's choice for us as men and women, but the world is trying to reverse it and say, hey, your kid would never... your little boy would never have liked trucks if you hadn't given them to him. And that is just not true. We had neighbors across from us in Los Arenos. They had six girls and one boy. This little punk was surrounded... I mean, this little doll was surrounded by... He's darling. I adore... I don't know where that came from. He's about 19 years old now. Chuck and I delivered him, so, I mean, you know, I adore him. But he was surrounded by dolls and frills and ruffles and stuff. And you know what he always went for? Trucks and cars and all that stuff. Never did go for that. And if ever there were female conditioning in the home, he would have been one that would have come under that and enjoyed playing house and dolls, which some boys do, and that's not wrong. I'm not saying that a boy can never pick up a doll. That's not what I mean. What I mean is what the feminists are saying, that we do by conditioning and we weren't born... Biologically, we weren't born... We weren't... whatever. Okay, I can't finish the sentence. And it gets to you. It really does get to you. You think you're not going to believe the lies. Jan, our oldest daughter, who's always walked with the Lord, all the way through all her schooling, was in Irvine, University of Irvine. And a doctor came in and told them that if they had a baby in their generation, that it would probably die of famine. And Jan decided not to have children. And I was so angry. I said, Jan, why would you believe him? Well, it's easy. I mean, he's the one with the brains. He's the one with the intellect. He's the one that's done this. She didn't say this. But, you know, that's the feeling that your kids have. What do you know, Mom? You know? But then God, in His sweetness and His wonderfulness, worked out a way where she couldn't wait to have a baby. And we have a little Katie Carlin in it. And so be patient, moms and grandmoms. Okay. There is a warfare on for your mind. And unless your mind is under the renewing power of the Holy Spirit, you'll be suckered in by the world's lies. Romans, the first chapter, don't turn to it, write it down, speaks of people who didn't like to acknowledge God when they knew Him. And they were turned over to reprobate mind. And reprobate means a mind void of judgment. They could not tell right from wrong anymore. Okay. Romans 8, in the Amplified, verse 5, tells us about a warfare between the flesh and the spirit. And the flesh is controlling of the mind and the spirit is controlling of the mind. In the Amplified Bible, chapter 8, verse 5, the latter half, but those who are controlled by the spirit's desire set their minds on and seek those things which gratify the spirit. And this morning, in the warfare for your mind, I want you to set your mind on the things that gratify the spirit and bring joy and pleasure to the heart of God. What is my part in renewing my mind? We're going to give you some steps. There are many, many more steps to take. As you search out the word, you might have a little place in your notebook that you call Steps to Mind Renewal. What is my part in renewing my mind? The Holy Spirit does His mind. He regenerates. He renews. You are under the control of the Holy Spirit, but you cooperate with the Holy Spirit in these ways. First, you must be in obedience to Romans 12, 1. You must present your entire self to God so His Spirit can create in you the desires and attitudes that please Him. We cannot have our minds, emotions, and will under the control of the flesh and expect to have a transformed life. It just doesn't work. So first of all, be obedient to verse 1. If you've never dedicated your mind, emotions, will, body, physical body unto Jesus Christ, do it. I just beseech you as Paul did. I beg, I plead, and all the rest of the things that you will present your bodies to Him as living sacrifices. Secondly, find out through His word what you should be thinking about. And there are so many scriptures on this. Colossians 3.2 that I've given you already. Set your mind on things above, not on things of this earth. Philippians 4.8 has so many things for you to think about. The things that are just, the things that are pure, lovely, good report. If there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things. And it definitely says, think on these things. This has helped me in my life immeasurably. We have had things come into our life that were so black and so sordid and my mind would get pulled into thinking about them and I'd just be pulled down into a pit. But as I would read this and God would say, K, you are not to think about that. You are to think on these things. If there be anything that's praiseworthy, think on that. Think on the goodness of God. Think of the parting of the Red Sea and the walking through the Jordan on dry land. Think about Jesus and what He said to His disciples and how He was when He was on earth and all these other things. Joshua 1a is such a good one. Joshua was going to go into battle and he probably was fearful. And God spoke to him and He said, Joshua, meditate in My Word day and night. Then you'll have good success and then you'll prosper. And it's true of you too. If you think on God's Word day and night, God will prosper you. Now, it may not be in great wealth of this world, but you will be so prospered spiritually that there isn't a possession on this earth that can draw you. Okay, and Psalm 1. Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly. But his delight is in the Lord, and in His Word does he meditate both day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water. And I read that and I just see myself, you know. That song, birds in the sky sing their songs to Him. Trees in the field lift their arms to Him. And you kind of feel like we had to do this in school. And I don't know if you did it in kindergarten. We had to be trees. And I can just see myself as a tree planted by the river water. And green foliage and all the marvelous things that develop from meditating in His Word and having our mind under the control of the Spirit. Okay, third step. Refuse. And this is where some sacrifice comes in. And you know, when I think of Jesus sacrificing His life, hanging on Calvary, and I talk about sacrifice, and I say give up a TV program, or a book, or a magazine, or a conversation, it seems so nothing. Sacrifice even seems like the wrong word, doesn't it? And yet, I will use it because it makes it clearer to us this morning. Refuse to fill your mind with things that would displease God's heart. Refuse to think about anything that is contrary to God's will for you. Rather, replace those thoughts with things of the Lord. Now, we don't want to just repress and sublimate and all that. We want to get those thoughts out of our minds, so we replace them. It's the best way. If you want to break a bad habit, the best way to break your bad habit is to replace it with a good habit. It's a replacing. So put God's thoughts in your mind and in your heart. Step 4. Ask God to alert you by His Spirit. The instant thoughts, fantasies, imaginations, any of these things, begin that would displease Him and keep you from the transformation in your life He desires. You don't want to continue being a caterpillar. It might be a good picture in your mind. When I think these things, I am a caterpillar. When I think on God, I am a butterfly. You know, for children, you use these pictures constantly because our mind does picture things. And it's one of the best ways to influence our thinking is to get the right picture in our mind. In fact, I have read it is the only way you can change your thinking, but I don't have to agree with that. However, it's a powerful way by changing the picture that's in your mind. Before you do anything, there is usually a picture in your mind of you doing the thing and then you decide whether you want to or not. Very interesting. Okay. In 2 Corinthians 10.5, verse 10.4 tells us that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, they're not fleshly, but they're mighty through God. And the weapons of our warfare can do this for us. And the weapons of our warfare are prayer and the Word of God. And this is what they can do. They can cast down every imagination, evil imaginations, any imagination that's not of God, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God. Prayer and the Word can cast down these imaginations and anything that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God and bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. Now, we are supposed to be doing that. And we do it through prayer and the Word, which are weapons of our warfare. Bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. You cannot help what comes into the mind, but you dare not let it find lodging there. Okay, pray that God will expose any thoughts, anything you're thinking about that displeases Him. We say, we sing, we recite Psalm 139 over and over again. Search me, O Lord. Try my thoughts or know my thoughts. We say it, but do we really mean it? Know my thoughts, Lord. And Lord, while You're looking, see if there is anything of wickedness in my thoughts. Anything that grieves You or brings pain to Your heart. God, try my thoughts. How many of us this morning, would like all our thoughts put on this screen? How many? And yet God knows our every thought. You know, when Jeff was a little boy, about two years old, I'll tell you he was two because I don't want you to think he was a dummy or anything, which he wasn't. He was a very bright little guy. But he used to stand in the living room and the kids got on to this trick. They would say, Jeff, let's play hide and seek. And he would close his eyes because if he couldn't see us, he thought we couldn't see him. And you know, we're that way with the Lord because we can't see Him. We think He can't see us. But He can. And He does. And He does try your thoughts. But you can give Him permission to try your thoughts and expose them for what they are, displeasing to Him. And then comes the cleansing. The results. First of all, this beautiful, beautiful transformation. The butterfly life, not groveling caterpillars. The freedom to soar. The beauty to behold. Other people looking at a caterpillar enjoy it. It's very rare to be anyplace and see a caterpillar go by, I mean a butterfly go by that you just don't stop and kind of catch your breath, don't you? There's just a beauty in their wings and all the varieties. I believe that God put butterflies here and the caterpillar just for a spiritual analogy for us. And we just stop and you kind of catch your breath and enjoy this special little creature that's so fragile and so beautiful. The transformation is one of the results of the mind renewal. And it's the one that the Bible promises. Also, there's peace in our heart. Part of the work of this transformation is peace. I was interested in reading a commentary by G. Campbell Morgan, not the whole thing, but a little portion of it, where he said, fear was the first emotional consequence of Eve's dialogue which led her to sin. I hate fear. I hate it in any form. I don't mean the godly fear, which means an awe and a respect and reverence for God, but the kind of fear that just makes you afraid. I don't know if you're like I am, but I used to wake up at night just terrified. I don't know why there was a burglar in the house. And I don't know how Chuck bore with it. He used to get so angry with me. And he saw this cartoon one time that the burglar had gotten in the house and he was stealing the silver or something. And the husband went downstairs and he took the burglar by the hand and he said, would you please come up and meet my wife? She's been wanting to meet you for years. Chuck thinks that's funny. But when our mind is renewed and we're thinking the things that God wants us to think, we have peace. Philippians 4.9 says when we think on these things that we're supposed to think on in Philippians 4.8, that God's peace will be with us. So you see, it isn't just for the transformation that will take place that others can see or just for the transformation that makes you pleasing to God, but also there's a transformation that peace comes into your life. Fear is scattered. Fear is taken away. There's a trust of God and what He's doing in your life that nothing else can work out except this renewing of your mind in cooperation with the Holy Spirit. At the retreat, Redona told, I mentioned her book to you, Tomorrow You Die, and I told you, I think, a little bit about her going into Albania to leave Bibles. And Albania was the first declared atheistic country in the world. They would have nothing religious. Bibles had to be burned. It was very, very dangerous for Redona to do this, and she was apprehended. She was taken before these interrogators and kept up late at night and went without food and water and all this sort of thing. And then they finally, I think, after the first interrogation, I need to review the book again, but they said, Well, tomorrow you die. And she felt she just had a few hours left to live. And she said at the retreat, You know, I felt such peace. She said, I had such peace, but you know, she said, I didn't gain that peace at that moment in that room. She said, You know where I got this peace from God? I got it back in Lusanne in my daily devotionals one day reading the Word of God. And I was reading Psalm 23 and verse 4 came off the page, Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. That's when the preparation was made in the mind so she could stand it. Mighty macho men have been broken by interrogators. They have been brainwashed. They have been changed. But when your mind is renewed on a daily basis in Jesus Christ through His Word, through prayer, through meditating on His Word, through refusing the world's garbage, when your mind is centered on Him, then in those times of stress and trial and heartache, you stand strong and peaceful and victorious in Him. I do know myself when I've gone through the darkest trials, it was the preparation of my daily devotional life in Him that in the middle of the night I'd wake up crying and His Word would come back and fill me. And I'd go, Oh, thank you Jesus. Go back to sleep. Our minds have got to be under the control of God's Holy Spirit. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Shall we pray? I do believe, Father, that it is much easier to give this lesson than it is to walk in it. And I can give you a lesson, Lord, under your anointing, but I can't make the women walk in it. So I ask this morning that your Holy Spirit convince each one of us of the truth that was brought forth. Lord, help us to know without a question of a doubt that the world is warring for every one of our minds and Satan is subtle and he'll deceive us on any level he can and any way he can. And I ask God that your Holy Spirit will really at this very moment do a work in each one of our minds that will cause us to long daily to have our minds renewed in You. How grateful we are for the work of the Holy Spirit which brought a mind renewal at conversion. And He continues to do His work. And we thank You that He does. But may there be that work in each one of us where we willingly submit our minds to be fed by You, to be nourished by You, that every choice and decision that comes out of this thinking part of our being will be in conformity to Your will and Your plan for us. Oh God, work a work among Your women that every woman in this room might be so transformed that the world will stop and catch its breath at the sight of godly women that walk with You. Oh God, we are so sickened by Christians living the caterpillar life. We ask that You will deal with every one of us this morning, every single woman in this room, that she'll renounce that place of walking earthbound and she'll desire to be loosened, to soar and have wings, to be above all that, to see herself as seated in heavenly places with You. Oh, I thank You for the work You're going to do among Your women today. Thank You for allowing us to be here. Our request we ask in the precious name of Your Son Jesus, Amen.