©1999 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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6/13/99
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Dwell On These Things
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Phili. 4:8
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6/13/99 DWELL ON THESE THINGS
Phil. 4:8 ¶ Finally, brethren, whatever is
true, whatever is honorable, whatever is
right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely,
whatever is of good repute, if there is any
excellence and if anything worthy of praise,
let your mind dwell on these things.
I cannot bring myself to part from this verse
without spending one more morning with it.
Our time the past two weeks
have been invested in looking at
some of the consequences of not doing
what Paul calls us to do in this verse.
Sometimes we need to do that.
Sometimes it is of value
to become aware of the traps
and the lies that war against our health as
God's people.
But I don't want us to leave this verse
until we spend a little more time
looking at it from the positive side.
If you have been with us the past two weeks
you know by now the importance
I see Paul placing on the choices we make
about what we choose
to focus our thinking on.
You see, underlying this statement
that Paul makes here in Phili. 4:8
there are several probably obvious
but extremely important assumptions.
1. One of those assumptions
is the understanding that
our mental activity,
our ability to think, to reason,
is a highly valued,
strictly limited resource.
We've already talked about the way in which
we can only focus our minds
on one thing at a time.
And then each day
we have a limited number of hours
in which to use our minds.
When we tuck our tired little bodies into bed each
night
there is nothing we can ever do
to retrieve the hours of the day
we've just lived through.
Whatever we chose to do with those hours,
and whatever investment we've chosen to make
with our minds
has become a permanent part
of who we are.
Have you ever watched a movie
and at the end of it said to yourself,
"I can't believe I invested
two and half hours of my life
in that stupid film!"?
I'm certainly not trying to depress us all
with the shortness of life,
but I see one of Paul's crucial underlying
assumptions
in his comment to us here in Phili. 4:8
being the healthy realization
that our thinking time
is a limited resource.
We've only got so much of it to invest.
And "INVEST" is perhaps
one of the best words I could use
to emphasis the concept
being presented in this passage.
We understand the concept of investment
when it comes to money.
We also understand the concept
of limited resources.
Most of us only receive
a limited, fixed amount of money
each week
or each month.
Some of it we must invest
in the necessities of life - food, shelter, utilities.
Some of it we choose to invest
in non-essentials
that we feel enhance our quality of life.
And some of it we may choose to invest
in things that bring us greater return.
Our allotted daily quantity of mental energy
is exactly the same way.
Some of it we must invest
in the necessities of life.
But the rest of it
truly is ours to invest
in whatever we choose to invest it in.
2. And the second underlying assumption
is the realization that
we are the ones who decide
where our mental resources are invested.
It is truly under our control.
Now I do not want to take
a relatively simple
yet vital survival principle
and turn it into a dry, academic study,
but the beginning of effectively using
this survival principle
is honestly acknowledging that
we have tremendous control
over the thoughts that dominate
our minds.
And I don't know how else to communicate this
other than to just be simple and direct
about what I see Paul saying.
If we find our minds
filled with negative thoughts,
filled with death and dying,
filled with crushing, heavy burdens,
it is because that is what we
have chosen to fill it with.
And before you think I'm not being fair
let me tell you why I say that.
The world we live in
is a world in which everything
and everyone is deeply scarred
with flaws
and failures
and sins
and problems.
Right now nothing is as it should be.
Everything has something wrong with it.
Every day we live
will bring with it something
and usually lots of somethings
that are nasty
or ugly
or painful
or offensive.
Every day someone will die
and someone will get sick
and some place will be too hot
and some place will be too cold
and some hideous disaster
will strike another group of
people.
And every day
we will also be exposed
to new examples of the faithfulness of our
God,
and new glimpses into His love,
and new opportunities to see Him
turn evil into good in our lives,
and we will be exposed to
new aspects of the beauty
He has woven into every molecule of this
physical creation.
Lam. 3:21 This I recall to my mind,
Therefore I have hope.
Lam. 3:22 The Lord's lovingkindnesses
indeed never cease, For His compassions
never fail.
Lam. 3:23 They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.
Lam. 3:24 "The Lord is my portion," says
my soul, "Therefore I have hope in Him."
Lam. 3:25 The Lord is good to those who
wait for Him, To the person who seeks
Him.
Every day we live
each of us chooses what we will focus our
mind on that day.
If we choose to fill our minds
and force our emotions to process
the endless flood of death and dying
and pain and sickness around us
then our day will also be filled
with a sense of bleak, empty, hurting
helplessness.
And life will be a painful, heavy burden.
If, however, we choose to focus our minds
on the evidences of our God
and His eternal faithfulness to us
seeking out and savoring
the glimpses of His kindness
and His healing
and His beauty that fill our days,
those choices will feed and strengthen our spirits.
Every person we ever meet
will have broken places within them,
things we don't like,
things that offend us.
And they will also have
special gifts they can offer us,
special ways in which they can reveal to us
the creative splendor of our God.
With every person we meet
we choose whether we focus on
their brokenness
or the good within them.
Every project we will ever come in contact with
will have flaws,
scratches,
things that just are not quite right about
it.
And every project will also have within it
things that are good.
We choose which we focus on.
EX. About fourteen years ago
I got this crazy idea
that I could build our own house.
Prior to that summer
the biggest thing I'd ever built
was a plant stand.
During that building process
there were several times
when I made frantic phone calls
to a friend of mine who was a
professional builder.
He always did everything he could
to talk me through whatever my most recent
disaster happened to be.
When I finally finished our house
there were thousands of things I had done
wrong,
or poorly.
Some of them were glaringly obvious.
Some of them I have been able
to go back a redo since then.
But I remember the day my licensed contractor
friend came over
to look at the house after I finished.
I know that, to his trained eye
there were flaws and defects
everywhere he looked.
But when he finished that tour
he didn't mention even one flaw,
or one defect,
and the only thing he said was, "You did great,
Larry."
I treasure that memory
as one of my personal favorite examples
of a person choosing to look at the good.
The principle Paul is presenting to us
has application to every aspect of life.
Every situation we ever go into
will have both positive and negative elements to
it.
We are the ones
who choose what we see
and what we come away from that situation
with.
Every church, every group of Christians
we are ever involved with
will have both strengths and weaknesses -
things they're doing right
and things they're totally blind to.
We decide whether we drink from the gifts
God is seeking to offer us
from our fellow believers,
or whether we attack them
for their failure
to live up to our expectations.
Should I bring it closer to home?
Every husband and every wife
brings to their partner
both good things
and bad.
Every married person decides
whether they will bring to their marriage
a heart of gratitude
for the good God has given them through
their mate,
or a heart of criticism
and anger
and resentment
for the places they feel their mate
has fallen short of their expectations.
...whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is right, whatever is pure,
whatever is lovely, whatever is of good
repute, if there is any excellence and if
anything worthy of praise, dwell on these
things.
Every job,
every school,
every teacher,
every circumstance that touches us
presents us with the same choice -
will I invest my mental energies
into finding what's wrong here,
or will I invest my mental energies
into discovering what's good,
or what my God can turn to good in my life?
And to help us make this
as practical as possible,
I'd like to share with you
an approach I follow personally
and one that I consider crucial
to my own mental health
and stability as God's child.
Because I live in this world
my life will be touched by evil.
I, like every other human being,
will have my own personal allotted amount of
hurt,
and suffering,
and pain,
and loss.
Then, added to this,
because I am a Christian
my Lord will give me eyes
so see some of the consequences of sin
in the world around me,
and give me both the desire
and the ability to help counter
some of those consequences.
It just comes with being
His child in this present world.
I have found it to be of tremendous value
to mentally divide up the evil in the world
around me
into three distinctly different groups
and to relate to each group
differently.
#1. First of all there is the evil
that intrudes into my life personally,
those areas of loss,
and hurt,
and weakness,
and sorrow that I cannot avoid
and cannot control.
Two crucial principles
govern my relationship
to these areas of evil.
A. I will find my Lord adequate
to bring me through the pain.
He has promised that He will never leave me and
never forsake me.
He has promised that He will never allow me to be
tested beyond what I am able to endure.
And He has promised that no circumstance will ever
enter my life
that is of such a nature
that it will separate me from the reality of
His love.
B. Not only will He go through the pain with me,
but He will actually transform it
into good in my life.
Rom. 8:28 ¶ And we know that God
causes all things to work together for good
to those who love God, to those who are
called according to His purpose.
It's not just a nifty Bible verse,
it is the absolute commitment
of the living God
to His children.
And at those times when I am confronted with evil
my calling is to seek to thank my Lord
for whatever of Him I can see in the
situation.
#2. Then there is another whole area of evil I
confront,
evil that has not affected me personally,
but evil God has given me some jurisdiction
over.
By that I mean
that He has given me the ability
to contribute to the healing process.
He has allowed me to enter that battle
in a way that helps bring truth,
or kindness,
or deliverance,
or comfort.
In other words,
He has given me the high honor
of being used by Him
to help reverse a little of the
consequences of sin in this world.
He gives every one of us that honor
every day we live
in the situations
and lives He places us into.
In those situations
my calling is to discipline my mind
to focus on the healing
and the truth
and the deliverance
He wants to bring out of the situation.
Our actions can and will make a huge difference
in the lives of others
when we allow God to guide us
into the battles He has equipped us to
fight.
#3. And then there is a third group of evil.
And this is the group where Paul's principle
here in Phili. 4:8
becomes all important.
And this is also the point at which
I may sound
like I am out of touch with the real world.
This third group includes all that evil in the world
that does not touch me personally,
and over which God has not given me
any ability to bring any amount of
healing.
In other words,
I can do nothing about it,
and I can do nothing to change it.
And with all of that evil
as much as possible
I choose not force my mind and my
emotions to process it.
I don't read the obituaries.
I don't read the detailed accounts
of the latest tragedies
in our world
or in our community.
I don't watch the movies
or the programs
that bombard my mind and my emotions
with other people's pain
that I cannot help relieve.
I have only so much mental energy.
I have only so much emotional energy.
I cannot and I will not squander it
on processing evil and tragedy
over which I have no control.
Let me just see
if I can pull together in a phrase or two
what I believe God is saying to us
through this passage in Phili. 4:8.
Our God is absolutely adequate
to bring us through any evil that touches our
lives personally
and to bring us through with victory
and praise to Him.
Our God has also carefully chosen
to place each of us into the battle of life
in a way that allows us
to effectively combat
some aspects of the evil surrounding
us.
Who we are
and what we do can and will make
a huge difference in our world.
But if we choose to invest huge quantities
of our mental and emotional energies
into attempting to process evil
over which we have no control,
it will rob us of the energy we need
for the work He has called us to do.
Phil. 4:8 ¶ Finally, brethren, whatever is
true, whatever is honorable, whatever is
right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely,
whatever is of good repute, if there is any
excellence and if anything worthy of praise,
dwell on these things.