Renewal of the Mind — Richard Sipley

The Renewing of the Mind and the Will of God

Romans 12, verses 1 and 2. I'm sure that many of you memorized this passage of Scripture many years ago. I have no idea when I memorized it. I have known it for many, many years, and yet, until God revealed to me the truths that are here that I want to share with you tonight, I hadn't any idea of the impact of this passage and what it could do for my life and what it could do for many others.

I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies, a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. Now, most of us know that verse, but many do not know the next one.

And be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. I believe that everyone who has met God in revival or in any deep sense desires with all of his heart to live and walk in the perfect will of God.

Now, I say he desires it because I believe that's true, but many times, even though we desire it, we do not attain to it. Why? I have been working with the revival movement now since 1974 very closely and have been a part of it and serve on the board of Canadian Revival Fellowship, and I have been involved in many movings of God where I have seen his power.

I've seen God's people meet him at a very deep level and seen their heart's desire to give everything to Christ and be filled with the Spirit and live and walk in the perfect will of God. And yet I have seen much disappointment in the hearts and lives of many very precious, sincere children of God.

Why? Well, there are a number of reasons, but I believe that one of the principal reasons is because they do not have a clear understanding of what God means when he talks about the renewing of the mind.

And that's our subject tonight. Many years ago there was a man who had been convicted of a very serious crime and he was put in prison for 40 years. At the age he was when he was put in prison, it was not likely that he would get out until he was a very, very old man if he in fact lived out his term.

Freedom After Long Bondage

But after he'd been in there a long time, his behavior was such that it came time for his parole to be considered, and when the board considered the possibility of parole for him and considered his record, they decided that his record was quite good and he had already served many years of the 40-year sentence, and they decided they would let him out.

And so the day came when he was to come out of prison and everything had been prepared for him and there were friends and there were state officials who were going to try to help him to get established in a new life, and so they had set up a program for him, they had found a job for him, they had found advisors who could help him, he had a rooming house with a room and some things to get him started in life, and now he was to leave the prison and he was to go to his rooming house and then to his job the next day and begin his new life.

And the afternoon came that he walked out of the prison and there were the high walls and the guards walking on the walls and the towers where they watched and where the great searchlights were, and he'd been behind these walls many, many years, never been outside.

And his whole life had become totally wrapped up in that prison and everything that it signified and his entire schedule was totally occupied with what took place in the program and schedule of that prison.

And he walked out the door and those huge iron doors clanged behind him and he was out on the street free. And as he began to walk down the street there was a guard walking on the wall that had gotten to know him over the years and had even become good friends.

And so the guard saw him walking and knew of course that he was going out on parole and he called down and he said, hey Jack! And the ex-convict stopped and he looked up and he said, yes, John? He said, Jack, listen, he said, I want to ask you a question.

He said, what is it? He said, Jack, tell me, what is it like to be free? Well, John, Jack stood there and he thought for a moment and turned that over in his mind and finally looked up and he said, John, it's too soon.

I don't know. I can't tell you. I'll tell you later. But that stirred something in his mind. As he walked down the street, he said to himself, I must come to grips with this and understand what it's like to be free.

I have been, I have been absolutely enslaved and in bondage for all these years. I have been a prisoner and my whole life has become totally shaped by this prison. Now I have to see if it's possible for me to be free.

And so as he walked along, an idea came to his mind and he went home and he went into the boarding house and went down in the basement. He looked all around and he found a bottle. It had been a whiskey bottle.

It was one of these tall bottles that had, you know, a narrow top and then it, it broadened out like that and then came down that way. So he set this bottle up on a shelf and then every day as he went to work and came home and wherever he went, he looked for little pieces of wire of all kinds.

He said, I'm going to do an experiment about what it's like to be free when you have been in bondage for many years. And so he would pick up little pieces of wire and he would come home and go down in the basement and drop them down in this bottle.

Now, some pieces of wire were thin and some were thick and some were long and some were short, some were stiff and some were soft, some were curled and full of spring and some were very straight. And he kept dropping them down to the bottle until it began to get full.

And then he would push the pieces of wire in and many months went by and he kept pushing it in and pushing it in. And then he had to just force the wire down the bottle and he kept jamming it in and jamming it in.

You know how it did. It got all intertwined and tangled until it was just a mass of wire in that bottle. And he kept forcing it in until he could not get one more piece of wire in and about six months had gone by.

And then one afternoon after he had finished work, he said, now I'm going to see what it's like to be free. And so he took the bottle and he laid it out on the concrete floor of the basement and he took a hammer and with one blow he shattered the glass and it flew in every direction and the wire was free.

Ah, but he discovered something very interesting. In fact, it was something he had sort of suspected would be true. He found that some pieces of wire immediately sprang loose from the mass and laid out completely free and independent on the floor.

He found that some pieces of wire were half free sticking out from the mass, but he found that the great mass of the wire was totally intertwined and was in the shape of its imprisonment. For it had been in that bottle imprisoned so long and so tightly that had had taken on the shape of its imprisonment.

And he found that he had to take each strand of that wire and disentangle it and pull it loose one strand at a time to get it free. Technically it was free, but in experience it was still in bondage. That is something like what happens to the human mind when a person surrenders to Jesus Christ.

A person has been living in bondage to sin and they don't have to have been an unbeliever all this time because my friends, I became a Christian when I was seven years old and you can't get in a lot of trouble by the time you're seven.

Especially if you're brought up in a Christian home like I was and you had a mom and dad like I had. And my father would have board meetings with me and he knew how to apply some pressure to the seat of my knowledge or some other seat.

It somehow got from here up to here. And he was very strict but he was very godly and I did not want to displease my dad. And I want to tell you that by the time I was seven I hadn't gotten in too much trouble.

And so I became a Christian when I was seven but I had a number of years to live and to grow up and to be a teenager before God really got a hold of my life completely. And during that time I developed many sinful habits in my life.

And then came the day when I was a teenager when I wanted to surrender fully to God and I wanted him to set me free. And I was very serious about it. And you know that the Word of God says that whomsoever the Son shall free he shall be free indeed.

Do you believe that? Well it's true. It's absolutely true. God says it's true and it's true. It's true in fact in God's heart and mind and it's true in fact in what he's done for us and what he will do for us and what he is doing within us.

But in our personal experience we may find that over the years we have formed various kinds of sinful bondage until our life has taken on the shape of our sins. And this is especially true with the mind.

For the mind is a kind of an instrument that forms thought patterns that are very strong and very powerful and very difficult to change. And I want to tell you that by the time I became a young man even though I had been saved when I was seven and I had wanted to be a Christian and live a Christian life all those years and I knew Jesus was in my heart.

By the time I became a young adult and really was wanting God to fill me and bless my life in my mind I had developed many many sinful thought patterns and my thought life had taken on the shape of the sinful bondage into which I had put myself over the years.

And of course there are many who weren't saved when they were seven like I was saved. And I deal with many people who didn't come to Christ until they were adults or until they were 18 or 19 or 20 or up in their young adulthood or even in the middle of life and married and had children and family and were going on with life and then they came to Jesus Christ and they have many many years many years of filling their minds with the things of this world and with sinful thought patterns.

And those sinful thought patterns have become very powerful and very strong and their whole thinking processes have taken on the shape of their sinful life. And then they come to the Lord Jesus Christ and they repent of their sin and they hate what they have done and they despise what they have been and God has convicted them for all the sinful thinking they have done all through the years.

And they want to be free from it and they confess it at the foot of the cross. And I want you to know the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses away every sin, every sin. Amen. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us, to cleanse us, to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Hallelujah. And no matter how there's no sin too deep the Calvary isn't higher, is that what you're saying? Amen. It's like putting it on the bottom of the sea and the whole ocean covers it. And God forgives us and he takes it away as far as he's concerned.

It's forgiven, it's cleansed, it's gone forever. Do you believe that? Yeah, but what about your experience? Ah, now I'm speaking to your condition. Because even though you're very sincere in wanting your life totally changed and you know God has forgiven you and you hate the past and you don't want your mind to be in bondage to the sinful thought patterns of the past and you're trying to live the Christian life and you're reading your Bible and you're praying and you're going to church and you're listening to the sermons and you're getting involved in Christian service and you're trying to live like Christ would have you live on the job, but you find that your mind, like the wire in that bottle, has taken on the shape of bondage in which it was formed and you find yourself in many ways unable to control your thought life.

And I have traveled in many countries of the world and I have preached to pastors and missionaries and Christian workers of all kinds and in different denominations and theological backgrounds, God's dear children, and I want you to know that everywhere I go I find that there is this problem that is defeating Christians and it's there after revival.

It's there after people have dealt with the self-life at the cross and they have been filled with the Spirit and many of them still have this problem. And the devil uses it to drag them right back down into defeat and to lie to them and tell them that all that God did for them God didn't do for them.

Because they still have a problem with their mind. Now what should we do about it? Well I want you to look at this scripture with me tonight that we have. The verse in Romans 12, the second verse. And be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Transformation Into the Image of Christ

Now first I want to take the word transformed. Transformed. I wonder if you'd be willing to help me with that word tonight. How many of you'd be willing to help me with it? Just just shake your head if you're willing to help me with the word transformed.

You say I'm not gonna shake my head until you tell me what I have to do. All right I'll tell you what I want you to do. I want you to get the word transformed up here by both ends with your hands. Will you do that?

Oh you're too proud to do that. Pride is a sin, okay? You got it up there? All right now what we're gonna do is pull it in half when I say go. Are you ready? Go. Pull that. Great. You can put your hands down.

Thank you. Your word came apart right where mine did. You see the first half of the word trans and the second half formed. That's right where it came apart. Transformed. Now trans means to be changed and formed means shape.

So this word means to be changed in shape. Oh yes that's great. I'd like to be changed in shape. Well we had some ladies in our church join the skinny class. They want they want to be changed in shape.

No that's not what I'm preaching about. No I'm not preaching on gluttony tonight. I'll do that another time on Thanksgiving Day. No I'm not talking about that kind of shape. What I'm talking about is the shape of our life and especially the shape of our minds.

You see when we're out there in the world our life is conformed to the world is shaped like the world is patterned after the world. Isn't that right? And then we come to Jesus Christ and God wants to change the shape of my life.

You want to change? Do you want to change? God wants to change the shape of my life and he and what he wants to do is he wants to take my life and change it in shape so that it's shaped after the image of who?

Of Jesus Christ. See that's what it says in Colossians 3 10. It says that we should be renewed in knowledge. See that's the mind the renewing of the mind after the image of him that created him. You see we are to be changed.

The shape of our life is to be changed into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. So God wants us to be transformed or wants our life changed in shape to make it like Jesus Christ and I believe that one of the greatest obstacles to that in the Christian life is the mind.

That's one of the greatest obstacles. Now you say well pastor simply why do you think the mind is so important? Well the mind is important because everybody thinks. Oh you say I know some people that don't think.

Well that's not true. Everybody really thinks. They just think differently than you do. That's all. I've done quite a bit of counseling in mental hospitals and they all think. Now you think that they think wrong and they think that you think wrong.

And I pastored in Tuscaloosa, Alabama once for a while and they have one of the biggest mental institutions in the world there. And one day there was a man who was driving into town. The mental hospital was just outside of town.

He was driving into town and he had a flat tire and there was a bunch of these folks working out in the field. So he had a flat tire and he got out and he jacked up the car and he took the wheel off and and he was he was putting on the new wheel and when he did he kicked his hub cap and he knocked all of his lugs, the nuts, the lugs, he knocked them all down a sewer drain that was right there.

And he stood there and he cussed and he threw down his iron and he was mad and he got red in the face and he didn't know what to do. And one of the men who was working in the field come over and said, say, said, if you want to get that wheel out and get in town, what you ought to do is take one lug off from each one of the other wheels and put it on that one.

You can put it on that'll get you into town. Which one needed to be out and which one needed to be in? You see, people think, everyone thinks, and people think all the time. Oh, no, you say, people don't think all the time because something happened to me because I wasn't thinking.

Oh, no. No, something happened to you because you were thinking about what you shouldn't have been thinking about and you weren't thinking about what you should have been thinking about. See, there's a, there's a really not, you know, most television ads make me sick to my stomach.

I don't know about you, but there's one that I like. This is one I like. And it shows a man driving a car. He's got a business suit on. He's driving a car and says, Mr. Jones is driving toward the corner of 25th Avenue and 5th Street.

And then it switches and shows another man driving his car in a business suit. And it says, also Mr. Brown is driving toward the corner of 25th Avenue and 5th Street. And Mr. Brown is thinking about his business instead of thinking about his driving.

And when they both get to the intersection, Mr. Brown is going to give Mr. Jones the business. I like that. It's an insurance advertisement. Yeah, Sunday you'll get that with a laugh right in the middle of the pastor's sermon.

Okay. That's the only good ad on television. People think even when they're asleep. How many of you ever dream? You dream? Yeah. I almost never dream anymore. I'm too tired to dream. When I go to bed, I just go to bed and I'm gone.

I don't dream because I'm too tired. But I used to when I was a kid. Man, I used to have the best dreams. They were thrillers in technicolor and widescreen. They were something else. People chased me and stabbed me in the back and I jumped out of windows.

You say, you must have had a terrible childhood. No, I didn't. I had wonderful parents. Don't analyze me. That's just the way it was. See, you think all the time. And let me tell you, with your mind, you can go anywhere and do anything.

Like I can stand right here and in one second, I can see myself in the home of Tom and Mary Kyle in Curitiba, Brazil. I can see it. Or I can see myself standing in the pulpit of the Pueblo Libre Church in Lima, Peru that seats 2 ,000 people.

See, I mean, that's simple, isn't it? Your mind just does it. See, there are things that some of you have done with your mind today that you hope to God you will never really do. Is that right? In fact, suppose I should tell you that I had one of these new electronic surveillance machines that the FBI has made and they were going to put the screen here in a moment and that this thing has a cone and I'm going to point the cone at somebody in this audience and you don't know who and it's going to play on the screen everything you've thought today.

And I put this thing up here and started to swing the cone. How long would it take to empty this place? See, I know because I'm human like you and I also know because there are thousands of people that tell me what they think.

See, I am totally conscious that there are thousands of God's Christians. I mean, born again, people that with all their hearts wish that they had victory and power and blessing, and they have been defeated for years with their mind.

And you're here tonight and maybe even heard about the title of this sermon. You're saying, oh, my God, I hope that man will say something tonight to deliver me in this area of my life. It's wrecking marriages.

It's destroying lives. It's ruining ministries. I preached a sermon on the mission field and I had one of our finest missionaries. I wouldn't even think of mentioning his name would be known all over the Christian Missionary Alliance and outside of it.

And he came to me and he said, Pastor, I'm so glad you preached that sermon. I've got to talk to you. And we talked alone. And he said, Pastor, if you hadn't preached that sermon today when I went home on furlough, I was never coming back to the field because I could not stand to go on trying to serve Christ for this problem.

So the mind is very important, God says, as a man thinketh. What? So is he. Well, you say now, wait a minute, wait a minute now, wait a minute. You see, my problem is the way I was brought up. You see, my problem is that I was brought up by ungodly people and I have had my mind exposed to things that preach.

If I were to tell you, you'd make you blush in shame. My friend, you couldn't tell me anything that would make me blush because I've heard it all. And my heart breaks in agony for the things that have been done to the minds of human beings when they were growing up.

And I had a couple flown all the way from the West. Somebody called me on the phone, said, listen, there's a couple. And the woman tried to stab her husband to death and she just missed his heart about that much.

And she stabbed him a number of times. Then she stabbed herself a number of times, thinking he was dead and trying to kill herself. Neither one of them died. And they were both in the hospital together.

And the police will not release them unless they can be counseled by somebody. And we want to know if you'll see them. And they flew them from one of the coasts of Canada to see me. And they are members of an evangelical church and have been Christians for many years.

And they sat in front of me and wept and wept and wept. And finally, I talked to this lady alone and she said, when I was eight years old, my stepfather began to use me sexually and he abused me and used me sexually from the time I was eight years old until I was 18.

And I got married to get out of that house. And she said and told me three different times in her life after that, when she had been abused sexually by men that were not her husband. And she told me a tale of woe.

And finally, she reached a certain point in her tale when she stopped and she just she just got the most awful look on her face and both of her fish clenched and she trembled from head to foot. And she said, I just want to hurt somebody.

I just want to hurt. There's been some awful things done to people's minds. And you say, yes, so it's not my fault. No, no, my beloved friend, man or woman, whoever you are here tonight, it's not your fault.

What's been done to you? Very likely it's not. But I'll tell you something, it's your fault after tonight if you don't do something about it, because by God's help, if you'll sit here tonight, I'm going to tell you what to do about it.

And I tell you, God will deliver you if you let him. Because I have seen people whose minds have had the worst possible things done to them, and they have been totally cleansed and totally delivered. And they are people filled with the spirit and on fire for God and filled with his joy.

And they have been free from their mental bondage for 20 or 30 years. And God can do it for you tonight. I pray God that he will. See, we're always blaming somebody else to say, well, it's not my fault.

You know, it's really the way I think is really the fault of my husband or the way I think is really the fault of my wife or it's my neighbor or it's somebody else or even do you know where the blaming game started?

In the Garden of Eden. Absolutely. And God said, Adam, what have you done? And Adam said it was her. In fact, what he said was it was the woman you gave me. Oh, we like to blame God. See, I know because I did this.

I went into prayer rooms and I wept and I prayed. Listen, I struggled and I agonized and I said, oh, God, deliver my mind. See, I'm an artist by nature and a poet and I'm that kind of a person. That's the way I made.

I love to read, man. I love to read. I went to a little country school and then I my folks moved to the city and I went to a junior high school and I walked in that library and I went berserk. I couldn't I didn't know there was anything like that.

I couldn't believe it. That library was full of thousands of books. I went crazy. And I just went down one shelf and up the other. And I read everything good. Bad and in between. And by the time I got into the ministry and I started out under the call of almighty God to preach the gospel, I had a bondage of the mind that I could not handle.

And I wept and I prayed and I cried out to God to deliver me. And I almost got to the place where I I don't think I ever quite said it's your fault, God. But I know some people who have talked to me who have made it mighty clear that they thought it was God's fault.

They've said, God, I've asked him to deliver me and he hasn't delivered me. I want you to know it's not his fault and it's not the fault of anybody who has had any effect upon your mind. Because God has a way to deliver.

Cleansing the Mind and Taking Responsibility

I want to read you a poem I came across because I think it expresses something that's going on today. We need to get our thinking totally changed because we've been brainwashed. Let me read this to you.

I went to my psychiatrist to see what he could find. And this is what he dredged up from my poor subconscious mind. When I was two, my mommy hid my dolly in the trunk. And so it follows naturally that I am always drunk.

When I was three, I had a bad relation with my brothers. And that is why now that I'm grown, I poisoned all my lovers. When I was six, I saw my father kiss the maid one day. And that is why I suffer now from kleptomania.

But I am glad to find at last the lesson this is taught that everything I do that's wrong is someone else's fault. It won't do. It won't do. It was a little boy who's going to help his mother one day.

And so, and she was busy. So he said, mother, I'll sweep out the basement for you. She said, that's good, Johnny, you go sweep out the basement. So he went down and he's sweeping out the basement, sweeping away, you know, and all at once a mouse ran out from under the sofa.

He said a mouse. And he took off after the mouse with a broom, you know, and the mouse ran the wrong way. And so he caught up with it and he smacked it with a broom and knocked it up against the wall, but it didn't hurt it too much.

And it started running again and he smacked it again and knocked it up against the other wall and now it couldn't run. So he ran over and it was crawling across the floor and he took that broom and he beat that mouse and he beat that mouse and he killed it about 10 times.

And when he got through, it was awful. It was smashed and bloody and horrible looking. And he was really excited over what he had done. And so he grabbed up the mouse by the tail and it was awful and dripping.

And he ran up the stairs as hard as he could go, shouting mother, mother, mother, mother. And he went in the kitchen and dining room and ran straight through into the living room. The only problem is he didn't know the pastor had come to call on his mother and the pastor was sitting right around behind the door in one of the best chairs, but he couldn't see him.

And he ran straight into the living room where he saw his mother sitting on the other side of the room, said mother, mother, mother. He said, I was down in the basement that this mouse ran out from under the sofa.

And he said, so I took after him with a broom and I hit him once and he wasn't dead. So he said, I hit him again and then he stopped running. And he said, and he wasn't still dead. So he said, and then, and then, and then he saw the preacher.

And he was horrified. He did a double take and he looked at the pastor and he said, and then, and then, and then the Lord called him home. Oh boy, it's not my fault. Oh, isn't it awful. The reason you're laughing so much is because you're so guilty.

Oh my goodness. The years that I was involved in that, you say, what am I going to do? Well, now listen very carefully. Things I'm going to say in these next few minutes can really change your life. I tell you, because he changed my life.

I wouldn't be standing here. I tell you, I wouldn't be standing here. I wouldn't be in the ministry. I don't know if I'd be married to my wife or what. I don't know what would have happened to me if God hadn't met me.

You say you couldn't have been. Yes, I was a Christian and I was, I was a Christian that met business and I had had the call of God and I had trained for the ministry and I was pastoring and I was very serious about the whole business, but I had a mind problem and I couldn't get victory.

Conforming to the World Versus Renewing the Mind

Now he says, be not conformed to this world. Now I want you to help me with this word. It's last time I'll ask you to help me tonight. So take the word conformed. It's pronounced conformed. Take it like this.

Are you all ready? When I say go, pull it apart. Are you ready? Go. Hey, you're good at that. Thank you. See, it came apart. Same place. The other one did. Here's the first part con and then formed. You already found out that form means shape, but con means like.

See, the other word means to be changed in shape, transformed, changed in shape, but conform means to be shaped like, and he says, do not be shaped like the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Do you know how people are shaped like the world in their lives? Listen carefully. We are shaped like the world by thinking the thoughts of the world after them. You better believe it. The reason that people struggle with Christian victory, one of the greatest reasons is because their minds are so full of the thoughts of the world and the thought patterns of the sinful life that their life keeps on being shaped like the world.

And they can't get their life into shape like Jesus Christ because their mind, their thought patterns are such. That they are conformed to the world, they are shaped like the world in their life and in their experience because their thoughts are the thoughts of the world.

And that's the reason. Can any of you quote the first Psalm? Anybody quote the first Psalm? Does anybody memorize scripture? Okay, some of you can. Now, I'm not going to get it all at once, but I am going to get the first verse.

Now listen very carefully to this first verse. Will you listen to it? Psalm one. Here we go. Don't even look it up. Just listen. Blessed is the man that walketh not, not, not, underline it, in the counsel of who?

Of the ungodly. See, one of the problems with God's dear people is they are filling their minds with the counsel and the thoughts of the ungodly. And I'm going to tell you, my brother and sister, if you insist on filling your mind with the thoughts and the advice and the teachings and the programs and the philosophies and the ways of thinking of the ungodly, if you insist on doing it, you're going to live like the ungodly.

And there isn't any Christian experience that will change it because the mind is that powerful. That's the way God has made it. Let me give you that sound. Listen. Oh, it's a gorgeous sound. Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.

But his delight, his delight is where? Is in the law of the Lord. And in his law does he meditate. He thinks about it. He turns it over in his mind. He memorized it. He fills his mind with it. How often?

How much? Day and night. And he should be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that bringeth forth his fruit in his season. And his leaf also shall not wither. And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

The ungodly are not so, but they're like the chaff which the wind driveth away. Therefore, the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish.