Your Thinking Is Making You A Slave

Last week I read a delightful post by Linda Nelson of the website “Monday Matters.” I enjoy the website and enjoy the authors’ insight into life and ministry.

Last week Linda Nelson told the story of her son asking for a special birthday present. We all know that just as Jesus said, we want to give good gifts to our children. The problem with this child was that the special birthday present he wanted was an elephant.

Linda Nelson described what they learned about elephants as they showed their son the “logic” of not owning an elephant. I think I might have just said the elephant is too big and costs too much.

She described what they learned.

~elephants are the largest land animals

~they are the only mammal that can’t jump

~when they want to communicate, elephants purr like a cat

~like people are right or left handed, elephants are right or left “tusked”

~elephants cry, play, and laugh

I enjoyed the thoughts of trying to tell a child with a heart set on an elephant that he couldn’t have one, but I especially enjoyed thinking about how you control an elephant.

Elephants are controlled by training them to think they aren’t more powerful than the chain around their leg and the stake in the ground. In reality, any full grown elephant can easily pull a stake out of the ground, but the elephant doesn’t know he can. He is chained not by the stake but by his mind. Over the years the elephant has been trained to think differently.

You and I are in the same situation. Our minds determine our future, our habits, and our very freedom. Too many of us are slaves to the way we think. It may be something a parent or another significant adult said. It may be something we picked up unconsciously. It may be a habit or addiction we think we can’t break. It really doesn’t matter where it came from; it simply matters that we believe it.

Paul told the Romans to be transformed by the renewing of their minds (Romans 12:1-2). We will not act differently until we think differently.

It is time for us to believe God over the things around us. We need to hear “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” We need to hear that the old man has died and we have been raised to the newness of life. We need to hear we are new creations in Christ. We need to hear that God loved us so much that He gave us His only Son.

What are you chained to that is keeping you from being free?

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3 Responses

  1. The wisest man I ever met was a body shop mechanic, a veteran from WWII, and a quiet soft-spoken Believer who had done 10 years of research in Baptist Church records. He had written a pamphlet and it, in conjunction with a question from him and the book of Jonah would change my view of everything. The main change would come in the way I viewed the Bible and the original theology of Southern Baptists, a theology which enabled and empowered a believer to be balanced, flexible, creative, constant, and magnetic.

    We are scarred to death of the idea that God might be absolute Sovereign, but George W. Truett got to the heart of the matter in his Address at the Centennial celebration of the birth of Charles Haddon Spurgeon in 1934 in London, when he said, “Calvinism pressed down on the brow of man the crown of responsibility.” Strange is it not, how we fear the truth of God’s Sovereignty today? Are we slaves to thinking, wrong thinking, about the truths that provided us with religious liberty and a nation of freedoms now in the process of being taken from us?

  2. I listened intently to the message from your pulpit in two services. With regard to the Elephant, much of the information and the point was previously heard. It is interesting (perhaps unintended) pejorative dismissive words are frequently used by people who would rather not face Truth. I have pondered on this morning’s presentation (your blog) all day and reviewed my steps since declaring before God and the Congregation: “wherever He leads I’ll go.”

    Dr. James Willingham, I would be interested in seeing that pamphlet and sharing notes. As one who answered the call to Ministry some 30 years ago making by “tub” sitting on Christ the Solid Rock, it has been an interesting journey. The illumination of personal “self-glorifying” agendas, destruction, lack of resolve, and competitive, dismissive attitudes in surprising places has been instructive. A church leader told me once, “There is a little larceny in everyone. Each has to decide how much they will tolerate.” I now understand why great ministries have crumbled. How humanistic relationships have dominated events leaving Christ (or in the O. T.: God) out of the equation. Occam’s Razor’s application is frequently applied without all the facts and without Christ. Most everyone would rather not be in contention with anyone. If one believes that the Devil is our adversary; an adversary which is wise knowing our frailties, then one must understand the relationship formula: Truth in Light is set up by Our Lord to work when we “agree together” on anything that would Glorify the Father through the Son, then the Holy Spirit is quickened. We can pray for Revival. However I must ask, has there ever been a revival without Acts of Faith? Just call me Stephen. There are many ways to stone to death, just as there are many ways to murder. There is an elephant, a chain and a stake. Power potential, content not to be bothered from its security or receive scorn from its master. Satan leaves his alone, for they are already his.
    Thank you!
    Blessings

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