Why Just Sermon a Sermon is Not Enough?

How many times have you heard an excellent sermon or message that inspired you to make some changes  in your life, but within a matter of weeks you were back to your old habits and routine? Kind of like those New Year’s Resolutions! The Bible says, you can’t put new wine into old wine bottles or you’ll ruin the new wine! If you have corrupted thinking, you’ve got to get rid of it before you can embrace new truth.

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Here is another example. Remember the parable of the sower? Your mind is like the soil in a garden.  Imagine a garden plot filled with weeds, worms, snails, and the like. You take a perfectly healthy plant and place it in the middle of that garden plot. What’s going to happen to it? Is it going to continue to grow  and thrive? Absolutely not! Before long the weeds and insects are going to devour it and suck out all it’s nutrients. That is the same thing that happens when we try and plant new truth, God’s truth, in a mind that is tainted with faulty mindsets, past conditioning, and falsehoods. Eventually the weeds are going to  take over again.

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Therefore, before we can truly embrace God’s truth we need to identify and get rid of the weeds planted in our minds: the negative thoughts and debilitating mind sets that we’ve accepted as truth.  They are choking out the word of God and causing our Christian walk to be unfruitful.

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If you don’t do anything about your mental garden, your mind and spirit will continue to war against each other. This is usually an unconscious pattern. For example, God’s word will tell you to give to receive, but your mind constantly tells you to hold on to everything you’ve got.  Your mind tells you to always get the last word, but God says to turn the other cheek and a soft answer calms the situation. Again, your mind tells you to work hard and strive for success, yet the Bible says, seek God’s kingdom first and everything you need will be added unto you.

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If you don’t address the false thinking that contradicts God’s word, you’ll continue to be what the Bible calls “double-minded” and because we continue to waver in our desires and beliefs, we can’t receive anything from God.