What Went Down–15 September 2010

After a quick “tea-party” in the garage, Sue Fuller took us for youth today, in Alex’s absence. We discussed the topic “Battlefield of the Mind” and started with a reading from Philippians and a Proverbs passage after that. Here’s a quick summary of what we discussed:

• Thoughts are like seeds, if watered they will grow and flourish; this means both Godly and ungodly thoughts: if we “sow” Godly seeds, things like love, forgiveness, humility and service will then flourish. If we “sow” ungodly seeds, we’ll get unforgiveness, anger, rudeness and selfishness.
• The New Age way tells us that if YOU believe it, you can do it, God’s way is completely opposite; He says if you believe HIM, by HIS WILL will you do it.
• Our words and actions come about as a result of our thoughts, as the Bible says, “Whatever the heart is full of, the mouth overflows with.”
• Past pain cannot justify bad thoughts and words about those pains today. In the words of Joyce Myers, “Our past pain may explain why we are suffering but it must not be an excuse to stay in bondage.”
• Jesus promised he would se the captives free, that includes those who He destined to be freed from bondage and evil influences.
• The Holy Spirit reveals God’s wisdom to us, the question is do we hear? We beg God for direction and decisions in our lives, but then we’re so busy that God’s words never reach us: we’re just too busy to hear his answer! Satan wants to overload and overwork our minds so we can’t hear God: that’s Satan’s biggest tool against God: our busyness.

There are 6 different types of “mind” we need to make sure we get back to reality from if we get stuck in them (and boy do we!):

The Wondering Mind: When we’re talking to someone, in church or even praying, our mind wanders to wondering other things, usually inane stuff like what the weather will be tomorrow, and the like.

The Confused Mind: When we hear something from God, we reason against the logic of His statement (God can’t seriously mean that?) and wonder what he “really” means by what He’s telling us.

Doubting Mind: Similar to the Confused Mind, but this happens when a person doubts that their faith is good enough to do something;  they pray for healing for a terminal cancer patient, yet that patient dies. They begin to question their own faith, but they don’t realize that death for Christians is the ultimate healing!

Judgemental Mind: Just like the Bible passage regarding you trying to get a speck out of your brother’s eye while you’ve got a plank in your own eye, we need to remember God is the ultimate Judge, and we are not God.

Passive Mind: We need to keep our minds active in God, else we’ll end up like this, being lukewarm, and we read in the Bible the Jesus “spits out” lukewarm Christians.

So to fight these negative “minds” we need to:

1. Read God’s Word more
2. Praise Jesus often
3. Establish a relationship with Christ through prayer.

Lastly, right thinking has nothing to do with Salvation. Yes, once you’re saved it helps, but IT WON’T GET YOU THERE.

Remember, words are a powerful thing, your mind perceives what you say as truth, that’s scientific.

Thanks to Sue for a very engaging session while Alex was away this week.

What Went Down–1 August

Sorry about the late post…

The first session in August was a good one indeed, we had a full house today with Daffu, Jess, myself, Marc and his mates from SU (that’s Scripture Union) namely Deo and Mik. Alex led us through a very absorbing discussion on prayer, which we got from the UCG site. I’ll quickly go over what we chatted about:

1. Some people wanted counseling from an older brother they never had during our tough teenage years; it’s nice to know we have someone we can talk to, even if we don’t know it sometimes: yes He, our Father God, is here for us.
2. We need to remember that God has been in human form so he knows what we as teenagers face even today!
3. Christ has empathy for us, that’s comforting because he KNOWS and doesn’t just say “I understand.”
4. We must come to Christs’s Throne of Grace and bring our problems with us. One thing to remember though is if we bring our problems to the foot of the Cross, we mustn’t take it with us again when we leave!!
5. Looking at the Lord’s prayer, it pretty much sums up our relationship with God. We have to know how much God has blessed us, but yet we are allowed to ask God for our needs, just we must remember it’s His will, not ours!
6. Alex put it very well: We need food every 4 weeks, water every 4 days and air every 4 minutes. That’s what we need. Now if you think about it we have a lot more than what we ever really need.
7. Finally, we must know God is always willing to listen to us, and we should never outgrow our need to pray.

Next week Alex won’t be here, so Paul will take us then.

Click here to visit UCG’s Teen Study Guide section on prayer: we used this content.