Welcome to the audio channel of Dr. Sadat. Preach Christ, teach the Bible, make disciples. So church, I'd ask the congregation to stand and please turn to Proverbs chapter 23 verse 7. as we will first pray and then read the Word of God for this morning's sermon titled, The Christian Mind. Proverbs 23, verse 7. Let us pray. And now we humble ourselves before God Almighty, whose grace has gifted us and whose love has saved us. Patiently now we wait for thee. You were as a lamp to our paths and a light to our feet. May the Holy Spirit strengthen his servant to deliver a word of truth so that many to Jesus will come and meet. Amen. Proverbs, chapter 23, verse seven says, for as he, for as a man thinks within himself, so he is. Please be seated. So our theme verse comes from the book of Proverbs. Proverbs is a practical book that deals with the art of living. It provides knowledge and instruction to guide its readers to a happy and prosperous life. Now, the immediate context in which our theme verse was written, it provides a word of warning. And the writer of Proverbs, Solomon, is advising us. He's warning us, saying, When you sit down and eat with a ruler, when you sit down and eat with a wicked person, don't be fooled by outward appearances. Because although they may say certain things or put out a buffet in front of you and say, eat, drink, and be merry, or though they may seem to be a certain way, don't be fooled because a man thinks within himself So he is. Because the person that you really are is the person inside of your head. You are the product of your thoughts. In other words, you are what you think. Now this verse is often taken out of context. The New Age movement, modern spirituality, loves Proverbs 23, verse 7. They love to use this verse to proclaim the power of positive thinking. And they say things like, if you think about an idea, if you think about a thought over and over and over again, that thought will materialize in reality. But human beings lack the ability to think something into existence. Only God can do that. So Proverbs 23 verse 7 has nothing to do with positive thinking. If you wake up on a Monday and spend the entire day thinking in your mind, I'm a millionaire, I'm a millionaire, I'm a millionaire. And there are zero dollars in your bank account. When you wake up the next day, you will still be broke with one less day to pay your bills. And the only thing that'll happen is you will now become a person obsessed with being a millionaire. This verse doesn't talk about the power of human thought. It talks about the predictability of human thought. For as a man thinks within himself, so he is. Who we are begins in our thought life because our thoughts have life. A thought is the father of a deed. The deed is the father of a habit, and a habit is the father of a character. So now we know what this verse means. Now we know what God is telling us in his inerrant, infallible word. We now know the predictable formula. of how the mind works. But here's the bad news. The devil knows this formula too. He knows how this formula works. He knows that as a man thinketh within himself, so he is. He knows that who we are, and therefore what we do, begins in our minds. Which is why, since the beginning of time, Satan has launched an invisible war on your mind. Because if he gets you thinking the wrong thing, sooner or later, you're gonna be doing the wrong thing. Because as a man thinketh within himself, so he is. So in the invisible war for your Christian mind, that's the subheading, that's the subtitle for this sermon. And to describe the components, to describe what this invisible war for your mind looks like, I'm gonna borrow four key points from a classic book that every Christian should have. It's called The Strategy of Satan, How to Detect and Defeat Him by Warren Worsby. That book describes the invisible war on your Christian mind, and here are the constituents of that war, taken from Dr. Worsby's book. In the invisible war for your Christian mind, the devil is the adversary. His primary target is your mind. His weapon is lies, and his purpose is to make you ignorant of God's will. And this sermon will not only make you aware of the invisible war, but give you a battle strategy so you do not become a victim of that war. Now there's a reason why this sermon is called the Christian Minds. Because if you don't think the devil is real, Or if you don't recognize his lies as lies, then you'll become a victim in this war and he will happily guide you by the hand through the wide gate into destruction. Because if your mind is clouded in darkness, then pitch black is all normal. The Bible tells us that before regeneration, before we are born again by the Holy Spirit, that our mind is blind, 2 Corinthians 4.4, that our mind is ignorant, Ephesians 4.18, that our mind is foolish, 1 Corinthians 2.14. In Matthew 13, Jesus tells a parable of the seed that falls on rocky ground. Why? Because the mind didn't understand. Ephesians 4.17 tells us about the Gentiles who walk in the futility of their mind. And Romans 1 tells us about those who God gave over to a depraved mind. The point is this, the invisible war is real and not to be taken lightly. So in the invisible war for your Christian mind, who are we fighting against? Who is the adversary? The adversary is Satan, aka the devil, aka Lucifer. Who is Satan? Who is the devil? John 8.44 tells us, He, the devil, was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. So Satan is a murderer. He has put a bullseye on your mind and won't stop firing fiery arrows until he takes you out. He's also the father of lies, meaning every lie in the history of human existence has its initial origin in the devil himself. Revelation 12.9 says, and the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old, who was called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world. His invisible war so successful, the deception is global. 2 Corinthians 11.3 talks about the character of Satan. It says, but I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. Craftiness comes from a root in Greek that means cunning, trickery, or readiness to do anything. So that's who the adversary is. What is the adversary's target? The adversary's target is your mind. Because if Satan can get you to believe a lie, he can begin to work on your life and lead you to sin. This is why he attacks your mind. For as a man thinks within himself, so he is. Satan would rather have you think the wrong thing, then do the wrong thing. You know why? If you think the wrong thing, sooner or later, you're gonna do the wrong thing. And when you do it, you're gonna tell yourself, I'm just doing what I think. I'm just doing what I believe. And you wouldn't even ever suspect the devil was ever involved. Satan attacks your mind because your mind is made in the image of God. God has a mind. He reveals himself to us in language that's processed by our minds. Our minds are a reflection of the image of God, and he attacks that thing made in God's likeness. And Satan attacks your mind to use you as a pawn. He'll delude you into thinking you are going to gain, but in reality, he's manipulating and using you to spite God and to exalt himself. So what is Satan's weapon? He has many weapons, but his primary weapon is the lie. Now, we're going to take his lie. And we're going to put it under a microscope. And we're going to dissect it. Because the first lie ever waged in history was in Genesis 3. So we're going to zoom in on this lie and see what it's made of. So let's make sure we know where we are. We're going to go to Genesis 3. Genesis is the first book of the Bible. What happens in Genesis 1? God makes everything. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. What happens in Genesis 2? God tells Adam and Eve, he says, you can eat of anything in the Garden of Eden, you can eat of anything in paradise freely, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you may not eat. And if you do, you will surely, certainly, absolutely, no gray area, you will surely die. Now why did God do that? Why did God give Adam and Eve a choice? Here's the answer. Because in order for obedience to be real, disobedience has to be a possibility. God wanted to give his creatures a free, a free volition choice. Which means, he says, you may freely choose. To obey or to disobey. If you obey, you will have life. If you disobey, the inevitable conclusion is death. So now we're in Genesis 3. Genesis 3, 1-5 says, Now the serpent, the devil, was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, Indeed has God said, You shall not eat from any tree of the garden. The woman said to the serpent, From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat. But from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat from it or touch it or you will die. Now here it comes. Here comes the lie. The serpent said to the woman, you surely will not die. Stop. This is a direct contradiction. This is a direct insult. to God's absolute truth. And what's the implication of this lie? that now God's law, God's commandment, God's black and white rule is now no longer a law. Now it's just advice. Now it's just a suggestion. Now it's just loose guidelines that you may choose to or choose not to follow. Because if you eat of the fruit of the tree, you surely will not die. And in reality, The reason why God's commandment, why his prohibition was there, was to protect Adam and Eve. But the lie doesn't stop there. So Satan lies and says, you surely will not die. But he doesn't stop there. What comes next? What follows the lie? And what follows the lie is Satan's substitution. Because when Satan lies to you and now creates a hole in your mind where something true used to be, now you have a gap in your mind, now you have a hole, now you have a deficiency where truth used to be. So now he's gonna fill that gap, now he's gonna fill that hole with a satanic substitute. And then Satan says, for God knows that in the day you eat from it, from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So the lie he told Eve was, you surely will not die. Now here comes the substitute. Not only will you not die, but if you eat of the tree, you will be like God. He turned God's prohibition into an opportunity for career advancement. And that is the substitution. Now when we talk about our Christian minds, when we talk about temptationology, yes that's a word, when we talk about temptationology, We may be deluded into thinking that when we're tempted to fall, it's a fall down. That is incorrect. It's a fall upwards. This is the way temptation works. You're intended to reach, you're intended to grasp, you're intended to extend your arm to be like God, and when you reach and think you almost have the apple, that's when you fall. It's never a fall down into blatant sin. You're too smart for that. It's a fall upwards. It's packaged as an opportunity for you to grow and you to be just like God. And Satan's lie leading to a substitution is a deception so powerful it has manipulated humankind since the beginning of time. We can be like God takes many popular forms. It's packaged in so many different ways. It can take the form of education. If we just educate people more, we can make the world a better place. It can take the form of psychology. If we just change the way people, the environments around them, we can make them all better people. It can take the form of religion. It can take the form of politics. It can take the form of nationalism. It can take the form of social programs. It can even take the form of tweaking different environmental conditions. And the end result is we have the answer. We can be like God if you just follow with what we say. We will have utopia on earth and we shall reign like gods. And the problem with that mantra is that when people say we can be like God, the reality is God is never involved. Because ultimately the problem with humanity is never what's around them, it's what's inside them. And as a man thinketh within himself, so he is. Now, I wanna give you a sense of how pervasive, of how powerful the lie is and how devastating its effects are in everyday life. You may not be thinking Satan's lie is pervasive, but it's everywhere in every facet of the modern world that we see. I'm gonna read you a very brief essay. It's called, If I Were the Devil. It was written by a radio commentator called Paul Harvey, and I'm not going to tell you the year in which he wrote it. But he wrote an essay called, If I Were the Devil, and this is what his essay says, quote, If I were the Prince of Darkness, I would want to engulf the whole earth in darkness. I'd have a third of its real estate and four-fifths of its population, but I would not be happy until I had seized the ripest apple on the tree. So I should set out about however necessary to take over the United States. I would begin with a campaign of whispers. With the wisdom of a serpent, I would whisper to you as I whisper to Eve, do as you please. To the young I would whisper, the Bible is a myth. I would convince them that man created God instead of the other way around. I would confide that what is bad is good and what is good is square. In the ears of the young married, I would whisper that work is debasing, that cocktail parties are good for you. I would caution them not to be extreme in religion, in patriotism, in moral conduct. And the old I would teach to pray, to say after me, our father which are in Washington. Then, I'd get organized. I'd educate authors on how to make lurid literature exciting so that anything else would appear dull and uninteresting. I'd threaten TV with dirtier movies and vice versa. I'd infiltrate unions and urge more loathing, less work. Idle hands usually work for me. I'd peddle narcotics to whom I could. I'd sell alcohol to ladies, and gentlemen of distinction, I'd tranquilize the rest with pills. If I were the devil, I would encourage schools to refine young intellects, but neglect to discipline emotions. Let those run wild. I'd designate an atheist to front for me before the highest courts, and I'd get preachers to say, she's right. With flattery and promises of power, I would get the courts to vote against God and in favor of pornography. Thus, I would evict God from the courthouse, then from the schoolhouse, and from the houses of Congress. Then, in his own churches, I'd substitute psychology for religion and deify science. If I were Satan, I'd make the symbol of Easter an egg and the symbol of Christmas a bottle. If I were the devil, I'd take from those who have and give to those who wanted, until I had killed the incentive of the ambitious. Then my police state would force everybody back to work. Then I would separate families, putting children in uniform, women in coal mines, and objectors in slave labor camps. If I were Satan, I'd just keep doing what I'm doing, and the whole world would go to hell, as sure as the devil. Now take a guess as to when this was written. 1964. Now when I read this, I thought it was written in 2005, 2006, recently. This was written in 1964. Did Paul Harvey have a vision? Was he a prophet? Did he have a miraculous view of the future? No. He knew the Invisible War was going on back then. He knew who the adversary was, and he knew how the lie works. And he just took the ramifications of the Invisible War to its natural conclusion. The invisible war is a mind game, and in the mind game, you are a pawn. You are expendable. You're not meant to recognize the invisible war is going on. You're always lured and tempted to take a fall up and think you may gain in the present, but in reality, you are being held by the hand to your own demise. So we know who the adversary is. We know his target, your mind. We know his weapon, the lie. What does Satan lie about? When he lies, he always likes to go big. So his favorite target of a lie is God. You're told that Islam, Mormonism, and being a Jehovah's Witness, they're three separate religions, right? They're three distinct worship systems, right? That's a lie. They are all built on the same deceitful premise. That somehow God got it wrong. That somehow the Bible needs an update. That somehow we have to restart the Bible and install a patch. Because God didn't really say what he meant and didn't mean what he said. And the fall up is this. In each of those systems, the followers have found the truth. They are now illuminated by something bigger and better. They found that secret knowledge that really tells us what the Bible says. And isn't it just a coincidence that in all three of those religious systems, they all believe that Jesus Christ is not God? The fall up is that you found a hidden secret truth. But the reality is this, when you stand before God the Father and tell God the Father, I don't think your son is God, now you're not only insulting Christ the King, now you're insulting the Father who anointed him. And the inevitable conclusion is judgment. So you're told Satan doesn't like organized religion, right? He hates church. Any type of church or religious system, he just runs far, far away, right? That's a lie. Satan loves religion. He loves organized system of worship. He had the nerve to tell Jesus in Luke 4, fall down and worship me. That's his point. If he can't get you to not to exalt him, his next best thing is to have you not to exalt God. As the late Adrian Rogers once said, Satan doesn't want you to be ungodly. He wants you to be like God on his terms. Satan loves worship, which is why he loves organized houses of worship. And to take it a step further, 2 Corinthians 11, 13 says, the Apostle Paul writes, there are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. So not only does the devil love organized religion. One of the first places, no one is called to go demon or devil chasing. But in the 21st century, one of the first places you will find a devil or a follower of Satan isn't somewhere out there. It's where I am standing. in the pulpit of a church. That's the first place you'll look for him. The second place is in a music ministry and the third place is the pews. Why? Because that's the lie. It's masquerading as God's truth when in reality your defenses go down and don't think he really is where he always likes to hang out. Beloved, just because in 2017 something is labeled Christian doesn't mean it has anything to do with Christ. Just because something is called a church doesn't mean it has anything to do with God. And just because someone has Reverend, Doctor, Minister, Apostle in front of their name, they may have credentials But it doesn't mean they're qualified to do what they do. The devil lies about doctrine. How many Christians in America tithe? Give 10% of their gross income to the church. This is a fact. 5%. Five, which mean in a room of a hundred Christians, five give 10% of their gross income to the church. For those that don't tithe. Why do they do that? Because they've believed the lie. They've believed and taken the fall up where they say, it's my money. I earned it. I can now do what I want as I please because it's mine. And the devil says, amen, it's yours. No one can tell you what to do with your money. That's the fall up. What's the real truth conclusion? The real truth conclusion is that 100% of your life is God's. The earth you live in, the air you breathe, the reason why you get up in the morning and are able to go to work is because of God. The fall up is to delude you into thinking your money is yours, but in the end now he turns you into a thief because you are robbing God. God says in Malachi, test me on this when it comes to tithing. And now the window of heaven that God would have opened up is now closed. Satan lies about ideology in popular culture. Listen, the Bible as a whole is very simple. You see patterns everywhere. In Exodus, The devil used Pharaoh to do what? Kill newborn Hebrew babies. Why? He wanted to wipe Moses out. He didn't want any of these God-exalting people populating over the face of the earth. In the New Testament, what did Rome do? They tried to wipe Jesus out as a baby. Why? Because the devil didn't want the Son of God, the light of the world, on planet Earth. So listen. The fall up is to believe the delusion that when it comes to abortion, that it's a person's reproductive right, that it's my body, my right. That is wrong. You're being used as a pawn in the mind game. The devil's strategy isn't really about you. It's to wipe out God's children. Because if you have less babies, if you have less men, if you have less women, you have less men preaching the Word of God, you have less women giving a birth to God-fearing girls and boys, and you have less people calling upon the name of the Lord. That is the fall up to make you think it's about you, but in reality, it's all a mind game. Do you know what feminism is at its core? It's a revolt against the idea of God being our father. What's the radical green movement all about? It's about reversing the hierarchy in Genesis. We're now humankind, now we're the bad guys. Now we're going to sacrifice human life so that plants and trees can live. What is evolution? It's a lie. It has nothing to do with science. It has everything to do with the philosophy that we can fraudulently explain life without God. Therefore, when you live your everyday life, you don't need God. The devil even lies about himself. The devil's in hell right now, right? Right? That's a lie. The devil is right here on planet earth sifting people like wheat. The devil has red skin horns and a pointy tail, right? That is a lie. If you read your Bible in 2 Corinthians 11-14, it says he disguises himself as an angel of light. If he walked in here right now, we would be dazzled. We would be amazed by how beautiful and gorgeous he looks. In fact, in Ezekiel it says, when he speaks, it's like a symphony. We would be dazzled and awed by an overwhelming emotional experience. We even have turned the devil into a cartoon. We named sports teams after him. I could say, hey devil, I had your food cake last night for dessert. We've taken something so real and so serious and cartoonized it to make him seem less threatening than what he really is. Do we now see how the invisible war is waged? With craftiness, with cunning, with subtlety, so our defenses go all the way down and we are now ignorant of the invisible war. So what's the point of all this? We know who, in the invisible war for your Christian mind, we know who the adversary is. We know his target and we know his weapon, the lie. What is his purpose? And the devil's purpose is to make you ignorant of God's will. Apart from God's word in the Bible, No one has any sure understanding of who God is or what God's will is. We have no other source of revelation of God of himself to humanity. So the devil wants to keep you as far away from God's word. He wants to keep you as far away from God's truth as possible and install a wedge, install a barrier, so you remain in darkness. He wants you living in a world that is pitch black all the time because He knows when you see even just a flicker of light, when you see the bursting rays of illumination of Jesus, when you see that life is not supposed to end in despair, that you have a future, that there is a God who came into this world who died so you could live. He doesn't want you knowing that truth. and the longer you stay, have your mind clouded in darkness, you will be none the wiser of that light. The devil doesn't want you to know that it's God's dispositional will, that he doesn't want anyone to perish. He wants you to keep on listening to people whose mind themselves are in darkness, so people who are of the darkness can speak to other people who are in darkness. The devil wants you to think about God more severely than he is, thinking he's cruel and unjust and unkind and has no mercy. He wants you to be skeptical about God. He also wants you to be suspicious about him so you doubt all of his intentions. And that's just people who live life with a closed Bible. People who live life with an open Bible, if you insist on reading God's word and actually have access to his will, then he'll convince you you should subtract from his word, you should add to it, or you should reinterpret it for your contemporary context. And with this purpose, everything is flipped. Now light is dark, dark is light, good is bad, and now God becomes the bad guy. God becomes the tyrant who's a dictator, and Satan becomes the liberator. He becomes the light bearer who revolted against the oppressive tyrant and now sets all of his children free. And the result of this bad thinking is that it leads to bad decisions and results in bad consequences. So instead of a fruitful life of love, joy, and peace, you get a satanic substitute of a life filled with fear, bitterness, and anger. And when you embrace the truth, the reality of the invisible war going on around us, and your eyes are open to the modern world that's conformed to a particular dark image. It does at first seem overwhelming, it does at first seem like an insurmountable goal. Because lies abound, lies abound everywhere in this world. But the only way to defend yourself against the lie is with the truth. So what is your, in the invisible war for your Christian mind, what is your, what is our defense? How do we protect our minds? And the answer is ridiculously simple. It is the word of God. It is the capital T truth, the true truth, the light that dispels the darkness. Listen, spiritual warfare is much simpler than you may have been led to think. When Jesus went head-to-head with Satan in Luke 4, He didn't call down a heavenly host of armies. He had one defense. It was the Word of God. And His response was, It is written. And it was something so sharp, it was something so powerful, the devil had no choice but to flee. There's a reason why a Christian in full armor holds the sword of the Word of God. Because it is a sword that never rusts. It's a sword that is indestructible, and it's a sword that also cuts two ways. So whether that lie comes at you from front, back, left, or right, it's a sword that cuts coming and going. Because I am no match for the devil, you are no match for the devil, but the devil is no match for the Word of God. So you ought never to believe a satanic substitute when you have God's truth. A mind that is saturated with God means that there is no room for lies and every decision in life is now measured by the Word of God, which means you now walk around in your mind with a figurative scale. Everything you hear, everything you read, anything your friend tells you, you put on the scale that is balanced by God's truth. So why is the Bible so reliable? Why is God's Word our best defense? Because God is a God of truth. His Word is truth, His Spirit is truth, and God could not lie to you if He tried, because His very essence is truth. What emanates out of His very being is the definition of truth itself. In Deuteronomy 32.4, the word says, the rock, his word is perfect, for all his ways are just. A God of truth and without injustice, righteous and upright is he. John 14.6 says, Jesus speaks and says, I am the way and the truth. and the life. John 14, 17, the spirit is a spirit of truth. Jesus says in John 17, 17, your word, the Bible, is truth. God's truth transcends time. So what is true now will be true in eternity, for what God decrees will come to pass. So what he tells us now in his word, what he tells us now in revealing himself to us, it is a truth that is unchanging and will stand forever. So in the invisible war for your mind, when you hear the devil whisper, what you are hearing are the whispers of a lying loser. But when God has spoken to us in his word, the Bible, you are hearing the words of an omniscient, omnipotent King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Now it's clear the devil is very active in trying to get us to believe a lie. What this means is that we have to be equally active in educating ourselves in the truth. God's word tells us that our salvation is guaranteed, but the Bible doesn't guarantee what our life will be like here on earth. The person who makes that sure is you because you play a starring role in how things turn out here and now in your natural life. The point is that we have to take responsibility for our minds because no one can change my thinking, no one can change your thinking if the person who chooses to think is you. First Peter 1.13 says, therefore, prepare your minds for action. Prepare your minds for action. Keep sober in spirit. Fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. So how do we do this? How do we prepare our minds for action? And I'm gonna close by saying this. This is seven quick steps for defending yourself in the invisible war for your mind. Step number one, you have to read the word, read the Bible. Bible study is not a luxury, it is an absolute necessity. And if you're not reading every day, I suggest you begin by at least reading one chapter a day, because you cannot think biblically unless you know what scripture says. A biblical life comes from biblical thoughts, and biblical thoughts come from the Bible. So step one, read the word. Step two, know what the word means. You don't read for the sake of reading, you read to understand what the word actually means. The Ethiopian once asked Philip, I'm reading these words but I don't get it. I don't understand what these words mean. So when you're intent, is to get the meaning. Here's my advice. When you're now reading one chapter a day, you have a notebook by your Bible. You read one chapter. After that chapter is over, you write a one or two sentence summary of the main idea of what you just read. If you don't get it, you go back, read the chapter again, and read it over until you get the main idea. If you still are confused, That's why you have the local church. That's why you have elders. That's why you have pastors and say, hey, I don't get it. Please explain it to me. And those individuals will be fulfilling their God-called purpose when they preach and teach the word to you in clear and everyday terms. So that's step one and two. Step number three, memorize the word. Did Jesus have his ESV handy when he went head to head with the devil in Luke 4? No. He had those words ingrained in his being, ready to go at any moment. So when you're reading the word and when you understand what the word means, make a positive effort to memorize the word. to at least have three verses on hand in your mind, ready to go at all times. Step number four, meditate on the word. Because as Psalm number one tells us, the blessed life is a life filled with the word of God. Step number five, use the word. A couple of years ago, I don't think my wife and I were married yet. We went to a Quaker wedding in Pennsylvania. Now the people were very lovely, but it was one of the weirdest things I've ever been to in my entire life. There wasn't a preacher or formal saying of vows. What the ceremony was is we all stood in a circle, which I'm going to call a circle of love and feelings, and we all expressed what we thought about the bride and groom. It was very strange. It went on for like half an hour, and then The ceremony was over. So my wife gets up, well my soon-to-be wife then, during the ceremony and she begins reciting 1 Corinthians 13. Love is patient, love is kind. But she didn't say this is 1 Corinthians 13. She just began reciting. So after the ceremony, people come up to her and they're like, you know, that was amazing. I almost cried. And I feel so warm and fuzzy. And it's so great. And who was that poet? Who was that writer? Who was that essayist? She's like, aha, surprise. It's the Bible. It's the New Testament. What's the point? The point is you have to use the word. We're texting, we're communicating, we're having conversations with co-workers each and every day. You don't have to recite chapter and verse, but you can incorporate God's Word into your everyday language. So now someone who's what? In darkness, can hear the Word of God relayed to them. The other day in my office, I told a patient, as a person thinks of himself, so they are. They're like, that's amazing. Are you a guru? Can I go to a seminar? I'm like, open Proverbs 23, please. It's not me. This is all the Word of God. So the point is, we live in a world of communication. We can maximize that for God's glory so you can use the Word. Step number six, listen to the Word. When you're hungry, you eat. When you have to breathe, you take a deep breath. So we have to listen to the Word. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. My personal opinion is this. We have an idea in 21st century America that the only sermon we listen to is on Sunday morning. That's flawed. I'll tell you why. Because when you want to grow your faith, you want to grow your knowledge of the Word, when you want to hear well-educated, well-earned men who are called by God to preach the Word, you can't deny yourself that nourishment, that substance. So we have to listen to the Word, and my soft recommendation is daily so you can renew, illuminate, and grow your mind and your Christian faith. And fear not, you will not be committing church adultery if you listen to another preacher. The pastors of this church will tell you we do not have a monopoly on the word of God. We are merely keeping Jesus' seat warm until he comes back. So, if you need three recommendations for people to listen to, here are three. John MacArthur, R.C. Sproul, Votibaution. John MacArthur, R.C. Sproul, Votibaution. Listen to the word because when you're hungry, you eat. The last step, step number seven. earnestly study the word. Never let a good sermon or a Bible study lesson go. If you want to put the notes directly in your Bible, if you want to put the notes in a notebook that you meditate on when you go home, so be it. But never let a good sermon or a Bible study lesson go, so you can incorporate that knowledge and wisdom into your daily devotionals and never have that nugget of wisdom ever, ever leave you. For as a man thinks within himself, so he is. And this is what the Christian mind is. It is a mind that is so filled with truth that there is no room for lies, that thoughts beget habits and habits beget a character. So as the Christian mind is nourished, The inevitable conclusion is that the Christian life will follow. For as a man thinks within himself, so he is. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for giving us the opportunity to come together today to celebrate and cherish your name. We know, O Lord, there are a lot of weighty themes today, and we ask you, Father, by the power of your Spirit, to allow this word not to return to you void, but implant it deep within our hearts. Allow us to keep our eyes cast on you, to know you, to see you, to embrace your truth, and develop an earnest fire, an eagerness, a longing for your word, and the fire in our bones that is found only and exclusively in your word. You have revealed yourself to us fully and finally in your word, and we shall never, O Lord, take that for granted. So inspire us, O Lord, to cast our eyes on you, and each and every step of our Christian walk to sanctify us in your word and in your truth, so that as our Christian minds grow, Our lives will never be followed, and we will be able to lead and guide others along that path in the knowledge of your truth and your word, revealed to us finally, finally, and fully in your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen. Thank you for listening to this sermon by Dr. Sadaffo. For more valuable content and resources, please visit WCSK.org.