2 Corinthians 10, let's stand and show respect to the reading of the Word of God, let you get stretched out and get ready for the message. Verse 5 says, "...casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ." Now, as you look at the text, I'm going to title this message, The Battle for the Mind. The Battle for the Mind. I preached from this years ago, and I feel a need to preach on it again. Here it instructs us that we need to bring into captivity every what? Every thought. Instead of us being taken captive by our thoughts, It says that we are to take our thoughts captive. Did you notice that? Because I really do feel, as the book of Proverbs says, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. I think there's a great need on the behalf of God's people to seek to control their thoughts. and to control their minds. And that certainly then is a battle. That's why I call it the battle of the mind, because it is indeed a battle to seek under the power of the Lord to control your mind and control your thinking. I do believe that Satan's main mode of attack against God's people, it's not so much, of course it's on the outside, don't get me wrong, but I think he seeks to attack you in your mind. I think that's one of the main modes of operation that he does in trying to bring down God's people, trying to make them perhaps unfruitful, is I think he seeks to attack you in your mind. In the book of Ephesians chapter 6, it talks about the fiery darts of the devil, and I think most of those fiery darts are aimed at the mind. Obviously, they're not talking about a physical dart he throws at you. It is spiritual, but I think most of those darts will be aimed at your mind, and I think if you can control a person's mind, I think you can control them. I think that's what he's after. He knows he can't take your salvation from you, but he wants to try to render you ineffective. in the Lord's work, to where you're not being an impact in other people's lives, to where you're not being as fruitful as you should be. A few years back, down at Buffalo Baptist Church, I went to a revival down there, and the preacher entitled his message, Have You Lost Your Mind? That was the title of his message. It was a good message. It was something along the same lines of what I'm going to preach to you this morning. Just have a two-point outline, but don't get deceived by that. There's a lot of points under this two-point outline. What we're going to do today is we're going to look at the types. We're going to look, first of all, at the types of bad thoughts. Destructive thinking. We're going to give you five. I'm not going to preach on these five. Five types of destructive thinking. And then the second point is going to be is we're going to look at the cure, the cures, or the attack. You can title it either way. I couldn't make up my mind which way I wanted to. how we fight to bring this destructive thinking under control, so it would probably be better to use the term, the attack. If we're thinking in these five ways that I'm about to give you, if we're thinking, if our mind's preoccupied with these things, then there needs to be this attack that we make to bring our mind and our thoughts back under control. Okay? So I think this is a very important message this morning. It's not real flashy, but boy, it sure is really important. Again, if he can control your mind, he can control you. We've tried to put a lot of effort on the outside, but folks, we need to put the effort on the inside. If your mind gets straight, if your mind is straight and your mind is right, then your life will be straight and right, too. So we need to be concerned. Remember, God looks on the heart and the mind. I want not only my outward actions to be pleasing to God, but I also want the meditation of my heart to be pleasing to God. So we need to be concerned about our thinking. The book of Proverbs says that the thought of foolishness is sin. Jesus taught that in the Sermon on the Mount. It's more than just not outwardly doing things. It's also wrong to think evil and to nurture such thoughts over and over and over again in your mind. So we're going to talk about these things, we're going to preach on these things this morning. So let's first of all begin by looking at, I wrote these down best I could. I know you can't see it, probably can't read my writing, but I'll tell you what it is as we go on. We're going to look at five types of destructive thinking. I can preach and have preached over the years a message on each one. Five types of destructive thinking. Five types. And the first one that we want to look at is worry. Is worry destructive? It sure is. It affects your mind tremendously. If you're not careful, your mind can get so preoccupied with worry that you can't think about anything spiritual. It's hard to. Have you ever been preoccupied? Have you ever been so worried that it kept you up at night? Ever get so worried before that you couldn't eat? Have you ever got so tore up and worried over something that it took away your desire for food? That it absolutely took away your ability to pray? Have you ever been worried that way? Well, worry is a sin. Worry is a lack of confidence and trust in your God. Just call it what it is. It is. I don't have time to preach on worry, but it is destructive in His thinking. If you give heed to worry all the time, You know what it'll do? It'll rob you of your strength. It'll rob you of your peace. It'll rob you of joy. It'll raise your stress level. It'll raise your this physically. It'll affect you physically too, but it'll affect you spiritually most. You know, if I'm filled with worry, I can't concentrate. You know, to really worship God and really study your Bible, you have to be able to do what? You have to be able to concentrate. Now, I'm bad about that. I can't stand any kind of distraction when I'm trying to listen to the Word of God or I'm trying to study the Word of God in my house. When I'm studying for preaching, if there's any type of—I have to be where it's quiet so I can focus on what's being said in the Scriptures. Well, worry will distract your man from being able to focus on the things of God, and if it's continued over a period of time, it'll make you very unproofful. Now, the second type of bad thinking is anger. And we might entitle this an unresolved anger, anger perhaps at something someone said or anger at perhaps something that someone did. And the reason why I call it unresolved anger is because unresolved anger, if kept in, will fester and lead to bitterness and hatred and all of these type things. Now, when I'm talking about anger unresolved, I don't mean you go out and take one of them little, they use them little clubs that's made out of foam and take your anger out. I think that's goofy. I don't think that does anything. That doesn't deal with the seed of the problem. The seed of the problem is sin. You don't get rid of that or imagine the person's a golf ball and hit it. That's evil thinking in your mind still yet, is it not? So I think all such things as that is just a worldly way of trying to deal with a spiritual problem. You can get so overwhelmed with anger if it's unresolved. That's why the Bible says to go and take care of it. If a brother or dad is odd against you, you go to them. And if you've got an odd against them, you go to them. Either way, it tells you to go. The reason why it tells you to do that is because if you don't go, that anger will fester up and lead to bitterness. hatred, and all such things. I read a tract one time written by a preacher, and I preached from this subject before on the subject of bitterness. Bitterness is one of the number one killers of Christian fruitfulness. And it is. You can see someone, if they become bitter, they will just absolutely check out of everything spiritually. Absolutely, they will get out of everything spiritually when they become bitter. There's people at home today, a sunny morning, And they've been home on Sunday mornings for 15 years because of something someone said or did at their church 15 or 20 years ago. And it's unresolved anger. And that unresolved anger caused them to flee away from the house of God, to flee away from serving the Lord. It can kill you over a period of time, and it's destructive thinking. And you know, in order to keep anger going, you know how you have to feed it? You have to feed it. We dealt in Psalms 37 this past Wednesday night. It says to fret not. You know what fret means? To simmer, to boil, and to roll that thing over. That's how you keep it hot. Roll it over and over and over and over again in your mind until you work yourself up in a seething rage. And if that's maintained in the life of a child of God, I'm telling you, it'll kill you over a period of time. It will render you ineffective. It will affect your worship. It will affect your ability to be close to the King the way you should be in your fellowship with the King. And over a period of time, it can cause you to check out to where you're not even going to church at all. Very important to control, to handle your anger the way the Word of God says so. Number three, discouragement is another form of destructive thinking. Do you all agree with these so far? You might be here this morning, and you have these. You might have one, and I pray you don't have all. But you might have one of these. Now, remember, I'm just giving you five, and this is not what the message is about. I'm just showing you the need to bring into captivity your thinking, because such destructive thinking can choke you out. It really can. It can render you ineffective, not being fruitful. Take your peace, and take your joy. So we need to bring into captivity. These are sins of the mind. Worry is a sin of the mind. Anger is a sin of the mind. Number three, discouragement. Many times we're prone to discouragement for one reason or the other. But discouragement many times happens because we have our expectations here. And then what happens is down here, And then we get discouraged because what we expected didn't pan out to be what we thought. And we get discouraged. Many times Christian workers are discouraged because, you know, we're a result-driven society. We look for what? Results. If we don't see results, then we think we're a what? A failure. I remember talking to a preacher one time and hadn't seen any people saved for years. I remember talking to him, and I said, well, you preaching the gospel? Yeah. Relying on the Lord? You going out and we're sowing the seed. We're sowing the seed. We're sowing the seed. That's what you're supposed to do. Who does the saving? Well, the Lord does the saving. Well, if you're preaching the truth, I don't think a switch of preachers is going to change the fact, do you? Preacher's not the one that does the saving, but at times we get discouraged if we don't see these results. My job, to be honest with you, is to preach the book. It's God that gives the increase. It's God that opens hearts. It's God that draws the sinners. That way, when it happens, he gets all the glory. He gets all the praise and the honor. OK? But discouragement will set in on preachers. I remember years ago, before Our church grew. You'd go to Bible conferences, and it was like if you wasn't seeing people saved or something mattered to you. Well, we all love to see people saved, do we not? We can't manufacture results by using worldly means, either. You can manufacture results, but the results you get won't be the type of results that are true. Preach the message. Share the message of Christ, then depend on the fire of the Holy Spirit to draw his people to it. But discouragement will set in sometimes. And I don't know, are you discouraged this morning? I don't know. Are you discouraged? Do you have a discouraged heart? Many things discourage you. Many things. But the bad thing about discouragement is it can quench you out. One of the greatest men of God that I love in Scripture is Elijah the prophet. I think he was quite a man of God. And he got discouraged. I mean, this is the same man that stood upon Mount Carmel and faced down a total of 900 and some false prophets. 450 prophets of the veil and 400 prophets of the grove, I believe, if I'm right. Numbers ain't right, forgive me. But it was 900 and some false prophets. One against them all. Prayed and fire came down out of heaven. Prayed and it didn't rain for three and a half years, and then prayed and it did rain. He was a man of God, yet he got so discouraged that he ended up under a juniper tree and wished to die in discouragement. This is dangerous thinking. Discouragement will quench you out, cause you to quit. Many people quit not because they're done, but because they're discouraged. That's why encouraging words sometimes is so very important for God's people to lift one another up as best they can. And pray one for the other. Encourage one another. Discouragement is dangerous thinking. Dangerous thinking. You can talk to teachers sometimes, high school teachers sometimes get discouraged. You don't ever know how things are going to turn out. You don't ever know. You do your duty and that one student you might have, you might not have a Sunday school class that has 15, you might have a Sunday school class that has one. That one student may make the difference in a lot of people's lives later. Faithfully teach the one. All God's people say, faithfully teach the one. I told you many times in the past about the story of Hollis Wolters back about 30, oh my. I want to say this, back about 30-some years ago, at the Tate Valley Baptist College, he had one student in a class. And that one student was a 16-year-old boy named Jeff Arthur. That was me. And he faithfully taught that one. I thought he was nuts at the time. I thought he'd close the school. I thought he'd close the class. I thought he'd wait until he got more people. He taught me for three hours, like he had a hundred. Did everybody in the house know this morning that that was a waste of time? It wasn't a waste of time, was it? He was helping train the future pastor of this church. He didn't know that then. He knows it now. God wants you to be faithful. But many times, you see, when we get discouraged, we look at things from our own standpoint, from our own thinking, from our own eyes. You don't really know. You just be faithful to what you're doing. Let the Lord take care of the results. You'll be all right. and cause you to quit. It can quit you out and cause you to quit. Number four, lust is the next one, is a dangerous thinking. It can permeate a person's mind. And there's so much, and we'll talk about this later, so much out there available for people that can fuel that flame. Internet. So many preachers are getting hooked on the Internet and the filth that's on the Internet. So many are getting hooked on the pitiful movies and things that you can rent. You see, you don't have to go out to the porn places no more. You can sneak that right in your house and no one knows. Does no one know? God knows. It's all makes a difference. Such things as so fuel the passions of your mind. It can lead you into adultery. It can lead you into fornication, young people. It can lead you into fornication. Lustful thinking will lead to lustful action. That needs to be controlled. Does everybody agree? That needs to be out of the box. That needs to be brought under control. King David, whenever he committed adultery, he stood upon the top of his palace when he should have been out with the men in battle. He was there. He got lazy. He was at the house. And he viewed Bathsheba bathing herself. He saw her. He saw her. Where was the sin first at? Right here. He saw her, he desired her, and then he took her. See, the pathway to sin is always that way. It always first begins in the mind. It always begins in the mind. You saw, you see, and then you nurture that thought over and over, imagine that thing over and over again in your mind, and then you seek to bring about what you're thinking. Bringing into captivity every thought, that's the fourth one. Finally, the fifth one is discontentment. Not being satisfied with what you have and not being satisfied with the state that you're in. Discontentment can lead you into rebellion against God. King David said, The Lord is mine. Then what did he say? He realized the shepherd would provide for him what he needed and would lead him wherever he needed to go, and whatever state he was in, he was content because he felt that the shepherd led him there for a purpose. So when you get discontented, man, you get discontented with what you have, and you're unthankful for what you have, and you think you should have a better this or a better that, it can lead you into rebellion against God. So those are just five. I could go on and on all morning, as you realize, from the past. But these are five types of destructive thinking. Do you have any of them? Do you have any of them? Worry, anger, discouragement, lust and discontentment. These are things that, if they are allowed to be nurtured and permeate in your mind, will absolutely rob you of your joy, your peace, your fruitfulness and make you very, very, very sad in your life here on this earth. We've got to have our minds under control. Well, now let's move on to the message. I've got you all introduced to what we're going to do. Let's talk about how to attack it. I'll run through these things relatively quickly. Let's turn to Psalms 19. Five things to do to control your mind. Five things. Five modes of attack. Five of them. And you write these down. Some of them are simple. Some of them are going to get a little bit more complex. Now that we've come to this point, we understand the need to have our mind under control. If we ever get permeated with any of this type of thinking, you can see how it's so destructive to our spiritual lives. We need to have our minds under control through the glory of God. OK? All right, here's the first thing you need to do. Here's the first thing you need to do to bring your thought life under control. Number one, you need to pray. You need to pray. Verse number 14 of Psalms 19 is something that you need to pray. If you don't have this marked in your Bible, mark it. But when you pray every day, you pray this. Nothing wrong with praying the Scriptures, are they? You know, if you're praying the Scriptures, what you're saying has to be God's will. That's what it says in verse 14. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart, that's your thinking. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable In thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer." Here you're requesting that God would help you to keep your thoughts to his pleasing. And by praying that prayer, you know, one main thing it does is it helps you remember every day the importance of having your thought life right. It helps you recognize every day of your life the importance of having your thinking straight. So Lord, today as I'm going forth to work, may what I say, may the opening of my lips, but may the meditation of my mind, the meditation of my heart be found pleasing in your sight. You know what? You show me a man that's seeking to keep his thinking pure where only God can see, I'll show you a man that's seeking to wholeheartedly service God. You show me a person who is just concerned on the outside of what man sees and doesn't care about his thinking, and his thinking is evil and unpure, I'll show you a hypocrite. Every day of our life, we need to pray, Lord, may my thinking be pleasing in your sight. So that helps you. You pray that the Lord would help establish your thinking. You know when you need to do that, don't you? You do that first thing in the morning when you first get up to remind you of your mind. You'll run off to work and it will overwhelm you. Man, have you ever done that? I've done that. I've ended late and got off to work and then everything fell apart at work and I was agitated, mad, worried, discouraged. I thought, man, what's happened? I had an awesome day yesterday. Well, I didn't stop to pray and get the Master to help me control my mind, my thinking. He wants you to pray. So the first thing, Psalms 19, 4, would you all agree to do it with me? Would you agree to do it with me? Just don't listen to a message this morning. Do this. Lord, help me to... Do you realize if your thinking will be clean all day long, that your life will be different all day long? And that your life will be more pleasing to God all day long? Lord, help me to have the meditation of my heart clean. Number one, pray. Number two, confess. Number two, confess. And that which is entered in your mind is sinful and wrong. And you confess that immediately when the Holy Spirit brings that to your mind. Lord, forgive me for that thought. Forgive me for thinking that way. Lord, this is wrong, and I don't want to do it. I'll do that. Boy, I'll pick up somebody to do something during the day, and I'll think about what they did. And I'll think again about what they did, and it will permeate my whole mind. And I said, Lord, I don't want to think this way. I don't want this in my mind. I don't want this in my heart. Take this old evil thought out of my mind and forgive me for that thing. You attack that immediately. You see, the problem with bad thinking is once it comes in, we nurture it. We just think about it and think about it and think about it and think about it and think about it. And the whole time we're thinking about it, it's affecting us spiritually and robbing us of our fruitfulness and our joy and our peace. So, Lord, forgive me. Do you confess the sins of the mind? Do you confess the sins of the mind? You know, if David would have did that, he would have saved him from a lot of other greater sins. It would have saved him from a lot of other sins. Would you all agree with that? When he looked out, then, and he saw Bathsheba, if he said, And the thought began to be planted in his mind. But you know, when a thought got planted, you know what he did, Brother Raines? He started nurturing it and thinking about it and rolling it over and thinking, my, thinking how it might be and all these type things. And it began to go over and over again. Now, if he would have went in the house and he would have said, Lord, forgive me for thinking this way. This is sin and this is wrong. And Lord, forgive me for that old vile thoughts that I had. You think he'd have been better off? You know what? That he didn't do that. He continued to nurture till down to he sent for her. And did it hurt his life? He ended up losing three sons over what he did. It led to nothing but trouble in his household. But you know, all of his trouble began with his mind. Does everybody see the importance? Hey, I know it's not flashing. But what I'm telling you is very important. If he can get a hold of your mind, he can ruin you. Now, I'm not saying he can take your... Do I have to say that every time? I'm just saying he can make you unfruitful, and that's what he wants to do. So, you need to confess. Rebekah, I miss her. I interviewed her one time, but it was on a separate issue. Reba had experienced her husband passing, and she had a son that died. And she had experienced the passing of her mom and her dad. And I was just wondering, I said, it looks to me like that would just... I mean, how could she keep from being depressed all the time? So I just wanted to know. I said, well, how do you... She said, well, Jeff, now... Thoughts like that do come into my mind, and when I feel myself focusing on those things and getting discouraged, I don't allow myself to think that way anymore. I said, what? She said, yeah, and then she quoted that familiar phrase that I always quote to you. You can't stop a bird from flying overhead, but you can stop it from making a nest in your hair. And the idea of that is that you can't sometimes control what might go in your mind at that particular time. You can stop it from dwelling there. So you confess, you confess your sin. So those are the first, in this attack, you pray, you pray Psalms 1914 every day, first thing of the morning every day of your life. And then, Eddie, you'll recognize that you need to keep your thinking straight all day long. Number three, or number two, then you confess. When bad thoughts come in, don't nurture them. You confess them and you put them out. And you replace them as we're going to look at at the end of the message. Okay, the third thing you need to do, and this is the main thing I believe that you need to do, is you need to saturate. You need to saturate your mind with the Word of Almighty God. Saturate your mind with it. You need to get more. I'm going to tell you, some of you here this morning need to have much more of the Word of God than you're getting. If you get about one dose of it every week, and then you don't study your Bible all week long, I'm going to tell you right now that you're not getting enough of the Word. If you don't, I hate, I don't have to pray that you'll get mad at me over that, but I'm telling you the truth. I have to have, I know my, I have to have this book every day of my life to keep my thinking straight. If I don't get this book every day, my thinking gets corrupt. Because I still live in a corrupt body, an old, wicked, depraved body. And I'm not going to be without sin until the day that I get my new body. But I want to tell you right now, if you don't let them saturate your mind with the Word of God, it will corrupt the way that you think over a period of time. I feel, and I know, that one of the main ways that Satan attacks God's people is he tries to get them away from the Word of God. And if it can get you away from the Word of God, then he can corrupt the way that you think. So God's people, they must saturate their minds with the Word of God. Saturate. That means get a lot of it. A lot of it. Take it in every day. Saturate. I'm going to give you some examples of that, Psalms 119. I'm going to pick up the pace. I'm not going to wear you plum out, but Psalms 119, notice what it says. We read this in Vacation Bible School. Psalms 119 says this, verse 15. I'm sorry, let's begin at verse 11. your mind that I might not do what? Sin against God. And about five times here in the book of Psalms 119, verse 15, verse 23, verse 48, verse 78, verse 148, look up how many times the word meditate is used. You know what it means to meditate in the word? It doesn't mean to cross your legs and put your fingers and roll your eyes back and clear your mind. To meditate in the Word of God means to think about it over and over again all day long. You know where most of your messages come from? It comes from my study, but it mainly comes from my meditation about the Word that I'm studying on. I'll get a passage of Scripture down in my heart, and I'll start thinking about that passage and the Word of God, and I'll begin to meditate on it, and an outline will come out, and I'll see all those things. It comes from meditation. And here in the stress of the matter is that if you saturate your mind with the Word of God, then it will keep you from sin. It will keep you from doing things that you don't have no business doing. So you've got to let the Word of God get down into your heart and down into your mind. You've got to saturate your mind with the book. If you're having trouble this morning, If you're having trouble this morning with worry and anger and discouragement and lust and discontentment, you know the cure for that? Saturate your mind with the Word. Lots of people's not getting enough of the Word. And that's why it ends up corrupting their thinking. Meditate upon the Word of God. Get it down in your memory. Read it every day. Come to all the services you can. Read it every day. Think about it all day long. Let the Word of God dwell in you richly. And it will help control the thinking of your mind. At the same time, if you don't get the Word of God, Your thinking is going to get corrupt. Do you all believe that? Do I have to tell you that or have you experienced that? You'll notice when you get away from the Word of God, you'll notice how corrupt your mind gets. And when your mind starts getting corrupt, you know what happens after that? You start picking up habits that you don't have any business picking up. You've got to have it in your mind. You've got to get it. I'm going to tell you something else this morning. Satan is going to try to do everything he can to keep you from getting it. After you're born again, after you know the Messiah is your Savior, you've got to saturate your mind with the Word in order to grow, in order to keep you from sin. When I rededicated my life to the Lord when I was 16 years old, let me tell you what I'd done. I never wanted to go back to doing the things that I did before then. And I knew, the Lord showed me something, it's so basic, I knew that if I was going to keep on being faithful, I know that I had to keep myself fed. I put a little new test in my back pocket, and I carried that everywhere I went when I was a sophomore in high school. And anytime I got a chance, I'd read it, just to keep my what straight? My mind straight. Keep my mind on the Word. Saturate your mind with the Word. If you're going to have clear, plain, clean thinking, then you need to saturate your mind with the Word. Everybody understand that this morning? If you've not been, If you've not been, I can guarantee your thinking's more corrupt, and I can guarantee you something else. Your life's probably a whole lot more corrupt, too. And is it my fault, or is it because you haven't saturated yourself with the Word? You've got to get your mind straight. That's why this message is so important. Number four, you've got to separate. You've got to separate. You've got to saturate, and then you've got to separate. Isn't that fancy? And by separate, I mean separate yourself from ungodly influences and ungodly things. Because we have to recognize this morning one thing, is that what we see affects the way that we think. Does everybody agree with that? What we see – let me go on to say this – what we see, what we listen to, Brother Raines, and what we're around affects the way that we think. We all know that. What we see, what we listen to, and what we're around affects the way we think. If you saturate your mind with the world, instead of saturating your mind with the Word, your thinking will be corrupt. Do you all agree? Isn't that in that deep study? No. If you saturate your mind with the world instead of the Word, it's going to corrupt the way that you think. And if you corrupt the way that you think, you'll corrupt the way that you live. This is an important message. No one this morning has to tell me that this is a good message. I know it is, because it's the Word of God. All messages that are a Word of God is good messages. This is an important message. Change your life practice. If you practice under the grace of God, what we're saying this morning, change your life. You change your thinking, change your life if you're born again. Now, you pump in five hours a day of television, you pump in five hours a day of television with its fornication, homosexuality. And it's bad language and improper dress. Don't take a brain surgeon to figure out that you're going to end up having a very corrupt mind. If you pump in five hours of the world through a television set, or through corrupt internet, or through corrupt movies, or whatever, if you pump that through your eyes all the time, it's going to affect the way that you think. Does everybody agree with me this morning? If you pump in five hours of that junk, it's going to corrupt your mind. But if you pump in five – what we do, let me tell you what's going on. We pump in five hours of television time that's corrupt and evil and wicked and with all the worldly things promoted on there, and then we'll give the Lord five minutes of the Word of God, if that, and think, boy, I tell you, we've sacrificed for the Lord today. You didn't sacrifice nothing, you just corrupted your mind. You've got to separate from such things. Such things will corrupt the way that you think. Very important today. Well, I couldn't find my glasses, and I thought, oh no, I'm not going to be able to see to read. All right, so you have to separate. Does everybody understand that? Separate from the world. Psalms 101.3 says, I will set no wicked thing before my eyes. If you have to put a note over top of your TV or your or your Internet screen, put it right there so you have to look at it every time you turn on it, it'll convict you to the core. Because if you set wicked things before your eyes, it'll corrupt the way that you think. And then you corrupt the way that you think, you corrupt the things that you do. And you corrupt your thinking, you'll corrupt your fellowship with Jesus Christ. And you know, you can't be happy if you're born again if you're not close to Jesus Christ. Separate. Change your music. Listen to Christian music. You can't listen to the music of the world without it corrupting your mind, I don't think. We all realize that music sins a what? What message is the music you're listening to sin? Back in the 70s, there was a song out called, Having My Baby. I believe I remember right, teen pregnancy increased about fourfold as a result of that song. It was a popular rock song back then. Increased about fourfold. Has an impact what you listen to, and who you're around for crying out loud has an impact. You run with a corrupt crowd, it'll corrupt your thinking. That's why in Psalms 119, David wrote, I'm a companion of all those that fear thee. I'm a companion of all those that fear thee, because God's people will help you keep your mind straight. I like to talk about godly things. I like to fellowship with people. I like to talk about the Lord. And it's uplifting. It keeps my mind clean. You've got to separate from these things. You've got to clean up what you watch. You can't saturate your mind with the Word and not clean up what you watch. You can try to, but you won't get nothing out of it because you're just going to counter it by pumping in the junk. What I'm telling you this morning is killing Christianity, killing the effectiveness of God's people, killing the fruitfulness of God's people. Finally, number five, replace your thinking with better thinking. Philippians 4, I believe it's verse 6. We'd better turn there so I can make sure I got the right one. I had a lot to cover this morning, but I did pretty well, I think, considering all my points. I had a message for you today. I tell you, when I came here today, I knew I had a message for you. I felt this message came from the King, as always. This message can change people's lives in this church starting today. I don't want to pastor a church of people that have corrupt minds all the time. I really don't. I'd rather pastor a church of five that had clean minds, spiritual minds, spiritual-minded, and loved the Lord any day. Philippians 4, verse 8, ìFinally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, Whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, what's it say? Think on these things. Instead of thinking about something that's unjust or unpure, you think about things that are just. You keep your mind, you bring in the captivity. every thought. You replace the bad thinking with thoughts about things that are righteous and good. And I tell you what, when you look at all those words, just, pure, lovely, all those are descriptions of Christ, aren't they? All those are descriptions of the Messiah. All right, I'm not done, just about. I give you types of bad thinking. I give you the results of bad thinking as it ends up corrupting your life. It affects your worship, it affects your fellowship with God, all these type of things. And now I give you the attack, how you can attack that. I want to take control of my mind. Don't you? Does everybody here agree with that? You want to take control of your mind. Once you've got control of your mind, it will make you more spiritual. and more happy and have more peace and more rest in your service for Christ. One of the great problems today is God's people don't have their minds under control. You pray every day. Would you do that? Every day. Opening my lips and meditation my heart be found pleasing to thee, O God. When bad thoughts come in, you confess those as being sin, and then you replace those with others. You don't sit and nurture them all the time. Okay? Saturate your mind with the Word of God. Y'all got CD players usually in your cars? You can put a message in there. You can listen to God's Word going to work every day if you'd like. Separate yourself from the ungodly things. Don't pump in smut, and you won't think smut. That's bad anyway. And then you replace, as we've already said. That's the plan of attack. I think that'll work if you practice it. May God add His blessings. Let's all stand.