Clean Mind // Standing Out From the Crowd, Part 3

A Different Perspective Official Podcast

What we do with our mind – our thinking time – each day is really important. What do you think about? How helpful or harmful are your thoughts. How do they influence who you are and what you do?

One of the things I really love to see in people is that they're the same on the outside as they are on the inside. Of course it can take a while to find out whether that’s actually the case because we really have to get to know someone before we discover whether what we see on the outside is really what we're getting.

I actually don't mind people who are blunt or direct, I'd much rather have that than have them say one thing to my face and another thing behind my back and one of the key things that we each have on our inside is our mind.

What we do with the old grey matter between the ears, how do we spend our thoughts? Or what do we think about? Because so often what we think about is reflected in how we behave. And while we can fool some of the people some of the time we can't fool all of the people all of the time.

This week on the program we're talking about what it means to stand out from the crowd, looking at that, I guess, from a bit of a different perspective.

We've looked at the difference between significance and success, I mean the difference between actually making a difference in peoples lives verses being noticed and big noting ourselves and being concerned with what people think of us and we've seen that so often there’s an incongruity that occurs between who we are on the outside and who we really are on the inside. We're going to unpack that a little bit more on the program today.

Who am I on the inside? Who are you on the inside? You know that place where other people can't see. A lot of that has to do with how we use our minds, the things, bluntly, that we think about. I mean some people spend a lot of time worrying about things, 'what about this? What about that? Oh, what's going to happen?' or criticising people, 'well, well, well I wouldn't have done it that way, absolutely not. Can you believe that she did that?' Or being threatened by people and their minds just go around and around this mountain called fear.

A lot of people spend time scheming against other people, thinking about how they can come out on top. Well, I guess you probably recognise some of those things, I certainly do. And you know the really scary thing is that the way that we think and the things that we think about end up being really entrenched patterns of behaviour. Some of the strongest patterns of behaviour we have are how we think and what we think about.

The apostle Paul talks about strongholds and that’s exactly what he's talking about, things in our minds and we hang on to them so strong that they have a hold on us. We can spend most of our time worrying and it grips us like cancer. If we spend most of our time criticising other people it ruins our relationships. If we spend most of our time thinking about how we can succeed and win and claw our way to the top, sure we'll stand out from the crowd but not for the right reasons.

Some people want to abdicate their responsibility for how they use their minds. 'Well, well that’s not my fault, it's just my personality type' and that’s true, we're all different. Psychologists have identified the different traits and identified different personality types but you know it's also true that we can make up our minds, we can change our minds.

We can choose to think about some things and not about other things. As entrenched as our thought life might be we can change it. Have a listen to what the apostle Paul wrote on death row. He's in chains, he's in a Roman dungeon, he's waiting to be executed. He's writing a letter to his friends in a place called Philippi; this is what he says from his prison cell. He says:

Finally, whatever is true and noble and right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about those things. Whatever you've learned or received or heard from me and seen in me, put them into practice and the God of peace will be with you.

That’s a pretty amazing thing to write when you're on death row. I don't imagine his cell was air conditioned, I don't imagine it was comfortable; he was probably tied up in chains. Paul, for me, is one of those people who really stands out from the crowd. He was abused, they tried to kill him, he was beaten, he was locked up, he was on death row and it was often his fellow Jews and Christians who plotted against him. And he comes up with this here on death row, Paul’s secret with how he copes with it all on the inside as well as the outside. Look at the first part of that again:

Finally, whatever is true or noble or right or pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about those things.

You see, what we think about makes such a difference. If Paul had been sitting there in the dungeon worrying about this and being afraid of that and thinking about this and chewing over that and mulling. You know when you sometimes go to bed and problems just go round and round and round in your head, Paul would have been a wreck, Paul wouldn't have able to write this stuff.

The things that we think about make a difference and you know something, we can choose what we think about. I might be working with someone and they're driving me nuts and in the natural flesh what I want to do is saw them in half. You know, your mind goes that direction and you start thinking, "Ugh, you know, I'm going to get this per …"

At that point, we have a choice to make and this is the choice that I try and make. I say, "You know something; I'm just not going to think that way. I'm going to think of something that’s true or noble or right or pure or lovely or admirable or excellent or praiseworthy and I'm going to think about those things."

When we're thinking, when people are getting us down or they're giving us a hard time, we can think badly of them or we can think well of them. We can think, 'How can I destroy this person or how can I constructively solve the problem or the issue at hand?'

When we're afraid we can think about God’s goodness and God’s grace or we can imagine all the bad things that are going to happen to us. "But how?" There's only one way, if something wrong comes into my mind I just choose not to think about that. If I feel the bad thoughts coming on I quite simply reject them and think about the good things, the true, the noble, the right, the pure, the lovely.

Our thought life has a lot to do with who we are and you know the thing is, because our thought life is hidden from everybody else, it's the one place where we don't have accountability. I don't have to account to anyone, in the natural here on earth, about what I think about. I just let my mind roam wherever I like and when we don't exercise discipline over the things that we think about, those thoughts end up impacting what we do and who we are and what we say and how we feel.

So the first part for Paul sitting here on death row is think about the good things and the second part is:

Whatever you've learned or received or heard from me or seen in me, put those things into practice and the God of peace will be with you.

In other words, live it out and you know what happens? When the goodness on the inside reflects in who we are on the outside, the peace of God starts happening in our lives even if, like Paul, we happen to be stuck on death row.