After Hurricane Katrina last year, an English atheist named Roy Hattersley wrote an interesting article. In his article he observed that almost all of the disaster relief was being done by religious groups of one kind or another. There were no teams of atheists or free thinkers or rationalists. He concluded that he wished it was possible to live a Christian life without being a Christian, yet it didn’t seem to work that way. The faith of believers gives rise to serving others.
Hattersley was right that serving others is a mark of a believer. NIV 1 John 3:17 If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Love for God expresses itself in love for others. Love for God expresses itself in acts of service to those within and without the church. One of the marks of a believer is that he is a servant.
God is interested in your actions of service and He is also interested in your attitudes behind your actions, both are incredibly important. An action done with a bad attitude doesn’t accomplish anything in God’s eyes. However, when our attitudes are right, we will be motivated to serve others, as if we were serving God Himself. NIV 1 Corinthians 13:3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Serving others needs to come from a heart of love, from thoughts motivated by God’s Spirit.
Today I want to talk about the topic “Adjusting Your Thinking.” Everything you do in life begins in your thought life. The things you do wrong, begin with wrong thinking. The difficulty you have in serving God, stems from wrong thinking. If you and I can get our thinking in line with God’s Word, then we will learn to please God. When you please God, your life will be the best life it could be.
The difficulty is that most people around you are thinking the wrong way about life and that influences all of us. However, as we focus on what God’s Word, the Bible says, not what we heard on television or read in the newspaper or saw at a movie, then God can begin to adjust our thinking. Serving God begins in the mind. Having a successful life begins in the mind. Pleasing God begins in your thoughts. NCV Numbers 14:24 My servant Caleb thinks differently and follows me completely. If you want to serve and follow God completely, you’ve got to think differently than the people around you. So, today we’re going to ask some questions about how a servant of God thinks.
To hear more about this topic, listen to my October 1, 2006 message entitled Adjusting Your Thinking