Good morning on this 28th day of July. Often out of life's deepest valleys come mountain-top experiences and vice versa. When King David had gone through the terrible experience of losing his baby son, he comforted his wife, Bathsheba, and she conceived and later delivered Solomon, the future king and wisest man who ever lived. Clearly blessing followed buffeting. The opposite occurred when Elijah faced the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel. After routing them in their confrontation and calling fire down from Heaven to consume the sacrifice, he experienced deep despair when threatened by the evil Queen Jezebel and fled for his life. He was so low that he asked God to take him. How can experiences lead to such opposite emotions so easily and quickly. The answer lies in a simple fact of life for most people - when good things happen to us we feel good, and when bad things happen to us we feel bad. But the Bible teaches us that it doesn't have to be that way. Layered in between our emotional reaction to our experiences are our beliefs and thoughts. In fact, our beliefs shape our thoughts. If we are taught to let the mind of Christ be in us, then we will believe, think and even respond as Christ would. The only way we'll be able to accomplish that is to know the New Testament intimately so that we will know and use the mind of Christ and can apply it readily to our lives. Several years ago I preached a series of sermons about the thinking patterns of Jesus, which included an analysis of both the ways Jesus did and did not think. In my next blog, I'll plan to review some of those principles so that we might apply them to our life's needs and circumstances; they are definitely some of the most important principles we will ever use in our every-day lives.
Tomorrow's message is about Paul's first missionary journey during which some very important circumstances developed which changed many lives. I hope to see you there.
Pastor Brown