{"id":726,"date":"2009-03-05T23:19:50","date_gmt":"2009-03-06T04:19:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/?p=726"},"modified":"2009-04-05T23:46:16","modified_gmt":"2009-04-06T03:46:16","slug":"brain-drain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/?p=726","title":{"rendered":"Brain Drain"},"content":{"rendered":"

This was sent to me as an email from my youth pastor.\u00a0 I’m thankful that God still uses Dyer all these years later to challenge me in my walk with Christ!<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cDo not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God\u2019s will is\u2014his good, pleasing and perfect will.\u201d Romans 12:2<\/p>\n

When I travel, wake-up calls are really important! More than once I have registered my wake-up time with the hotel desk confident that they would call right on time. Well, you know the rest of the story. Rolling over and looking at the clock only to realize that you’ll never make the morning meeting on time is not a great way to start the day!<\/p>\n

So here\u2019s a wake-up call that will help you get your day (and the rest of your life) on track for God. If you are not wide awake spiritually, you may find that you have been robbed blind of the most important treasure you have: your mind and the way you think!<\/p>\n

Os Guinness tells a great story about a Russian factory worker in the days when Khrushchev was the prime minister. Because of the enormous economic strain in those days, employees would steal tools and just about anything else they could get their hands on. To stop the thefts, a KGB officer was placed at every factory gate where each worker was carefully searched for contraband. Petrov, a long-time laborer, pushed a wheelbarrow loaded with two large sacks of sawdust out the factory doors every day. Each day the guard searched through the sacks of sawdust but consistently found nothing. Weeks into this routine the frustrated guard finally said, \u201cHey, Petrov, I promise not to tell anybody. I can\u2019t get what\u2019s going on here. I don\u2019t know why you need all this sawdust. What are you stealing?\u201d Petrov grinned and whispered, \u201cWheelbarrows.\u201d<\/p>\n

Os Guinness makes this probing conclusion: \u201cWhile we\u2019ve been inspecting bags of sawdust, Satan has been stealing our minds.\u201d\u00a0 What a great insight! And while how we behave\u2014keeping all the rules and all the fuss over politics, abortion, and gay agendas\u2014is not sawdust, it is easy to get sidetracked by the issue du jour while letting \u201ccontrol central\u201d slip into thought patterns that quite frankly aren\u2019t anything like God\u2019s thoughts at all. This is no small issue. God\u2019s Word says that as a man thinks in his heart, so is he (Proverbs 23:7). I have always been taken aback by Jesus\u2019 reproof of the religious folk of His day, when He said, \u201cThese people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me\u201d (Matthew 15:8)!<\/p>\n

Paul gets it right when he informs us that the key issue in growth and transformation is the renewing of our minds, not just the mental activity of stacking up huge stores of biblical data. If that\u2019s all we have we soon become proud and judgmental. We are to train our minds to think God\u2019s thoughts after Him. To think the way He does about the poor and the oppressed. To think His thoughts about our enemies and those who have used and abused us. To let His thoughts honestly evaluate the lame stuff we pile up in our hearts. To think His thoughts about our money, time, family, job, and all other aspects of our lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was sent to me as an email from my youth pastor.\u00a0 I’m thankful that God still uses Dyer all these years later to challenge me in my walk with Christ! \u201cDo not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leadership"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}