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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Jonathon Cherne

Food For Thought

This morning my sermon is entitled, Food for Thought.

I'm sure we've all thought about the food that we put into our bodies.

Maybe some of you are thinking about that right now, I don't know.

But have you ever thought about the food for your thoughts?

Have You ever thought about what you're feeding your thoughts?

This message is going to be about our thought life.

The Bible talks a lot about our thoughts and the information we put into our minds and how that affects us.

We live in a world where anything and everything has access to our minds.

It's like we're constantly being bombarded by information, by different thoughts.

Too often we fail to guard and we allow into our minds things that we shouldn't and it affects the purity of our heart.

And so we're going to talk this morning about the food that we consume for our thoughts.

Father God, Lord, I pray that you speak through me, Lord.

I pray, Father, that you show us in your word, Lord, what you want us to think about, Father, that you change our minds to be the mind of Christ, Father.

It was a nice treat from the people we were staying with.

Now in order to make the perfect pancakes, you need ingredients, right?

Flour, some sort of sweetener, sugar or agave nectar, whatever you prefer for your perfect pancake.

Maybe egg or flaxseed instead or a little salt, a little oil.

So we need all these ingredients to make the perfect pancake.

And my perfect pancake includes blueberries.

So you've got to put in some blueberries, otherwise it's not a perfect pancake.

So if I was, if I went to my pantry and I'm gonna make pancakes, I go to my pantry and I look at my pantry and all I find is flour, maybe some garlic, maybe some salsa, some eggs, a little salt.

And I take all those and I come and I mix them up in a bowl.

Now, what if I put them in the blender and I mix them really good?

No, I'm going to end up maybe with an omelet or something.

I don't know, but I'm not going to get pancakes.

You see, in order to get pancakes, we have to have the right ingredients in our pantry.

Has anyone ever started to make something and they realized they were missing an ingredient?

They tried to substitute that ingredient and it turned out awful.

You know, you think, oh, I can just, we'll just put in some applesauce instead.

And then it doesn't turn out because it's not the right ingredient.

So it doesn't make what you're trying to make.

So the things that we put into our pantry affect what we can make.

And the things that you put into it, because everything in your life comes from that pantry.

My sister and I, we were backpacking in South America, and we were waiting to board a bus in Buenos Aires to go up to Iguazu Falls.

We had just been to Peru and taken lots of pictures, Machu Picchu, different things.

And my sister ran out of money, so she was like, can I borrow some money so we can continue our trip together?

And so I had this running tab with my sister.

And so I just pulled out $300 and I put it in my day pack with my cell phone and my passport and the camera.

And we were there at the bus stop, and I was supposed to guard the luggage, right?

So I put our big backpacks in front of me.

I put my day pack between my legs and kind of cinched down on it.

We were standing there waiting for the bus.

And we saw these, there were a couple other Americans there.

They heard us speak in English and we started talking.

And as I was talking to them, I must have let my guard down a little.

And all of a sudden, from between my legs, my backpack is gone.

My guard was down, and someone took my backpack unexpectedly.

In my backpack, I had all those valuables, all those pictures, and I lost all.

The Bible says above all else, above your luggage, above your money, above everything, guard your heart.

Above everything else in the world that you would guard, you should guard your heart.

Not only could you lose the things that you love, the people that you love dearest, but you could also lose your identity if you do not guard your heart, your identity as a Christian.

I remember my sister another time, she caught me listening to some music that I would shudder to listen to now.

And the words were all about things that shouldn't be repeated here.

And my sister was shocked that I was listening to such a terrible song.

She said, I can't believe you're listening to this music.

And I was like, oh, I don't listen to the words.

You see, I was naive enough to think that the music didn't have an effect on my pantry.

I went to church, I wore a tie, I prayed before I went to bed.

I thought that because I appeared good on the outside, that my pantry was good on the inside.

You hypocrites, you clean the outside of the cup, but inside it's full of greed and self-indulgence.

You blind Pharisees, first clean the inside of the cup, and then the outside will be clean.

You see I was focused on guarding the outside.

I was focused on myself and how I appeared to others and yet I wasn't filling my pantry, the pantry of my heart, with the things that a Christian should be filling them with.

Volume 3 of the Testimonies, page 507, says, guard the senses, lest Satan gain victory over you, for these are the avenue of the soul.

We guard our heart by guarding our senses.

Everything we see, everything we hear, everything we touch, everything we smell, everything we do impacts the pantry, impacts the heart.

The magazine cover at the grocery checkout line, the billboard you passed on the way to church, the song you heard at the gas station, the words your friends spoke to you.

Every intake into your mind affects your heart, affects your pantry, affects who you are.

Sometimes we don't realize that each and every input in our mind matters.

We think that we can just discard some things.

We think that we are strong enough to filter things out.

We don't realize that these things are getting stored in our pantry and even though we might not be accessing them right then, later, those things will bubble up.

So we have to guard our heart, guard every input, every thought impacts our salvation, whether for good or for evil.

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Food For Thought

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