MTYC 2012

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Montana Youth Conference

Christian Berdahl

Filled with What?

Now this particular message is entitled, actually I changed the title for this weekend, but it comes from our original seminar entitled Opus, Identifying the Mind's Mark.

And for this weekend I've entitled it, Filled with What?

Because what we allow into our minds and into our souls changes us.

Whether we like it or not, that's how we work.

And so opus is actually a musical term and it's entitled, basically it's an artistic work, especially 1 on a large scale.

And so we're talking about the mind, and when I look at the mind, and the more I study about the mind and how it works, the more I realize that each 1 of us has an opus in our heads.

We have a masterpiece in the mind, the human mind.

And so I think 1 of God's greatest creations, on this planet at least, was the creation of our mind because it is who we are.

It's the essence of who we are and it's incredible what we can do to develop it and increase it and use it for God's glory.

It's amazing just how fast it can become depraved and you do crazy things like show up at, you know, the opening of Batman and shoot a bunch of people.

I don't know if you guys heard about that last week.

So we each 1 are carrying around in our own heads a masterpiece.

You know they've said that the greatest distance a man will travel is about the 7 inches between his 2 ears.

God wants to help us through that journey.

So let's put a couple things in our mind before we jump into how the mind works and why it's so powerful.

There is a cosmic battle going on over you and me and both sides, God and Satan, both of them are at war for our soul and our choice.

So God wants our souls, the devil wants our souls.

God wants our choice, the devil wants our choice.

God wants our willing, now that's the key word, God wants our willing love and worship.

Now, the devil doesn't care how he gets it.

He wants our willing or ignorant worship.

See, there are those who actually worship the devil and they know that they're worshiping the devil.

And there are a vast majority though who are ignorantly worshipping the devil and they don't know it.

God wants our minds fully intact and aware.

You see, God doesn't want to blind us and trick us into becoming Christians and the children of God.

The devil wants to short-circuit our minds and blind us.

So you can see the vast differences between how God operates and how the devil operates.

You see, you could almost say that in a way, don't misunderstand me, that the devil has an advantage over God because he can use deception and trickery and all this other kind of stuff which God of course would never use.

God wants us to make Intelligent decisions based on the evidence of his love.

So he wants us to be a thinking people, a praying people, a people of faith, not a duped people, amen?

Satan wants us to make emotional decisions based on our own happiness.

No matter what anyone says, no matter what God says, just do what feels right to you.

God wants us to know who He is and what He stands for.

He does not want us to come in and not understand who He is.

In fact, when we truly understand who He is, that's when we will want to worship Him.

That's when we will want Him to be an attentive Father in our life.

Now the devil wants to mask who He is and what He stands for.

You see, the devil will, in fact, at the end of time, he's even going to personate Christ.

He is gorgeous, beautiful, angelic being and many will be swept away by his tail again.

In fact, he'll even use the personification, if you will, of Jesus Christ.

So, it's not that he's this hideous, heinous creature with the, you know, horns and a pitchfork and a pointed tail.

That actually is set up by the devil I believe to do people are thinking that's what the devil is like all this nastiness and the evil things and seances and you know all the kind of the creepy things of these horror movies and all this kind of stuff, people go, oh, that's all demonic.

Yet the devil comes to church today and we don't even perceive it.

So he'll use anything because he wants to mask who he really is as long as it accomplishes his purpose.

So there's a very real war going on inside of each 1 of us.

And I explain it this way, there's the carnal dog and he's fighting against the spiritual dog.

Now this is a key point and this is what this weekend is about and will continue to be about.

And this I'm putting it in really simple terms.

Whichever dog gets fed that's the 1 that will win the fight.

So if you feed the carnal man or the carnal dog that man or that that dog will win the dog fight.

But if we feed the spiritual man or the spiritual dog, he's gonna win.

If we feast on the things of God, we will become like God in character.

If we feast on the things of the devil in carnality, we will become like the devil.

So ask yourself a question right here, right now.

Last Sabbath, were you feeding the spiritual dog or the carnal dog?

Answer in your mind, yeah, I was feeding.

Okay, yep, or no, I wasted away, slept it away.

Because, you know, after all, you just go to church and that's where you read it, right?

That's where you get filled up, is that church.

So, what we do is we fill up on Sabbath and we kind of like binge feed to feed the spiritual dog.

But then, what we do is we starve the spiritual dog all week long and we begin feeding that carnal dog.

By the time we get to Sabbath sometimes we don't want to go to church anymore.

Whatever dog we feed that's the 1 that will win the fight.

Now, Paul was talking about this in Romans 7, for I know that is in me, that is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing, for to will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find it not.

I know what to do, I just don't know how to do it.

I know what's right and what's wrong, but man, I don't always do that.

And Paul goes on, for the good that I would, I do not.

So in other words, I want to do good, but I'm not doing that.

But the evil which I would not, that I do.

Can anybody relate to what he's talking about?

This is the converting of the mind away from self and what we want to do in our desire and moving it and God does this for us and but we have to be an active participant in it.

And he turns us away from those thoughts and those selfish things, and this is the struggle.

This is where Paul's going, man, I know what to do, but sometimes I'm just not doing what I need to be doing.

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Filled with What?

Transcript

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