Episode 76: Renewing The Mind Through Fellowship

Jacob Paul: Welcome to the Truth in Love podcast with your hosts Kimberly Faith and John Mac. The Truth in Love podcast seeks to present God’s timeless truth through the lens of his remarkable love.

John McLarty: Are we on, Kim?

Kimberly Faith: We’re always on, dad.

John McLarty: As long as we’re on.

Kimberly Faith: Right? What do we do? We do a podcast about the soul never sleeps or something like that.

John McLarty: No rest for the weary.

Kimberly Faith: Well, dad, this podcast was your idea, and I am absolutely loving it and very excited, and just going to let you take the lead about renewing the mind through fellowship with believers.

John McLarty: Well, it does kind of spin off of last week’s podcast on who are we really? And that’s the kind of the personality of our soul. And we’re born again. And of course, as newborn believers, we’re not mature Christians. But then we delved into last week, just how do we develop that inner person, which is the mind of Christ? How do we let that out and not cover it up with the flesh?

Kimberly Faith: You talk about that. It reminds me of, you said newborn believers. I think about, you know, when a baby is born, how they’ve got all this gene pool. Right? They’ve got this DNA and with their parents, but that is manifested through the fellowship of family and extended family and the community and their maturity. Even as a baby, you could recognize some of these traits, the DNA.

John McLarty: That is so fascinating. Yes. You’ve got the smooth brain, but then it’s influenced by, you know, its surroundings, the family. But then, this is just totally a new thought, but I used to teach kids how to swim. And so four and five and six year olds.

Kimberly Faith: Was this back in Lubbock at the Seahorse?

John McLarty: This was in Lubbock at my uncle’s swim school. It’s a public swim school. And you could already see in a five year old the hesitant, just tap, put their toe in the water, and then a kid who would just plunge into the pool, had no idea even how to swim. But they were just going to get out there and thrash around. And you could recognize those you know, four and five year olds have these distinct personalities.

Kimberly Faith: Well, it’s so

John McLarty: And from the same family. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. 

John McLarty: So same environmental influences, so to speak, but also just the nature of that child. So then we have a natural part of us, and then we have a unique nature of our soul. And that’s what we kind of explored last week is how to develop that. What is it?

Kimberly Faith: Well, and it

John McLarty: And how to uncover it’s covered up by the flesh.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right.

John McLarty: The mind of the flesh, the desires of the flesh, but it’s kind of letting Jesus out. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. 

John McLarty: Let Jesus in us out.

Kimberly Faith: It reminds me of that book, The Shack, and how when you know, this metaphorically, of course, speaking the holy spirit led, the man, the main player of the story, into this beautiful, wild, crazy garden. And he said, what is this place? And she said, it’s your soul. And he had never even understood what his soul looked like. And I think that’s at least with this podcast, this is one of the goals that as we are discovering who God made us and what our purpose is, and that he’s given us this remarkable purpose that most of us never even understand because we don’t know who God really is. We don’t know who we really are, and therefore, we are not able to discover our divine purpose. And I think this particular podcast is going to add another dimension to that.

John McLarty: It does, and it just ties into so much that we’ve already talked about, but I’ll just kind of give the background. So this is renewing the mind through fellowship with believers. And this started appropriately with a believer, a fellow member of our church, Gary McHenry, came to bring a devotion on one of our Friday night studies, and he brought up Nehemiah 4:6. And I’ll just read that. And this is when they were rebuilding the wall.

Kimberly Faith: This was after the seventy years of exile.

John McLarty: Yeah. They were returning from exile. They’d already, interestingly enough, rebuilt the temple. They’d started worship. And then Nehemiah had a burden, he heard that the walls were torn down and on fire, and he pleaded with the king. Could he go rebuild the wall? And Nehemiah says, so we built the wall, and the entire wall was joined together up to half its height, for the people had a mind to work. And Gary just said, what is that mind to work? And it’s just so fascinating because the use of the term mind, they had a mind to work. That kind of means they had a will to work. And then we just kind of built on that. And Gary was bringing out that as Christians, we have that born again soul, and we have decisions to make. That soul is born again. It’s the nature of Christ. It has the mind of Christ, but it’s not without an enemy.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: And Nehemiah, in those days, they had an enemy. And even as they built the wall, they had a mind to work. They were under attack. And, you know, the attack was, you know, from the 

Kimberly Faith: The enemies of the

John McLarty: The surrounding yeah, enemies.

Kimberly Faith: The naysayers and the enemies.

John McLarty: And they did everything from naysaying then to political influence to scorn and then to, you know

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: Everything they could do. They used every technique under the book to stop the building of the wall.

Kimberly Faith: I think it’s interesting to think about when our soul is born again. Our soul has a mind and our flesh has a mind. You know? It’s almost like there’s this if you read in, we’ve talked about this quite a bit, but we get to choose which mind. When we’re born again, we actually get to choose to think with the mind of Christ, as opposed to the mind of the flesh just wants what it wants.

John McLarty: And that is exactly where we’re going with this, is that very concept. And it’s just so fascinating that when we’re born again, I’ll read a scripture here real quick. It’s Second Corinthians 5:17. And it says, therefore, if any man be in Christ, so that’s a born again believer

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: As you mentioned, he is a new creature. So that born again isn’t just reformation.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: It’s a renewal. 

Kimberly Faith: Transformation. 

John McLarty: It’s a new person. A new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new. Then just jumping forward to verse 21. For he, and that’s God, hath made him, Christ, to be sin for us who knew no sin. And this key phrase here, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

Kimberly Faith: So beautiful.

John McLarty: So it is this contrast. The born again believer is absolutely made up of the righteousness of God. That’s our inward person, our soul. And we’ve talked about this. But then you have this flesh, and it’s got a mind of its own. We use the example of a horse that has the mind of its own.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: So the flesh is always selfish continually. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. 

John McLarty: I mean, it says, I’m hungry. I want to be fed. I’m cold. I want something warm. 

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: I’m this.

Kimberly Faith: I want to watch TV. I want to do 

John McLarty: Exactly.

Kimberly Faith: You know, what’s interesting about this too is, I don’t know if you ever felt like this in your walk with the Lord, but sometimes I feel like I get in this mindset where I am struggling to do the right thing. Instead of thinking about that as I get to choose the mind of Christ who will enable me to do the right thing, I’m almost like doing this in my flesh. Like I have got to obey because and then list whatever reason. Instead, I’m going to choose to be in Christ through loving obedience, which produces obedience and produces the mind of Christ almost effortlessly because it’s already there. It’s not like we have to strive to get it. No. It’s already there, but we do choose to use it.

John McLarty: To kind of let it.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: And that’s what’s so fascinating. I’m sure our listeners are picking up on this and its use of  the word mind. So we have the mind of Christ.  And sometimes like, that’s over here. And then we have the mind of the flesh. 

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: But then there’s the phrase that the people had a mind to work, and that’s almost our free will is our mind. It’s like you just said, we have a decision. We can decide to follow Christ on any given day, any given moment, even any challenge to our, you know, somebody calls us a name. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

John McLarty: Or, you know, causes a reaction.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. No. I’ll give you an example. And actually, if you know, this is last week, I’ve had several hotly contested cases coming up in my office. And in one of them, you know, one of the other attorneys just sent me a really just not very nice email, very personal, you know?  And my first reaction was you know, my knee jerk was to be offended, right? Retaliate immediately.

John McLarty: Exactly.

Kimberly Faith: And because I really want to have the mind of Christ, I stopped. And by God’s grace, I don’t take credit for this. And I’m like, Lord, I need to have your mind now. It was like a very practical, I need to have your mind right now because what I’m about to do doesn’t reflect your mind. And you know, dad, I don’t know why it blows my mind so much that I get this choice and I’m not using it enough. But almost immediately the Lord said, I mean, it was just confirmation, stop. Here’s what you need to do. And it was completely not, I mean, you send an email basically that says, you know what? There’s some truth in what you say. Why don’t we have a phone call? It was the olive branch response instead of the, oh, you want to go there, buddy?

John McLarty: Attack you back.

Kimberly Faith: Right. And you know what it produced was a result that completely diffused the situation. And I didn’t have to think about it. The Lord just did it through me, and it was such a relief. And I’ll give you one more example because this is such a practical thing. And I don’t want it to sound like what we’re talking about is like, this is what preachers do, or this is esoteric, or this doesn’t apply to me. But, another thing, you know, when I get ready for a trial, I’m usually several weeks in advance getting ready, like, you know, getting my witnesses together, preparing my file, getting my battle plan drawn up, all this, which has been culminating since the case was filed. But this has happened many times where I’m starting to ramp it up and the Lord just says, no. Stop. You have other things I need you to do. It’s a very uncomfortable position to be in. But that happened this week too, and I just did it. And wouldn’t you know, the case got continued. So it wasn’t time to ramp it up. God knew that he’s already in the future. But having the mind of Christ by saying, I choose to do what you’re leading me to do right now, and it was to help somebody that, not even a client, just somebody else, was the right decision that I could not have known in my mind of my flesh.

John McLarty: Yeah. That’s a perfect example of you didn’t have to choose that. 

Kimberly Faith: That’s right. 

John McLarty: So there’s this interface mind, that is our free will that’s deciding you’re going to follow the mind of Christ or the mind of flesh. And that’s our free will. And that’s this part that needs work. That needs renewal, needs tuning. So we have the perfect mind of Christ, and it’s perfect. We can’t improve on that.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. How could I have known that stuff?

John McLarty: We have this selfish mind of the flesh, and it is what it is. But then we have this interface. And that’s what we are talking about, it’s an interface. It’s like and that’s our free will.

Kimberly Faith: And that’s what we get to train.

John McLarty: And it’s also kind of referred to as our mind. The people had a mind to work. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

John McLarty: Well, they could have had a mind to not work.

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

John McLarty: To be lazy. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah.

John McLarty:  But they had a mind, they were making a freewill decision. And that’s where we’ll go to Romans 12:1 and 2. And it again uses this renewing the mind. I’ll just read that. I’ve got it right here. And I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you might prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

Kimberly Faith:  I love that. It’s one of my favorite verses.

John McLarty: So here are these new Christians, and they have the perfect mind of Christ, and they have the flesh. But what is the renewing of the mind? And that’s  Christian growth. That’s where it becomes more habitual to decide, no. I’m going to go with Christ’s way of resolving this problem.

Kimberly Faith: Right. Kind of like going back to the baby. Right?

John McLarty: Right.

Kimberly Faith: I mean, if the baby grows up seeing his parents working, then he’s going to have a mind to work because they’re going to integrate him into that. And he’s going to cut those grooves in his will where working is natural. Working is part of what we do. And I think, you know, moving towards this idea that we do this with the fellowship of believers, family, is a great example of that.

John McLarty: It is. It is. And that’s kind of where we’ve actually had podcasts that hit all around this. So it’s like, how do we renew that mind?

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: Right. How do we strengthen that habit to follow Christ instead of follow the flesh? Cut those grooves. And we’ve kind of talked about some ways to do that. So this is, one way,  is through time in the word. One way is through prayer. Another way is just through obedience to Christ, and he manifests himself to us.

Kimberly Faith: I want to talk about this for a minute, obedience. Because I think obedience in general has a real negative connotation. I mean, we talk about you know, God just commands this and commands that, and it’s like in this wrathful almost judgmental, you know, like, you better do this or else, right? But I have really experienced what it’s like to obey God because I love him. And I’ve also spent most of my Christian life obeying him because I was afraid of him. So the contrast, and I’m not saying I’m perfect or arrived. I’m just saying I’ve experienced both. And sometimes I fall back into this obedience out of fear instead of obedience out of love. The difference is immeasurable, really.

Because when you do something because you love somebody, it’s a complete game changer. It’s like the fear disappears, and it’s like you’re entering through this dance with them where all your moves are together, and you have this perfect partner. And he’s saying, hey. It’s kind of like that verse we always talk about where God says, you’ll hear a voice behind you saying, turn this way or that way. So you’ve got the perfect partner who’s saying, look, if you’ll do this, you’re going to be in step with me, and I already know everything, and I love you more than you love yourself. And, you know, and I’ve got the strength to carry you through. And it’s just a big difference.

John McLarty: And here’s where this kind of comes into that is I’m just going to paraphrase a passage, I think it’s in John, but it’s like, He that loves me will keep my commandments, and he that keeps my commandments, I will manifest myself to I him. So that’s the renewing. And I think we’ve shared this before in podcasts. Just one time out just knocking on doors and kind of came upon a family that was really receptive. And my companion and I, when we left, we were energized. We felt the presence of God just kind of like, you guys did what I wanted you to do tonight. And the family ended up coming to church and joining the church. So yeah, it wasn’t that we were out in fear of retribution. We were out just, you know,  our church used to do Tuesday night outreach. But that’s part of renewing our mind is having that experience where we’ve, even when you’ve said you chose to follow the mind of Christ in this law situation.

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

John McLarty: And you ended up realizing it was the better solution.

Kimberly Faith: It was perfect. 

John McLarty: And then that makes you want to do that again.

Kimberly Faith: Right. It’s like when we, so I’m going to read that. The verse you were just you were just

John McLarty: Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: Quoting. It says Jesus said, this is in John 14:15. He says, if you love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the father, and he will give you another helper that he may abide with you forever. The spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him, but you know him and he dwells with you and will be in you. And, you know, I think about this and I think and the last verse says, I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you. In the context

John McLarty: And that energizes us. We want more.

Kimberly Faith: Yes. We want more because the presence of God, the Bible says that it’s the goodness of God that leads us to repentance. And when we experience the presence of God, it’s so good. We just want more. We want to obey. We want to live in obedience. We want to know what he’s thinking. We want to know what his plans are. We want to know what his mind is. And he’s already given it to us. This isn’t rocket science is what I’m trying to say, but we make it rocket science.

John McLarty: That is such a perfect example of that renewal of the mind through obedience, but we mentioned through, you know, word and prayer and obedience, and those are pretty standard, you might say, a formula for renewing your mind. I spend time in the word, spend time in prayer, Don’t you know, just be doing what God wants you to do. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

John McLarty: The new thought I had on this, on renewing the mind through the fellowship of the believers, is out of Ephesians. Ephesians Chapter Four, and it’s kind of 12 and 13. But I’ll read part of that. And this is to the church, and he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the son of Christ to a perfect man to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. And just the idea that this was a function of believers .So through fellowship of believers, that is leading us unto the fullness of Christ, to the it says, unto the perfect man. And that’s the mature man. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

John McLarty: That’s the person with a renewed mind.

Kimberly Faith: Well, later it talks, I love the part of that verse that says that we should that we should no longer be children tossed to and fro, carried about with every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men, the cunning craftiness, and the deceitful plotting, but speaking the truth in love may grow up in all things into him who is the head, Christ, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind that you and it goes on to talk about what that looks like.

John McLarty: Well, yeah, let’s jump down to 23 and 24. It says, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind that you put on the new man, which is created according to God in true righteousness and holiness. So it really just struck me that this is one of the functions of a church, of an assembly of believers, is that we’re renewing our minds through that association with the believers. And I just thought of going to church, and I gave a devotional on this recently, so I used some names of some people in our church, and I’ll just use them here. So we have one of our ministers, Rick Saldivar. And when he gets up to preach or just give a devotion, his job, his day job, he’s retired now, but he was a Frito Lay salesman. So he was always in all these grocery stores and he would witness to the stockers at all these grocery stores. And he would know them by name and Rick would get up. He was in charge of Sunday morning services for a long time. And he would just bring, he would come to tears.

Kimberly Faith: He would cry. Yeah.

John McLarty: Just about the soul of the stockman of a Harps or a neighborhood Walmart. And just his passion for souls. So I could read in the Bible, and we should, about our passion for souls, being fishers of men. But I would see that. I would see it in Rick.

Kimberly Faith:  Right. 

John McLarty: And of course, it wasn’t Rick in per se. It’s Jesus in Rick.

Kimberly Faith:  Right. 

John McLarty: But it’s this aspect of Jesus.

Kimberly Faith: Right. Well, like, that’s like when I, you know, when I mean, I was influenced by you and mom writing your testimony tract. And it was like, I should write my testimony tract. And so I’ve handed out thousands of these, but that was the influence of you and mom. And I saw how powerful that was just to have, this is the story of how I came to meet the most important person in my entire life, Jesus Christ, and have taken him as my Lord and Savior. And it completely changed my life. That’s the most important story we could ever tell and to have it in a tract. You all influenced me to do that for myself.

John McLarty: And that’s a perfect example of this kind of revelation I had, is we influence each other. And so  christian growth, rather than just being a function of going off by ourselves, and there’s nothing wrong with that,  Jesus went off at  times by himself. But I just thought, if fifty years ago, Lynn and I had just moved into a log cabin in the most remote setting, and we’re like, we’re just going to dedicate ourselves to prayer and the word of God.

Kimberly Faith:  Right. 

John McLarty: Would we be the same people we are today?

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

John McLarty: No. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

John McLarty: Because we have been influenced by Rick Saldivar, by brother Brian Disney. 

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty:  By all these you know, by our family.

Kimberly Faith: Well, think about

John McLarty: Other believers.

Kimberly Faith: The same thing applies if a child grew up in isolation. 

John McLarty: Exactly.

Kimberly Faith: Their personality would be so linear. And they wouldn’t have these multifaceted influences of maybe the crazy granny like me who, you know, does things that mom and dad don’t have time to do or whatever that looks like. But I think about the people who have influenced my Christian walk. Of course, you and mom have been very influential.

But I think about, like, Jeannie Champagne who took me under her wing when I was a teenager. I think about, you know, Kenny Francis, who patiently taught me in high school even. And all those people added value to and another dimension to my life that has allowed me to come to what the Bible calls the fullness of Christ, the stature of the fullness of Christ. I think about, you know, what does it mean, you know, we can’t even really put in words what it means to observe the stature or the fullness of Christ, but don’t you want to? Don’t you want to know what I mean, I think about when Jesus was in Gethsemane, right?

Here he is. You know, he’s praying. He’s sweating drops of blood. He’s considering pain for all the sin of the all the sin of the past, all the sins of the future, all the all the sin. And he’s also considering the worst part, separation from the love relationship he’s had with his father since eternity past. And so here he is, and then, you know, five or 600 men show up to take him prisoner. Right? 

John McLarty: Right. 

Kimberly Faith: Because they think he’s going to run. But the Bible says that he came out to meet them. And when they taunted him with, so where is Jesus of Nazareth? He said, I am he. And they fell back. That’s a really great picture of the fullness of a statue of Christ. I want to be like that. I mean, there’s no reason we can’t. There’s no reason we can’t except for ourselves

who we don’t choose.

John McLarty: When I see you have that passion and I saw it in Rick, and then that rubs off on me. 

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty:  And that’s kind of the point of this. We’re rubbing off on each other. Iron sharpeneth iron.

Kimberly Faith: Passion is catching.

John McLarty: Yeah. And it just gave me this appreciation for this fellowship of believers. And it’s not a minor thing.

Kimberly Faith:  No. It’s huge. 

John McLarty: We think of the mind, you know, renewing our mind as this real, you know, in the word, in prayer, but it’s very much a function of, you know, who we hang with, so to speak.

Kimberly Faith: As brother Kenny says, our homies.

John McLarty: Our homies. At the same time I was putting this devotion together, I was reading the book of Daniel, and this really struck me, that Daniel was given this impossible task.

Kimberly Faith: It’s King Nebuchadnezzar.

John McLarty: King Nebuchadnezzer said I had a dream, and I want the wise men to tell, I don’t even remember the dream. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

John McLarty: So tell me the dream and the interpretation.

Kimberly Faith: Or I’m going to kill y’all.

John McLarty: Or I’m going to kill all of you. Well, they were all like, this is impossible. And then that came to Daniel. He  was one of the wise men, which is very interesting. He was in that group. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah.

John McLarty: So he was going to be killed. So he went and said, king, I’ll take this on. 

Kimberly Faith: Give me a minute. 

John McLarty: Give me a minute. And then Daniel out of 2:16 to 19. So Daniel went in and asked the king to give him time. Give me some time that he might tell the king the interpretation. Then this is so interesting. Then Daniel went to his house and made the decision known to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. Well, that’s Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

Kimberly Faith: Right. Those were their Babylonian names.

John McLarty: The same men that were thrown into the fiery furnace

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: And there was a fourth man in the furnace. But he went to his companions.

And look what he did, that they might seek mercies from God, from the God of heaven concerning this secret so that Daniel and his companions might not perish with the rest of the wise men of Babylon. Then look at what happened. Then the secret was revealed to Daniel in a night vision. So Daniel blessed the God of heaven. So this wasn’t just Daniel as a freelance,

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: Believer. He went to his buddies. 

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty:  He said, look, guys. 

Kimberly Faith: This is serious. 

John McLarty: We need to petition the God of heaven. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

John McLarty: So he went to his companions 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. 

John McLarty: And they prayed together, and God revealed the secret. So that just really struck me that he went to his, you might say, his inner circle.

Kimberly Faith: It’s kind of like, you know, if we can get a grip on understanding the spiritual warfare that we’re in, we would never, we would never go in if we were in the US army, we would never go in to fight the Taliban by ourselves. We would never go into Gaza or to any type of  wars in Nigeria, you know, China, Russia, whatever, any hostile territory by ourselves. We would go with a unit. We would go with an army. I mean, probably a lot bigger than a unit.

But the unit,  the smallest part of that are the people we’re tightest with and that we’re in sync with and the people who tell us, hey. Don’t forget your helmet. Or, hey, are you ready? You know? And we can count on them if we’re out of hey, I’m out of ammo. You know? We can count on them. And I think Daniel was kind of going, man. Guys, I’m kind of out of ammo here. We have to get together and really ask the Lord to reveal this. Otherwise, we’re going to be killed. And what a blessing to have people that you know have your six in spiritual warfare.

John McLarty: That’s the exact take away from this devotion, that it’s our inner circle, our fellowship of believers. It’s not a light thing. And for you know, we kind of have a phrase freelance Christians. You don’t want to be a freelance Christian. You want to be a member of that team, like you talked about. And the military is a good example of that.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah.

John McLarty: You have kind of like your inner, your unit, right? But then you have this bigger structure all the way up to the command. 

Kimberly Faith:  The command. Right. 

John McLarty: You know? I can say, yeah, we’re going to send the satellites over X country. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

John McLarty: We’re going to give you the secret info.

Kimberly Faith: Exactly. Well, you know, I also think about the idea that we, not only are, I mean, gaining the awareness of the importance of a church is sometimes, you know, I guess where I’m going with this is I have a lot of people I meet who say, well, I don’t have any friends at church. You know, I don’t have, I don’t have, nobody has made friends with me. Well, you know, I like to turn that question back around and say, what have you done to make friends with people to initiate that? Because that’s the way friendships happen. You take the initiative. And I think that, especially during COVID, we got in this mindset of isolationism, and it was almost like we’re all having to figure out how to repair from that. And for some of us, it was challenging because we were being forced to be isolated in a lot of ways. But the really cool thing about what COVID did was it forced us to actually be more intentional about getting together. I mean, we were like seeing that isolationism was pulling us away from having this inner ring. And so it forced us to be more intentional, at least it did for me anyway.

John McLarty: Yeah. And just to wrap up the thought here, this Ephesians is a key verse. A part of renewing our mind is to take advantage of and be a part of this institution. The church isn’t just this amorphous kind of floating around thing. God set up, God created the church.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right. Jesus said, I will build my church.

John McLarty: I will build the church. And then they took the house of God function away from Israel, God did, and gave it to this new nation, this new group, this new identity. And it’s a real thing. And here in Ephesians, it’s saying, God gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors, teachers. There are offices. There’s you know? And then other places in Romans, talks about, you know, somebody in the church, the specific assembly, say, he’s added us to, or adds other people to. Somebody’s a foot, somebody’s a hand. So we all have these different functions that are fitly joined together. But it’s for the perfecting of the saints and the work of the ministry.

Kimberly Faith: Well, and ultimately for the glory of God.

John McLarty: Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: You know, I mean, I think that, especially when you see these excuses, and I’ve been just as, you know, I’ve given excuses too, but a lot of the excuses boil down to our own sense of self importance when, you know, like, I don’t get to do, I don’t get to be this person. I have to be the janitor. I don’t get to be the choir director. And you start to see these schisms, but the schisms are only created because we have forgotten, we’ve put on that mind of the flesh instead of the mind of Christ because, you know, I want to read this verse in Philippians. It kind of is a good segue into this verse with Philippians. Philippians 2:5-8 says, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, becoming the likeness of men, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.

John McLarty: That’s a great challenge to kind of sum this up, is that humbling. Usually to be a member of a body of believers, a church, it takes some humility. And it’s like Nehemiah and the group that built the wall. It’s not without challenges. It’s not without, you know, conflict. It’s not without, you know, stress and trouble.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. No. It’s, well, and it’s even that way with a family. You don’t have 

John McLarty: Exactly. 

Kimberly Faith: I mean, obviously, somebody has to be in charge of, maybe mom’s in charge of one thing, dad’s in charge of other things, and the kids got things they’re in charge of. You know? And I was thinking about how, you know, we have so many great military leaders who have made comments about humility. And I, you know, it’s so interesting that even in leadership, if you’re a leader, if you don’t have the mindset of being a servant, then you’re a terrible leader. Jesus led by example. He didn’t ask his disciples to do anything that he didn’t do, that they weren’t qualified to do, that he wasn’t already doing himself.

John McLarty: Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: You know? And I think it’s, you know, if you don’t really care who gets the credit, then there’s really no limit in what you can do.

John McLarty: Yeah. That just kind of part of this wrap up can be Philippians 4:8. So this whole topic is renewing the mind. And here’s this challenge. Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatsoever things are just, pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, and if there’s anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things. So that’s all the nature of Jesus.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: But as we see Jesus in others, I’m just going to call out one name here that kind of reminds me of some of this verse. We have a member of our church, Russ, Russ Richmond, and his ministry so it’s not like, here’s Rick Saldivar who just, you know, sheds tears over souls.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: And Russ is more of a works ministry. He goes to, like, ladies in the church, you know, that need help, and he’ll fix the faucet or cut down some branches. Well, Jesus was a servant. Jesus did works. Jesus helped others. So these cumulative qualities in others. So I see that in Russ, I see something in Rick Saldivar, I see studiousness in Brother Brian getting deep into the Word, Kenny something else, your passion. I see your passion for just things of God and digging into things. My wife, Lynn, her ministry of just

Kimberly Faith: She just loves on everybody.

John McLarty: Loves on everybody.

Kimberly Faith:  Right. 

John McLarty: So I guess my point is we’re not seeing the greatness of other people’s flesh. We’re seeing the greatness of those that have let Jesus live through them. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. 

John McLarty: But then we see that. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. 

John Mclarty: And it’s like Jesus isn’t here walking the earth now. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

John McLarty: But he is kind of through others.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: That is letting Jesus out in their lives. 

Kimberly Faith: Absolutely. 

John McLarty: And we see that, and it helps us renew our mind.

Kimberly Faith: I think about, you know, what we want to be remembered for, and I want to, I truly want to be remembered for Jesus, what people saw in me, you know, and it’s a struggle. It’s a daily struggle. I think about this verse in, you know, in Philippians 4:8 that you just read. And I’ve always thought about how do I make myself think about these good things, right? Because on one hand, we kind of like to hear salacious gossip. We kind of like to know the dirt, right? I mean, that’s just who we are. So a lot of times we just, that’s one of the reasons that the news that comes out, most of it’s bad news because that’s what people want to read, right? 

And as I was thinking about this when you were talking, our thoughts, what we think about shapes our heart, our emotions, our actions, it determines our peace, right? And when we live in a world where negativity is kind of lauded, fear, temptation, distractions, all those things are kind of the predominant culture, we don’t have to force ourselves to think positive thoughts or ignore real problems when we have been born again because Christ has already put the ability in us to think about things that are true, that are honest. That’s because we have his nature in us. I just want to drive this point home because this has been a point of frustration with me. I keep thinking, well, I have to think about things that are true and noble and just and all these things. Right? And I know I’m not capable of doing it. Well, that’s the first step. That’s right, Kim. You are not capable of doing that without Jesus. And you have to choose. Okay. This is not forced positive thinking. I’m going to choose the mind of Christ. I’m going to continually make it a habit to choose the mind of Christ. That’s a that those decisions are micro decisions. I’m going to choose not to think about Jeffrey Epstein and all that, you know, all that fallout. I mean, you know, it’s one thing to know that it happened and then you flush it out, but that doesn’t do anybody any good. And I don’t mean to call out names, but it’s just been in the news a lot. I don’t have to think about the person who offended me. I get to choose to think about what God puts in my mind about that person, which is typically to pray for that person.

John McLarty: Right.

Kimberly Faith: You know? And so the more that I discipline myself to think about what Christ puts in my mind and that mind of Christ that I already have.

John McLarty: We already have.

Kimberly Faith: We already have it. We just aren’t using it. And I’m pointing my finger right at myself right now. And I want to use the mind of Christ because the bottom line is you think about the contrast in Galatians Chapter Five about the fruit of the spirit and the works of the flesh. If we are living, producing the fruit of the spirit through the spirit in us, love, joy, peace, those are the first three. Right? I mean, that’s Jesus. That’s always Jesus. And then we get to say, oh, this isn’t me. This is Jesus in me. Do you want to know him? What an opportunity. Because it’s such a rare thing on this earth. And I think that your, you know, your point is excellent that when we have a body of believers who are all wanting to do this, it strengthens that bond. It gives us that camaraderie. Yeah. We’re all fighting the same fight. We all acknowledge that we tend to think with the mind of the flesh, but we want to think with the mind of Christ. So how can we strengthen each other? Well, that passion is a great, it’s catching.

John McLarty: We had a young man in our church. Brother Brian turned the New Year’s Eve service over to the young people. So this young man was 18 years old, a senior, and he got up and said, everybody does New Year’s resolutions, and that’s okay. And he said, but we already have the mind of Christ. We don’t need to do all this reforming and rebuilding. He said, we just need to let Jesus out. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. 

John McLarty: This was an eighteen year old.

Kimberly Faith: That’s great.

John McLarty: And it’s like my mind went, that’s a tune up.

Kimberly Faith: That’s a tune up.

John McLarty: That’s a, you know, that’s a good reminder. And it was coming from an 18 year old. That was so exciting, but it’s just right on to what we’re talking about. He encouraged me. He helped me renew my mind. He talked about kind of getting your mind right. So you get around believers

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: And if the believers are letting Jesus out in them, that helps us get our mind right.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right.

John McLarty: Get our mind corrected. Tuned up.

Kimberly Faith: We talk about this and I,  just to kind of wrap up, but we talk about this a lot, how when we get together, when I get to come visit you and mom or do a podcast with you or even just getting together with other believers, how it’s almost like a little mini revival. And it’s such a blessing and what a great opportunity we have to be in a country where we can do that. Amen to that. You know, one of the things I’d like to encourage our listeners to do this has kind of been one of my New Year’s, I hate to say resolutions,because I should have been doing it all along, but something God laid on my heart, and it is to make a list of the top 20 countries where where Christians are persecuted, like Nigeria 

John McLarty: Iran. 

Kimberly Faith: Libya, all these countries where, Eastern Eastern, you know, Eastern Africa. And and just pray for them to have the just the strength, the comfort, the boldness,the resources they need

John McLarty: Amen.

Kimberly Faith: To heal their hearts, if their children have been taken away, if their families are in jeopardy, just entering into their suffering and asking the Lord to help me do that, because that’s really difficult to do when you don’t know somebody. If it was you that had been captured by the enemies of Christ, it would be easy for me to enter into your suffering, but to give me that passion, that same thing we’re talking about, really.

John McLarty: That’s good.

Kimberly Faith: And so that’s just that’s free. One of those one of those things that Lord just kind of laid in my heart.

John McLarty: Part of renewing our mind.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right. Well, this has been good, dad.

John McLarty: This has been very good.

Jacob Paul: You’ve been listening to the truth and love podcast with your hosts, Kimberly Faith and John Mac. To discover more answers to the big questions in life, visit us at gofaithstrong.com.