Sermon Tone Analysis

All In! part 2

And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.'

The second is equally important: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'

No other commandment is greater than these."

INTRODUCTION

Good Evening!

Last week we talked about these verses.

That the greatest commandment given by Jesus tells us to love God with all our heart.

And we discussed about the heart.

How it is the center and the seat of our spiritual life.

And How the heart deals with our emotions and passions and that is very important to God, but it also speaks of dispositions.

I believe that our view of the heart is centered around the emotions we have toward others.

And the Bible teaches us that we must love God with all our emotions, desires, passions, thoughts, affections, and will.

We must be all in.

But it is not just about emotions alone, but it is about commitments and we discussed how we must have both going in our lives to be “All In!”

But tonight we want to talk about another part of that verse:

And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.'

I want to look at the word: Soul, With all your soul!

Has anyone ever heard the phrase “soul-sucking job?

Maybe you have been on a job like that?

That phrase means that the situation is demeaning, depressing, unfulfilling, hostile, and does not give you life.

It drain you of all your energy and positivity.

This word Soul here in the greatest commandment passage is a Greek word which is psyche referring to the mind.

Man has a soul.

This is the part of man where resides the office of human government.

The soul determines, the motivation of the total man.

The mind of man is closely related to his learning ability.

You see, the mind is constantly being fed ideas, thoughts and impressions.

Then all those things, ideas, thoughts and impressions are being accumulated, analyzed and stored away for future use.

This is the reason why it is so important that the mind be given material that will edify the total man spiritually.

Those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit.

So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death.

But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace.

Understand this the result of the Fall, the human mind is imperfect.

It’s powers have become weak, impaired and perverted.

The power of reasoning is poor.

Memory is defective.

In fact, all is our of order and the human mind has become the ground of the devil’s working.

The mental processes are a part of Satan’s attack and very often the devil’s stronghold.

Everything is pure to those whose hearts are pure.

But nothing is pure to those who are corrupt and unbelieving, because their minds and consciences are corrupted.

So the scriptures reveal that the wicked move to the natural mind.

Evil thoughts, language, imagination and acts which are symptoms of what in the mind.

A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart.

What you say flows from what is in your heart.

So the mind which feeds upon the things of the world produces carnality.

The mind which feeds upon the Word becomes a renewed mind.

So many times we are sitting on the back end of a decision wondering how we got there.

Sometimes it is a pretty benign choice like eating that cheeseburger when you swore you would eat better.

Other times those decisions have pretty big consequences.

So many times we are sitting on the back end of a decision wondering how we got there.

Sometimes it is a pretty benign choice like eating that cheeseburger when you swore you would eat better.

Other times those decisions have pretty big consequences, perhaps flirting with a married coworker.

To understand how our thoughts affect our lives we must first understand our thoughts processes.

There are three steps in this process.

1. Thoughts

Our Thoughts are make up of information that our brain takes in and sends to our mind.

Our mind acts as the gatekeeper of the computed information.

It determines which information is relevant and what will become our mental focus.

Those thoughts can very easily become beliefs that can affect our feelings in positive or negative ways.

Let’s take the cheeseburger example.

Maybe the thought was simply, “I am hungry”, or maybe the thought is “I have had such a hard day, I deserve a treat”

2. Feelings

Feelings are the emotional response to thoughts and behaviors.

They are indicators of our connection to a situation.

They stem from our experiences and our perspectives…aka thoughts.

This is where things can get tricky, we can take a simple thought “I am hungry” and add our own emotional response to it, often we can combine emotions from other things happening that day onto thoughts that have nothing to do with it.

“I am hungry” can have the stress of the day tacked on, or anger from a fight, or sadness from bad news.

3. Behaviors

Behaviors are the actions generated from our thoughts and feelings.

The way we behave in response to something is because our thoughts persuade us it is the best decision to make at that time.

So if you’re hungry, and you’re feeling sad and stressed etc, you may decide a cheeseburger is the best idea to cover both the thought and the feeling.

So what we can see here is that our what we bring into our lives will affect our behaviors.

So when we are contemplating the impact of our thoughts we can see that they strongly affect the entirety of our lives.

They provoke our emotions, as well as, our behavioral responses.

Our views and perceptions alter how we will feel and thus how we will respond to a situation.

Just as every journey is made of many single steps each individual response makes up the life we build.

So when we are contemplating the impact of our thoughts we can see that they strongly affect the entirety of our lives.

They provoke our emotions, as well as, our behavioral responses.

Our views and perceptions alter how we will feel and thus how we will respond to a situation.

Just as every journey is made of many single steps each individual response makes up the life we build.

This will provoke our emotions, as well as, our behavioral responses.

Our views and perceptions alter how we will feel and thus how we will respond to a situation.

Just as every journey is made of many single steps each individual response makes up the life we build.

You see, spiritual life passes from the Word through the mind, renewing it and edifying the spiritual man.

You see, spiritual life passes from the Word through the mind, renewing it and edifying the spiritual man.

But the carnal man is self-centered, the spiritual man loses his identity and reproduces Christ.

And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all He has done for you.

Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind He will find acceptable.

This is truly the way to worship Him.

Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.

Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect

Apostle Paul here used the word Transform.

I wondered why he chose that word?

The Greek word transform is translated is the same word transfigured that used in .

And was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light.

(KJV)

In the New Living Translation:

As the men watched, Jesus' appearance was transformed so that His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as light.

(NLT)