Program Success Christian Reader September 2007 | Page 15

The Christian Reader September 2007 15 Elevate Your Mind, Get Yourself Together Rev. Dr. Warren Jackson is the Founder & Senior Pastor of the Rise Above It Family Church in Holly Hill, Florida Email: [email protected] Website: risefamilychurch.org “Elevate your mind, get yourself together”, I remember growing up as a little boy in government housing and hearing this statement all the time. This statement had in it much power to take us to another level in life. However, we who were living in the projects understood the rhythm of the rhyme but we did not understand the statement. If we could have only taken the time to pay attention to the words and not just the rhythm of the rhyme, maybe some of us could have escaped the tyranny of poverty of mind. All lack begins with the thinking process. Poverty of mind arrests futures, destines, and promises. It retards careers, purposes, and appointments. It steals dreams, destroys lives, and kills hope. We in the church must come to the place that we are willing to elevate our thinking in order to elevate our communities, cities, governments and world. Elevate your mind, get yourself together. It implies that I must do something for myself in order to change things in my life. It means that I have something to do with how life comes at me; it implies that my response to situations and circumstances could be different if my mind was at a higher level, and then my perception of life would work in my favor and not against me. No matter how bad it is. And things can get pretty bad at times. That is why this elevation is something that must be a continuous thing. It is not a one time event. When your mind is operating in survival mode, it is always “hit and miss”. It’s like playing music by ear; sometimes you might miss the key, as opposed to having sheet music where you can read it. The Bible, the Word of God is our Sheet Music. Words can be so impor- tant. However, sometimes we can say them without even hearing them. In the case of those of us in the projects, it meant very little to individ- uals that were still in survival mode; we did not understand the power of the statement. The statement itself carried much possibility and promise, but the “beat” had us, not the lyrics. Elevation implies an upward motion. It says that I am making the decision to think at a higher level, perceive at a higher level, to see at a higher level. It gives the indication that things that would have both- ered me previously, don’t offend me now because my thinking is different; I have allowed the word of God to change my thinking. It means that integrity has become a part of my life. It means that I don’t have to step on people in order to get elevated because I know how REAL ELEVATION comes. The Bible teaches the same principle of elevating our minds, thoughts, perceptions, etc. In III John we hear him saying, “I wish above all things that you prosper and be in health even as your soul (mind) prospers”. It implies that we are to work on our minds in order to obtain the prosperity and health of a life that is without limits in God. Many have worked on their spirits, which is already born again, but few have dealt with the savagery of the mind that has left them in the dark ages attempting to do new things; the old pattern of thinking without any promise of getting results. God is calling us higher in a culture that that is termed the Kingdom of God, and governed by the King of Glory. The Bible gives us to know that an unregenerated mind is against God. It fights against the very nature of God within our spirit. That is why the Apostle Paul said that the things that I need to do, I don’t do them and the things that I don’t want to do, I do them. Because the mind has to be changed, our thinking must be altered in a direction that causes us to serve God even in our minds. I have learned in my 30 years of living for Christ that you can come to church, dance, holler, fall out under the Spirit, and cry, but if that mind has not changed you will be just as defeated as when you came in. The mind must change. The Apostle Paul says in Romans to be renewed in the spirit of your mind, that you may prove what is good, perfect, and acceptable con- cerning the will of God. And THAT is the whole of the story. Because discipline is a difficult thing, it separates members from disciples. It separates the “haves” from the “have not’s”, it separates the rich from the poor; it separates the powerful from the weak. It separates those who would change the world for Christ Jesus as oppose to those who come to church for entertainment or other things. When we change our way of thinking we are able to change the way we do things. We are able to see prosperity in health, wealth, in our emotions, in our social lives, we began to draw people of integrity to us, educationally, we began to strive for more, because now we know that knowledge is something that everybody can have, and those who have knowledge can and will change things. In the book of Joshua, God told Joshua after Moses died, “Thou shalt meditate on the Word day and night to observe all that is written therein, and then thou shalt make thy own way prosperous and then thou shalt have good success”, or the amplified says “deal wisely and have good success”. This had to do with Joshua’s way of think- ing, not his ability to speak in tongues or dance in the spirit. I believe see REV. DR. WARREN JACKSON page 18