15th Sunday after Pentecost, Morning Worship, September 21, 2025
Sermon Series: Rick Warren’s Transformed – Week 3 Mental Health
Sermon: Change Your Life By Changing Your Mind
Accompanying Scripture: Romans 7 : 15-25a

Change Your Life By Changing Your Mind

Romans 7:15-25a

My mobile telephone is one of the handiest tools I’ve ever owned. Not only can I receive calls from just about anywhere on the planet, but I can send and receive text messages that save me time. I can access my email and my checking account. My investments are a click away, as is the latest weather report for the next 7 days. I can even access files, like my sermons or reports.

I love my mobile phone. Instead of a briefcase, I need only have a small purse and everything I need is at my disposal.

The problem is, I use it too much. Perhaps you’ve experienced this problem. I’m sitting watching TV and I check for text messages and email. I set the phone down. A scene on the TV is
boring, so not 5 minutes later I’m checking my phone again. No messages.

This dependence on immediate activity occurs while I’m eating dinner or waiting for a friend or even waiting to cross the street at the light. I can’t keep my phone in my pocket.

This will go on for thirty minutes before I catch myself! I put the phone down and tell myself to leave it there. Forget it.

I try to leave it there, but I do the very thing I don’t want to do.

I wonder if Paul would have had that trouble. For he says, “I do the things I don’t want to do and I don’t do the things I want to do.”

In fact, phone addiction has become a problem. Parents today have the added chore of teaching their kids the proper use of a telephone before their young brains become addicted to social
media and the internet.

We do what we don’t want to do. The phone is a small but important example. It serves as a good example of how this happens in other parts of our lives.

In our scripture passage this morning, Paul talks about this at great length. He readily admits that “Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.” (v20 MSG)

The first statement on the back of your bulletin says this in a
different manner:
God is far more interested in changing your mind than changing your
circumstances.

Whatever is going on in our minds controls what we do. If we don’t think it, we don’t do it. Proverbs 4:23 says, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”

Often, we are told false things about ourselves. They are all too easy for us to take too seriously. Sometimes they are destructive and hurt us. When this happens, we’re tempted to turn from
God, perhaps because we’re embarrassed or hurt.

One way to counter this is found in #1 in your bulletin:

1.Feed my mind with truth daily.
But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ” (Matthew 4:4)

Scripture is a good place to begin. Meditation and prayer follow. A conversation with a friend can be a spiritual experience.

Temptation begins in the mind. Pride, lust, anger, resentment, fear, envy, and worry. Any of these can trigger us to pull away from hurt. A difficult scene on the TV screen sends me searching for my telephone for a text message instead of concentrating on the source of the trigger.

The battle takes place in our mind.

To help counter this, we turn to #2 in our bulletin.

2. Free my mind daily from destructive thoughts.
For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit[a] set their minds on the things of the Spirit. (Romans 8:5)

And finally, #3:

3.Focus my mind daily on the right things. Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth, (Colossians 3:2)

What is the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning? Read the news, do a load of laundry? Or sit in quiet and seek peace?

What do you do last thing at night? Take your bad day to bed with you and toss and turn? Or turn it over to God?

Pray constantly, Paul advises us. It takes a while to learn it, but you really can be in conversation with God all through your day. This draws your attention to what’s around you, be it beauty or difficult situations; you can talk to God about it.

I’m still working things out with my mobile. I’ve begun leaving it alone until after my morning meditation. It’s difficult, but doable. When I catch myself looking at it too much, I ask myself what the real problem is.

Those are my solutions. They may not be yours. But when we focus on God’s truth, we can begin to pull away from destructive thoughts and set our minds on God and what God wants for us in
our lives.

All glory and honor be to God.

Amen.