TO THINK LIKE GOD
Do you know what it means to think like God, to have the mind of Christ? I’m sure many of you can answer that question with sound biblical theology. Still, that’s my concern— that Believers spout on about profound truth but they never actually experience it! Their theology ends where it began — with “the right answer.” I don’t think I need to point out to you that faith is not a summation of noble ideas, rather, in the Kingdom of God, faith is more of a verb than it is a noun; it’s “Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven!” My point is, if the Church truly knows what it means to think like God
, then why aren’t Believers leading in every realm of society as God’s solutionaries?
Why are injustices like sex trafficking, abortion, racism, and prejudice, to name a few, still happening on our watch? Where are the innovators and the idea makers, the risk-takers, and the ground-breakers?
TRANSCENDENT THINKING
My journey into the mind of Christ began many years ago, when Bill Johnson, who was the pastor of our small rural church at the time, began teaching the congregation about the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I’ve shared this story several times, and I’ll share it with you now because this is one moment when a whole new dynamic opened up in my life and my theology became a reality.
Back in those days, I owned an automotive repair shop and one of our largest fleet customers was a timber company that had purchased over twenty brand-new computer-controlled Chevy trucks. Let me remind you these were the days before automotive technology was standard in the production of vehicles. Back then auto mechanics meant repairing engines and replacing parts not fixing computers. On top of that, there was very little information out there about the technology in these trucks. There was no Google in those days. Long story short, one of these brand-new trucks rolled into the shop one afternoon on the back of a tow truck. It was followed by a phone call from the manager of the timber company telling me there were 10 more dead trucks just like that one, and I needed to “figure it out!” I spent days working on that truck and couldn’t get it started. I called the dealership and they walked me through numerous tests over the phone and faxed me the wiring diagram, but still, nothing worked.
Finally, Sunday came around. At church, Bill had been teaching the congregation about words of knowledge. For those who need a refresh: a word of knowledge is specific information we get from the Holy Spirit about a person, place, or thing that is currently true, but that we could not have known, had the Lord not revealed it to us, and that’s when a thought hit me that changed everything I knew about God up until that point. I wondered if the Holy Spirit might know as much about trucks as He knew about people!
The next day, after the shop closed and everyone had gone home for the night, I started praying for God’s help. As I prayed, in my mind’s eye, I envisioned myself laying hands on the truck in the same way that I did with people. Feeling uncomfortable but knowing no one was going to see me, I acted on the vision and put my hands on the fender of the truck. Asking for God’s help, a picture emerged in my imagination of a broken wire under the right front fender well. Then I heard a Voice in my mind say, There is a wire broken on a diode under the right front fender. Now, I know this thought was not mine for two reasons: first, I had torn the wiring apart in this truck and never came across a diode. Second, I didn’t even know this truck had a diode; there was no indication of one on the truck’s wiring diagram. I immediately start peeling back the undercoating and lo and behold there it was, the broken diode. I soldered it back on and the rest is His-story...the truck started right up.
I WAS MADE FOR THIS
Since that day, I have solved numerous difficult situations with information the Holy Spirit provided. The truck and the diode experience opened the door to a whole new dynamic in my life and I began to grow progressively in my connection to the Holy Spirit’s transcendent thinking, but there are two things that I learned from that experience that I want to share with you that will teach you how to think like God:
- Spiritual gifts give us access to the mind of Christ
. Gifts of the Spirit
are not trophies or awards that are earned by our merit but are God-given to those who desire them. Spiritual gifts disciple us with the mind of Christ and bring us into spiritual maturity. Jesus put it this way, “ If I don’t do the works of the Father, don’t believe Me!
” (John 10:37) As a child of God, there is an expectation that we would accomplish the impossible because the God of the impossible abides within us.
- Spiritual gifts need a job. When I assigned the gift of the word of knowledge the job of uncovering the solution I needed for the truck, I gained access to the mind of God and what was once undiscoverable and unseen was now exposed by the light of God’s wisdom. It was right then that I began to understand what Bill Johnson meant when he said, “ There’s no such thing as a secular job as soon as you receive Jesus because everything you do from that day on is sacred. ” When we assign spiritual gifts to a job, regardless of where we work or what realm of society we’ve been given influence over, ministry happens! In other words, when an auto mechanic becomes spiritually in tune and intelligent, he now is in the work of ministry!
So tell me, what’s your story? What complex problem, whether it be in your life, family, or the world, do you need a supernatural solution for? Think about this: lying dormant in many Believers is a single thought that originated in God’s mind. Do you know what this thought is that I’m speaking of? It starts as a whisper and becomes a declaration that shouts: “I was made for this!” That’s right; in your heart burns the notion that you will not be conquered because you are an overcomer! If you take hold of the thought that you were made to conquer anything that stands in your way, you’ll begin to harness the power that overcomes crises, transforms lives, and radically shifts culture. How do I know this? Because you were born to be God’s solutionary! You were made for this!
