Jim Van Gelderen: This is Jim Van Gelderen and I am podcasting from Kansas City, Missouri, where I parked my trailer for a couple of weeks. Just a couple of hours from now, I’ll be heading up to Albany, Missouri, where my wife and I will begin revival meetings starting tomorrow.

We’re excited about that. But the last couple of weeks I have been in the Rocky Mountains, most of it at Treasure Mountain Bible Camp, which is at eight thousand six hundred feet right there in beautiful marble, Colorado actually above marble Colorado in the mountains there.

And one of the weeks, the very first week, they have something called flags, which is future leaders is the first two words. I don’t remember the other part of the oh God and godly servants.

Yeah, it just came to my mind. And it’s for young people, and I think juniors and seniors to be able to come for a week, learn how to counsel.

Then the next week, they actually are part of the team there as an associate counselor. But that week, first week, I teamed up with pastor Ward Smith from Parker, Colorado.

He pastors Grace Baptist Church. Actually, Brother Smith did most the counseling teaching, but we teamed up in training these young people for ministry the next week and hopefully beyond.

But brother Ward Smith did a wonderful job presenting a counseling paradigm that the Wilds Christian Camp has used for years out of Ephesians chapter number four, and it certainly has captivated my thinking. I’ve kind of been on this journey for a few months now, thinking about this wonderful truth of who we are in Christ.

In fact, you’ve probably heard that come up in some of our podcasts. Obviously, when I, uh, dealt with the I’m a butterfly inside that my daughter Jana wrote that particular poem.

It’s dealing with these same truths. But I want to probably do a couple of podcasts on this, because Ephesians chapter four does give us a good angle at understanding this.

But Ephesians chapter number four, uh, of course, has those famous words put off put on right in the middle of them. It has and be renewed, which by the way, they’re all three infinitives.

But that’s the positive side. In other words, uh, he starts with dealing with the wrong mindset.

And a lot of this is dealing with our thinking processes. And, uh, the very first few verses he is addressing what unsaved people look like, think like.

But anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself, brother Ward Smith. Uh, I could be saying it, uh, kind of paraphrasing.

It may not be the exact wording, but he basically in the booklets that he was teaching us through the basic overview of it is this we think, um, excuse me, we do what we do and we say what we say because we desire what we desire because we think what we think about God, ourselves. And the Bible could have put it this way.

All of our wrong actions and wrong words are rooted in wrong thinking, either about us, about God, or about the Word of God, which, by the way, is that which properly tells us how we need to think about ourselves and about God. But, um, uh, so it’s very important that we think biblically and it basically used a tree.

Some of you probably have seen this wrong fruit comes from wrong root. So the root is our thinking.

The trunk of the tree is our desires. And the fruit of the tree is what we say and do.

Many times we only deal in counseling. Unfortunately, just with the fruit.

Got an anger problem. You got a lust problem when we’re just dealing with the fruit now, sometimes that needs to be dealt with, but you’ll never see sustained victory until you deal with your wrong thinking process.

Why do you desire what you desire and then do what you do and say what you say? Well, it’s because you think what you think, and many of us don’t realize it, but all wrong actions come out of wrong unbiblical thinking.

And it’s very helpful in counseling when you get down to wrong thinking. And I want us to talk about wrong thinking in the next few weeks here, because it really is something that can be corrected, because that’s what the renewing of your mind is there.

In Romans chapter number twelve, we dealt with a podcast or so ago, but that passage here in Ephesians four, it says, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind. Okay.

We’ll talk about that later. But I want us to start.

If you have your Bibles, you can go to Ephesians chapter number four, because in chapter four, verse seventeen, it says this, I say therefore and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles, and the vanity of their mind. Now, Gentiles, they’re of course, talking about lost people, and lost people have vain minds.

What that means they have emptiness. Okay.

Now notice the word mind talking about thinking. But it’s, it’s vain in the sense that it’s empty.

There’s not lasting value there. Then it says, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their hearts.

Now notice understanding, having the understanding darkened. That’s an interesting word.

It literally means thinking through. So it’s reasoning.

Unsaved people have reasoning that is unbiblical. It’s darkened.

They don’t. They don’t think things through the right way.

And honestly, many Christians don’t either. But he’s now arguing from the fact that we ought not think like lost people, though we ought sometimes do.

So they have empty thinking. They obviously have, um, incorrect reasoning processes that are not biblical.

And then of course says, uh, through the ignorance that is in them, that means obviously there’s absence of truth, there’s an absence of right thinking. So you see in that verse a lot.

Then it says, who being past feeling, have given themselves over unto lasciviousness to work all uncleanness with greediness. Now, that’s just a fascinating verse lot to unpack there.

But basically what happens is wrong thinking produces wrong living. And what happens is you, your, your, your conscience gets seared.

So your past feeling, in other words, the guilt goes down, the conviction goes down. And you give yourselves to lasciviousness, which is living without boundaries, doing what you want to do.

If it feels good, do it. Now, every one of you listening to me, if you are involved in things that are out of bounds, things God clearly says are wrong.

It comes because of wrong thinking, and particularly if you can do them without conscience or without guilt or without much guilt. Uh, your past feeling is what it’s saying there.

So that’s how people get there. That’s how lost people get there is they just, they do wrong.

And so far that their conscience gets seared, they have a wrong thinking process, produces this wrong fruit. And we all know that if you only deal with the fruit and never get to the root, then you’re going to continue to bear bad fruit.

It kind of be like this. You go out and pull weeds.

Maybe your parents say, hey, go out, weed the garden and you pull out weeds. But you, you crack them off so that the roots still on the ground.

Unfortunately, you’re going to be back a couple more days doing it again. Far better to pull out the weed with the root.

Now you’ve solved the problem. And so we can look at this verse and say, who being past feeling, giving them, and we can deal with the lasciviousness they’ve given themselves to work all uncleanness with greediness.

In other words, they’ve become passionate about uncleanness. Now, this obviously has moral overtones.

So verse really seems to mostly be dealing with morality, of course, pornography and all the sexual addictions of today and the moral filth that’s involved is really all reflected in this verse of Scripture. But its fruit.

And you can have other fruit, anger, worry, lying, and all of that bad fruit comes from a bad root. But the bad root is what you think about yourself.

God and the Bible. Now we’re going to talk about that next week.

But when you don’t believe right about yourself or about God or about the Bible, you’re going to have wrong desires, and those wrong desires are going to produce things you say and do that are sinful or wrong. And so my challenge to each one of you is don’t just deal with the fruit, because if you struggle with sensual thoughts defeated, often they’re you struggle with looking at internet places you ought not go.

You struggle with anger, frustration. You struggle with disrespect to parents.

You just name the sin. You say, I struggle with this.

If you’re just going to try to deal with the fruit, uh, most chances are you might correct it for a little while, but you’re never going to get sustained victory because you’re not dealing with the root. You got to deal with, why do I want to do this?

Well, you want to do it because you think wrong or wrongly, would be a better way to put it about either yourself, God or the Bible. Now we’re going to talk about that next time.

And but I really, really, right now want you to see what fruit in my life is sinful or is doubtful or incorrect, or it’s bad fruit. Uh, then go back and think, why do I want to do that?

It’s because you don’t think biblically about yourself or about God, or about the Word of God, which tells us how to think about God and ourselves, by the way. And these are really important things.

Then, of course, the Word of God there in Ephesians four says, but ye have not so learned Christ. That is not really who you are.

And we’re going to talk about this now. We’ve talked about it already some, but I was so moved by Brother Smith’s wonderful presentation of this put off, renew, put on truth that I wanted to revisit it.

And of course, Ephesians chapter four. Great place.

So, um, I trust this will encourage you that if you do have bad fruit in your life and you’ve tried to pull it off and it keeps coming back. Well, there’s an answer.

We got to get down to the root. So let me just conclude again with the little saying there.

You do what you do and you say what you say because you desire what you desire about, um, uh, and then you desire what you desire because you think what you think about God, yourself and the Bible. So think about that and we’ll be back to revisit this.

And in the meantime, I just remember, keep your eyes on the Lord, one hundred percent of his will, zero percent my will. That’s total surrender, one hundred percent dependence on his strength and zero on mine.

That’s total dependence. God bless.