God is a triune Being, and we, being formed in His image, are also triune beings. We are in essence, an eternal spirit, we have a soul (mind, emotions and will), and we live in a body. When we are born again (John 3:3), our spirit is instantly renewed and we begin a new life in Christ.

But our mind, which controls our emotions and our will, is a different matter entirely. Renewing our mind takes constant work and prayer and is a gradual process that will take place for the rest of our lives. And while we are in the process of that ongoing renewal, our mind remains the main battlefield for the attacks of the devil. Fear, anxiety, anger, resentment, jealousy, lust, and pride all start with a thought, and unless we act promptly to cancel the enemy's assignment on our minds, sin is "crouching," ready to pounce.

That is why Paul tells us very strongly to be "transformed by the renewing of our minds" (Rom. 12:2). We work together with the Holy Spirit to renew our minds on a daily basis by taking captive "every thought to make it obedient to Christ" (2 Cor. 10:5). We are to be "made new in the attitude of our minds" (Eph. 4:23) and to "set our minds on the things above, not on earthly things" (Col. 3:2).

Having The Mind Of God

The Bible talks a lot about our minds, because that is where most Christians have trouble in—the mind, the "seat of consciousness, thoughts, volition and feelings" (Oxford Dictionary). It has been said that the human mind is the playground of the devil and the games the devil wants to play with us are dangerous games indeed, with eternal consequences.

However, God created our minds just as He created the rest of us and therefore, with His help, we can control our minds and overcome the temptations, emotions and feelings that beset us in our daily walk.

Kingdom business professionals are no more immune than anyone else. Indeed, in the marketplace, we are beset with a whole array of mental attacks and temptations ... the fear of failure, worry about the future, the temptation to cheat and lie, the anger with competitors, the lure of wealth and the all-too-human tendency to manipulate and dominate those around us. We must be constantly reminded that we are to love people and use money, not the other way round.

God gave us our minds and He expects us to use them and not leave them at the door of the church. In fact, He says quite specifically in Isaiah 1:18, "Come now, let us reason together." To "reason" means to "argue, discourse, converse, to talk, to think in a connected, sensible and logical manner, to think out, to arrange the thoughts in a logical manner" (Oxford Dictionary). God put something between our ears that has a higher function than just filling up our hat.

God invites us to "see and know and consider and understand" and to "present your case" and "set forth your arguments" (Is. 41:20-21). In the New Testament, the same theme continues, "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope you have" (1 Pet. 3:15).

The Spirit Of The World

We live in a complex, high-tech and often confusing world with many competing philosophies, religions, economic systems and mindsets. If we do not understand with our mind what we believe and therefore set forth a strong case for our convictions, then we are at the mercy of "every wind of opinion" and every new-age messiah with the latest ratbag revelation.

God expects us to "understand the times" and not bury our heads in the sand and hope everything will somehow turn out all right. This is because there are powerful forces out there, backed by an ancient and implacable enemy, who are doing everything in their power to ensure everything does not turn out all right.

Today, we are living in a world where 47 million babies die unnecessarily each year worldwide, sacrificed on the altar of convenience and "the right to choose." Here's also where the fundamental building block of every civilized society–marriage–is being perverted and redefined into any indiscriminate coupling of genders and "orientations."

The powerful homosexual lobby is calling into question many of our basic Christian presuppositions. The Metropolitan Community Church, an openly homosexual "church" in America, says that Jesus Himself was homosexual and wore a purple robe to the cross as a sign of His homosexuality, that David and Jonathan were homosexual lovers, and that Ruth and Naomi were lesbian lovers.

Primary school children in America and Australia have been given compulsory questionnaires on their sexuality, with questions including these:

And this applies to PRIMARY SCHOOL children, not university or college students!

The Bible Versus Man

As Alan Sears and Craig Osten say in their disturbing book, The Homosexual Agenda, "Notice how heterosexuality is portrayed as the abnormal behavior ... And what happens when children start to reject their parents' beliefs after being indoctrinated in the public schools? After a week of mandatory 'Homophobia Week' assembles in Beverly, Massachusetts, a 14-year-old girl told her father he was a homophobe."

Australian philosopher and animal rights activist Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at the prestigious Princeton University in America (ironically holding the "Chair of Human Values") and arguably the most influential bioethicist in the world today, believes and recommends that:

Nobel laureate Francis Crick was quoted in the Pacific News as saying, "No newborn infant should be declared human until it has passed certain tests regarding its genetic endowment and if it fails these tests, then it forfeits the right to live." Ingrid Newkirk, co-founder and national director of PeTA, said, "I don't believe that people have the right to life. That's a supremacist perversion. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy."

We are traveling at frightening speed down a slippery slope of moral relativism and a new, all-inclusive "tolerance" that holds that all beliefs and values are equally valid, and that all truth is personal and relative. The absolutes God sets out in the Bible are anathema to the advocates of the "new tolerance" and if we do not actively support and approve of their deviant lifestyles and practices, then we are narrow-minded, judgmental, old-fashioned and, horror of horrors, "homophobic." Today, if we don't support abortion on demand, we are not compassionate. But what about some compassion for the baby, so conveniently referred to in abortion parlance as the "product of conception?"

The Question Of Tolerance

There are many issues facing Christians today, including terrorism, drugs, pornography, wealth inequalities, etc. But the two "flash points" remain: the attack on morality and the sanctity of life.

In morality, an acceptance of the homosexual (gay) lifestyle has led to same-sex marriages and once on the slippery slope, what will stop the slide to the legalization and social acceptance of bestiality (see Peter Singer), incest and pedophilia (the North American Man Boy Love Association, openly supported by the American Civil Liberties Union, publicly crusades for the acceptance of consensual sex between men and boys)?

In life/death issues, abortion on demand has led unrelentingly to the horror of partial-birth abortions, and what stops the slide down the slope to involuntary euthanasia (as has happened in Holland), infanticide (see Peter Singer again) and the whole Nazi nightmare of genocide and the legal murder of the elderly, sick and other people who are racially or socially unacceptable to the elite?

Josh McDowell and Bob Hostetler, in their book The New Tolerance, says: "As you read these lines, the society around you is undergoing what may be the fastest, most ominous cultural change in human history ... It is a change so vast that its implications are mind-boggling. Most frightening of all is that most Christians seem to be missing it. As a result, we may very well wake up in the not-too-distant future in a culture that is not only unreceptive, but openly hostile to the church and the gospel of Jesus Christ, a culture in which those who proclaim the gospel will be labeled as bigots and fanatics, a culture in which the persecution of Christians will not only be allowed, but applauded. And all of it will be directly related to the 'new tolerance.'

"The new tolerance unrelentingly inserts itself subtly into our lives, via television images and song lyrics. Whether you know it or not, the deceptive doctrine of the new tolerance, and the accompanying idolatry it fosters, is all around you, seeping not only into your mind, but into the minds of your children and other loved ones."

McDowell and Hostetler point out that the goal of the "new tolerance" is not only to achieve acceptance of people who are different, or who believe or behave differently (which is totally acceptable to Christians, because we are not to judge the world), but also to force all others to approve of and participate in their attitudes and activities.

As Christians, we are to love our neighbors but we are not told to love their lifestyles or behaviors. McDowell and Hostetler say, "The Bible makes it clear that all values, beliefs, lifestyles and truth claims are not equal. It teaches that the God of the Bible is the true God (Jer. 10:10), that all His Words are true (Ps. 119:160) and that if something is not right in God's sight, it is wrong (Deut. 6:18).

"This is not just the view of Hebrew culture or Christian culture or Western culture; it is the truth, according to the God who rules over all cultures revealed in God's Word."

(End of Part One)