YOU BECOME WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT

God is so much more wonderful than anyone you have ever known. 
God loves Mother Theresa but he does not bow to her goodness. She lived every day of her life in need of His mercy and forgiveness and so do we.

When you were born, your life was a gift from God. 

• We owe everything to Him. 
• He created us. 
• God is the only source of life. 
• All life comes from Him alone. 

But our experience of life is not so wonderful. We know we are moving through this world on a one way journey towards death. 

Big business makes billions of dollars from botox, hair dye and viagra. We know our vitality is fading with every passing year. The biggest selling drugs in some western countries are statins, which promise to make a very small reduction in your risk of dying of a heart attack. 

God’s original plan for us was ever increasing life, quite the opposite to what we know in this faded world. 

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

• And God blessed them.
•  And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion ... over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Genesis 1:27-28 (ESV) 

Our Creator is the living God, the eternally creative life giver. 

• He made the first man and woman to rule over all living creatures, to multiply life without sickness, without aging, without death.

• God made this world full of life and peace and He plans to restore everything that has been ruined. 

We see little glimpses of this in the Bible.
Abraham was childless and already past retirement age when God promised to make him the father of many nations. 

• When he was about 100 years old and long since retired from married pleasure, God restored his virility. His wife Sarah, who was over 90, produced a son. After Sarah died, Abraham had another family with his concubine Keturah.

That is history but God also promised a wonderful future which we have not yet seen.

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, 

and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. Isaiah 11:6 (ESV)  

Our thinking is so conditioned by the limitations of aging and death, that 21st century secular people see this as mere mythology. 

• Academic liberal theology trains preachers to see the Bible as a collection of fables. 

• But why should it not be true, actually, really, literally true? 

The heart and soul of Christian faith is the supernatural life, death and resurrection of the Son of God.

Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?

• But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 
• And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. 1 Corinthians 15:12-14 (ESV) 

Take away this faith and Christian civilization becomes a decaying empty shell. We see this decay on the TV news every night. 

Faith is everything, so what is FAITH?

Faith is trusting, trusting in money, trusting in the economy, trusting in your job or your abilities or trusting in God.

• What you trust in determines what you think and how you live. 
• The things you trust in will fill your thoughts.
• You become what you think about most of the time. 

Jesus said:

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.

• But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 
• For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6:19-21 (NIV) 

The things you treasure most will stir your emotions and fill your thoughts.

• What is the foundation of your life?