Recognizing Jesus

The Jews answered him, "Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?" Jesus answered, "I do not have a demon, but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me. Yet I do not seek my own glory; there is One who seeks it, and he is the judge. Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death." (John 8:46-51)

Jesus' words probably seemed alien to the Jews. They were trying to identify Him, to understand Him by their worldly classifications: "Are you a Samaritan? Are you possessed? Who are you?" They had no framework to help them comprehend Jesus' assertion: "If anyone keeps my word, he will never see death." They were stuck in a worldly mindset, and they couldn't see beyond it to recognize who Jesus really was.

Jesus totally disregarded their accusation that He was a Samaritan. Then He really threw them for a loop: "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:58). Whoah there, Jesus--mixing up verb tenses? These people had no idea what the words "I AM" meant, even though God had identified Himself with those exact words before. They were so blind to who Jesus was that they picked up stones to kill Him.

Defensive much?

There's this girl at the gym I go to. She works REALLY hard on that elliptical. You can tell she is pushing her body too much, huffing away as she studies her medical textbooks. The other day, I was on the elliptical next to her, and she was silently judging me for not working as hard as she was.

How do I know she was doing that? Because I used to be that girl.

I used to organize my life with mathematical precision. Calories in, calories out, carefully maintaining what I thought was a balance. I was a little insane, and almost fell into a diagnosable eating disorder.

How does this happen? Like any problem, it began with me believing a lie from my culture: that I (as a woman and as an American) could and should become perfect. That lie grew in my mind, until I was a slave to a ritual of thought that revolved around food and exercise, and manifested in destructive behaviors like eating too little, organizing my day around meals, and working out too hard. My mindset became a comfortable security blanket to me, my mental refuge.

All that repetitive, cyclical thought accomplished exactly what the devil intended for it to accomplish: it kept my eyes focused on me, me, me, and NOT the person of Jesus Christ. And it even began to damage my body.

But I can tell you one thing without shame: Jesus wanted me so badly that He freed me from that mindset (and many other mindsets as well). Now I can look at that girl at the gym and know in my heart that I have left that type of bondage, never to look back--and that I want to help free others, too.

You probably don't have an eating disorder. But I can pretty much guarantee you that you have absorbed some lie from your culture, internalized it, and perform it every day, probably without consciously realizing it. A mindset is a familiar pattern of thought that is lived out in behaviors, usually with counter-productive results. They infuse our spirits with lies so that we become blind to who Jesus is, and we fail to recognize Him. What's more, when people try to tell us the truth about our mindsets, we pick up stones to kill them. (I hope not literally. Although my brother did throw some pillows last week when we were telling him about a mindset he needed to pray about.)

We become defensive.

Even right now you are thinking, "I don't have a destructive mindset!"

Well, the Jews didn't think so either. "Are we also blind?" asked the Pharisees (John 9:40). They were consumed by their own worldview--a religious worldview that had been reduced from the awesome righteousness of God to the self-righteousness of human performance. And because their mindset led them to believe that God couldn't possibly be a miracle-working, dirty-footed nomad from Galilee, they didn't recognize God when He was actually talking to them face to face.

I think a lot of Christians in the world today have a religious mindset that has been birthed in them not by God or His Word, but by their culture, so much so that they can't recognize Jesus even when they are sitting in church. But even more subtle are those other supposedly innocent lies we absorb from culture or from our childhoods or our families. They obscure our view of Him by locking us into a wrong mindset, drawing our eyes to ourselves rather than to the radiance of God.

What does this look like? You wouldn't know, because one of the most sinister things about a wrong mindset is that you don't know you have it.

I've known people who have had mindsets of failure, which is directly contrary to the Word of God. They wouldn't try to do things, or would even intentionally mess themselves up, simply because they were afraid to try and fail--and they didn't even realize that these behaviors were dominating their lives.

My calorie obsession was a control mindset, which can also manifest as manipulating loved ones, trying to achieve the highest grades at school, or even obsessively shaving your eyebrows and drawing them on with an eyeliner pencil. (I've seen this first-hand.)

I've known people with mindsets of unworthiness, which appears in self-demeaning comments, needy behaviors in relationships, sometimes even dressing sloppily or refusing to wear cute clothes. There's a poverty mindset, where people scrap and save and are constantly in fear that they will run out of money. There are mindsets of competition, where you constantly think about how much skinnier the girl next to you is or you keep your car spiffier than everyone else's. That can keep you from seeing people with the love of God.

There are mindsets that come from every place in your past where something went wrong, where the world hurt you and then said, "You better start thinking like me, or this will happen to you again."

We act like we don't know that Jesus came to empower us to walk out His life on earth. We make excuses for our behavior, never facing our bondage to mindsets that keep us from seeing Jesus and the power of His truth.

Well, I tell you what, folks: Jesus came to set the captives free.

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound...(Isaiah 61:1)

Do not be conformed to this world (worldly mindsets from worldly lies), but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (Romans 12:2).

You can't determine what is perfect with your backwards mindsets. You must be transformed by the renewal of your mind(sets). When you get in the Word of God and absorb His truth, all of your thoughts and behaviors begin to change.

You start having a kingdom mindset. Your behaviors start to look less and less like fear and more and more like Jesus, the author and perfecter of your faith.

In John chapter 9, Jesus declares "I am the light of the world," and then heals the man born blind. The Jews argued among themselves about whether He was from God or from the devil. Even the formerly blind man said, "He is a prophet." Nobody really recognized Him, because they were too distracted trying to fit Him comfortably into their own lifestyles, their own ideas, their own mindsets.

They were too afraid of freedom to be set free.

Don't let your mindsets obscure the miracles in front of you. Jesus wants so badly for you to walk out your true identity in Him. Let Him rock you right out of your prison and into His glory.