A Flourishing Mind Feeds on Life-giving Thoughts
Published: Mon, 02/24/25
Updated: Mon, 02/24/25
Sessions Include:Lesson #1 Lesson #2 Lesson #3 Lesson #4 Lesson #5 Lesson #6 Lesson #7 Lesson #8 Lesson #9 Lesson #10 Lesson #11 Lesson #12 Lesson #13 Lesson #14 Lesson #15 Lesson #16 Lesson #17 Lesson #18 The Me I Want to Be / Lesson #19 The Me I Want to Be / Lesson #20 The Me I Want to Be / Lesson #20 The Me I Want to Be / Lesson #21 The Me I Want to Be / Lesson #22
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We once lived across the street from a couple who did not get along. The husband worked in security, but his passion was to be a body-builder. He was strong, sarcastic, and self-centered. His wife was small and timid — and angry. He had to go to work every morning at 6:00, and she got up at 5:00 to fix his lunch. We wondered why she would do this for someone she was so mad at until she explained that she was secretly packing his lunches with enough calories to put weight on Shamu the Killer Whale. She loaded what he thought were dietary turkey sandwiches with butter and mayonnaise. She put extra sugar in his yogurt and made his protein shakes with half-and-half. He worked out a lot, but he could never understand why his body didn’t look like the guys in the magazine. He never knew she was larding him up when he wasn’t looking. Our bodies are constantly being formed by what goes into them. We may not like this truth, we may not heed it, but we can’t evade it. Bodies get shaped by what goes into them. Sometimes our kids are tempted to feed our dog bad things — things the dog should not be fed. When bad things go into the dog, bad things come out of the dog. We know that about dogs, and we recognize the importance of what we put into what we value. We are careful about what fuel we put into high performance cars, commercial airliners, or thoroughbreds. But we may forget this when it comes to our minds. In this world we are being bombarded by a steady stream of messages from the media, bosses, co-workers, people we date, books, iPods — and from our own thoughts. Our mind will be shaped by whatever we feed it while the Evil One tries to lard up our mind when we’re not looking. He will put depression in our thoughts at breakfast, sprinkle temptation in our mind at noon, and slip us a worry sandwich when it’s time for bed. He will try to keep us from noticing what we are putting into our mind.
A Flourishing Mind Feeds on Life-giving Thoughts John Ortberg, The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God’s Best Version of You (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), 12–13. If you would like to explore this new study, it is available on Amazon, as well as part of Good Questions Have Groups Talking Why Study Books?My church recently transitioned to using books as curriculum in our Sunday School. The reason is simple. My life has been profoundly influenced by the reading of books. I don’t think my life has ever been changed by any curriculum piece I have ever read. Ever. I have actually surveyed a number of groups I have taught over the years, asking: Has your life ever been changed by any curriculum? The most common response is for people to laugh out loud. Our first study was the Bless book by Dave and Jon Ferguson. It is a great study on relational lifestyle evangelism. About half-way through the the study, we did a survey to help determine what we would study next. No one wanted to go back to the curriculum. Not. One. Person. The #1 choice for what to study next was a tie:
We will be studying these two books over the next year and a half or so. Here is what Amazon says about Ortberg’s book: The Me I Want to Be will help you discover spiritual vitality like never before as you learn to "live in the flow of the spirit." Why does spiritual growth seem so difficult? God's vision for your life is not just that you are saved by grace, but that you also learn to live by grace, flourishing with the Spirit flowing through you. And this book will show how God's perfect vision for you starts with a powerful promise: All those who trust in God "will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit" (Jeremiah 17:7-8). Pastor and best-selling author John Ortberg first helps gauge your spiritual health and measure the gap between where you are now and where God intends you to be. Then he provides detailed tasks and exercises to help you live in the flow of the Spirit, circumventing real-world barriers - pain and sorrow, temptations, self-doubt, sin - to flourish even in a dark and broken world. As you start living in the flow, you will feel:
God invites you to join him in crafting an abundant and joy-filled life. The Me I Want to Be shows you how to graciously accept his invitation. I have just completed a new, 22-week study of John Ortberg’s book, The Me I Want to Be that we will be using in my church. (I had previously done a 7-week study.) I have always thought that using books as a curriculum would be a good idea, and I have written a lot of book studies over the years. One of the things that actually using books as curriculum caused me to realize has to do with cost. By writing a study on every chapter of this book, instead of my previous study that had a lesson for every section, the cost drops to below what we were paying for curriculum. Better curriculum. Cheaper cost. Win. Win.
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