Flawed Thinking: Learn Discernment!
Flawed Thinking: The Reprobate Mind Learn Discernment!
Kelly Durant 10-7-12
Romans 1:28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 2 Timothy 3:8 Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith
2. How many of you remember seeing little kids argue? We often see how kids are unfair but it is the same with adults! For example, if one kid takes the seat of another, and the one who lost his seat gets mad and punches the kid in the arm, then the kid in the seat yells and accuses, “Look, he hit me!”. So the teacher turning around punishes the kid who hit, and hitting is wrong, but everyone that saw it happen knows the one at fault was the one that stole the seat. What is wrong with that picture? It is faulty reasoning and faulty judgment concerning who has guilt. And simple minds just respond without the facts!
3. Today we can apply the scripture concerning reprobate minds to what we see predominating in society today. People who are not interested in God’s truth, are those who have a reprobate mind, they live and promote lies. It comes from flawed reasoning which has been with us since the Garden of Eden. After biting into a lie the mental confusion sets in, flawed thinking skills take over; erroneous deductions cause a lack of discernment and then we invite punishment. Confusion thinking continues until death unless the person sees the light and ceases to resist the truth, and the passing of guilt on to others. The lesson of Eden is: the guilty one accuses the other one of what he or she is guilty of! A person who lies poisons their own brain and they do not even notice the damage!
Reprobate mindsets are seriously affecting the world right now destroying the values of truth, of right over wrong, of Christ over evil. Reprobate minds promote personal agendas damaging the future of nations through erroneous politics. Their persuasiveness even deceives some Christians who are swallowing up lies as truth not discerning the hypocritical malicious intentions behind it.
People with damaged minds are always quick to accuse others and they are influenced by Satan who is known as, “the accuser of the saints”. People who judge without all the facts, or worse, they distort the facts and truth, are of false witnesses. Ex 20:16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Those who never allow for others to reply when wrongly accused are committing an offense. It was worthy of death in Moses day by breaking this law of the 10 commandments.
4. The error is that people today are often choosing to be lazy and simple-minded in their judgments and deductions. People love to get conflictive with others and emotional over certain subjects. But only fools, according to the Word of God in Proverbs, love to argue and put down not knowing the facts. Proverbs 1:22 How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners (accusers) delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?
Here is the sad part, we observe more and more that Christians are becoming simple minded due to their lack of educating their selves with the facts of current matters and with the Word of God and they don’t even recognize their own poor judgment, accusations on others, and bitterness!
Many Christians today rarely open their Bibles and seriously pray and this lack of spiritual depth keeps them simple minded and in danger of forming and expressing opinions that are of the world and not of God. Anyone can get deceived on the issues at hand whether they be matters in the church or in the nation, and be unaware of the truth God wants to reveal!
We must mature and be led by the Holy Spirit! If not the results are illogical thinking skills, and opinions with aggressiveness which brings division, not unity and peace. Sincere God fearing Christians will see clearly what is right and wrong and have the conviction to never accept a lie!
5. In Jesus day do you recall how the self righteous hypocrites accused Jesus? These people had some Biblical knowledge but they had reprobate minds and many of them had demons as they wanted to kill Jesus! They accused Jesus of having the prince of the demons in him, Beelzebub, representing all that was evil, while they were the ones who really had him! All Jesus did was good for others and he healed them and loved them but his purity and love, his holiness, exposed their lack of it and all they wanted to do was get rid of him!
Discrediting the good others happens in the church and in society and the critical attacks come from those who are of a damaged mind, ignorant on matters, envious, or hungry for power. Accusers are the tools of Satan even though they don’t see it that way, they think they are justified in all of what they do. It was that way with the jealous, demon-possessed religious hypocrites in Jesus day.
6. Sometimes people have a legitimate complaint. Not all bad comments or accusations are wrong, some may be valid. As Christians we are always to be objective, discerning, praying, and being led by the Holy Spirit to understand the motives, and see the sources and their intentions.
However, Jesus exposed the lack of truth in many by God’s message of love and doing good works! When the light comes on with Jesus words, then suddenly everyone sees where the sin is, and most of the time the guilty ones are the accusers not the accused!
Key factor: The diversion tactic of those who have an evil mind is to always make the good appear to be evil! This causes their evil to be seen as good?! But God will condemn those who use this tactic. Isaiah 5:20Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
7. Reprobate minds are in people who live in mental torment as all they do is obsess. What bothers them causes them to go crazy! Mark 3: 2And they watched him, whether he would heal him on the sabbath day; that they might accuse him. Imagine the obsession of these people that all they wanted him to do was make a mistake and heal on the Sabbath so they could accuse him of working and by this go around and disqualify all His words and works to say he was not being sent from God! Ironic, right? They wanted to disqualify Him from being their Messiah, the forgiver of sins. From this we conclude, all those that do good works for the Lord be they Soldiers, Officers, Ministers or any type of leader, will always become a target of attack from those who have damaged minds and hearts!
Imagine the context, visualize if you can how Jesus, a person with an unexplainable power, like on the sci-fi movies where they make something transform in from of your eyes, and all He had to do was touch a person and they are healed! You would think, everyone would want to bring him the whole town for healing, and many tried, but due to the resistance from the accusers, His works were cut short. Matthew 13:58 And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief. Unbelief is the product of a mind resisting the truth.
These are real miracles, the saving of people from being blind, deaf, or lame! But contrast how the other religious devotees, they ones who are supposed to represent God, had no power of healing or helping, how they plotted to entrap him?! Do you see the damaged mind in not recognizing the authority of God in Him? Did they have any power to heal & teach with authority? No! They did not live nor let live!
8. These people with reprobate minds are always in denial of the supernatural facts, blinded by their own agenda and throughout time they have always tried to prove those of Jesus guilty of some violation hoping that the undecided people will lose respect. What they want is to eliminate the competition so that the people would have to accept only their version of the truth!
Now the important question: Have you ever asked God, how blind am I to my sin? How flawed is my mind and way of thinking about others? Proverbs 20:6 Most men will proclaim everyone his own goodness: but a faithful man who can find?
Many people of the world today have the mental illness of hypocrisy, they are very outspoken on their opinions, about what they say is not right, they are quick to accuse, yet they have a closet of sins and no love or good acts of kindness to offer in their defense!
9. Here is an example of today’s flawed thinking ability. One time I googled The Salvation Army just to see the images I could get and see articles from different places and I came upon a young girl’s accusation against TSA. What was happening was the Salvation Army was closing down a retirement center in some Northeastern State and a few dozen elder people were forced to relocate. The complaints and accusations of this girl, who just happened to get in the middle without knowing anything, was that the Salvation Army is a terrible organization because they are going to just throw old people out in to the streets and not take care of them! She wrote, “They are terrible, never again support them, they are cruel to old people!”
Am I helping you to see the flawed reasoning in the blind simple mindedness of people today? Let’s start with the facts. 1) She did not have the facts of everything happening yet acted as if she was an authority on the matter. 2) She was condemning and critical but offered no good alternative of what to do 3) She attacked the organization without even contacting them giving them an opportunity to explain. This is slander, deceit, and unfairness, yet how many thousands of people were exposed and persuaded to her thinking? The internet can facilitate lies.
Do we not see many leaders today in power using this same tactic of dis-accreditation of others, accusing while ignoring the facts, and unfairly attacking never allowing nor accepting an explanation while they have nothing good in defense as a solution?
10. All Satan wants to do is damage & destruction, and too many people have an appetite for destruction! People with reprobate minds love to hear the bad news to spread it around to everybody, and then later they are deaf to hear the good news! People of this nature will suffer the same punishment of those who are liars since they accept and promote falsehoods as truths. Revelation 22:15 For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.
In this situation, you can be 100% sure no old people were thrown out on the streets to be homeless and die as she implied. They were cared for, or the news media would have definitely reported on that one! By what I soon read was that a new center was replacing the old one a few miles away, and possibly not everyone wanted to transfer so far away, but other rest homes were also available locally. So once you hear the facts, the story is no longer a story, yet the damage is done and the angry girl will give no apology nor regrets for the unjust damage done.
What was she thinking? Either she was evil and only wanted to attack anything good and Christian, or she was a victim to flawed thinking, a reprobate mind, depraved of correct judgment! Either way Satan was using her! Who knows how many people may have stopped supporting TSA due to all the many internet comments that are lies!
11. In our Corps here in Hialeah, and everywhere, all true Christians who are active serving and doing God’s will always be subject to attacks from those whom Satan will use. What we must do is pray the Holy Spirit will guide each of us into all truth and protect us from these unfair attacks. We all desperately need the Holy Spirit that guides into all truth!
People are unfair to accuse. Some people may why do you do so much for the Corps, the Corps will never do anything for you! This is not true, I have seen people serve as volunteers in the Corps and then the Lord opens up doors for them the get a good employment! Blessings come by doing God’s work and will no matter what anyone else comments!
The lesson: please learn and teach others that there are logical steps to A Godly mind and deductive reasoning. For example, the outspoken angry girl should have had a logical mind that would have told her, I must contact the source for more information and facts since I do not understand this scenario, I should do research on the history and record of the Salvation Army to discover if they have a good or bad record, and I must discover what their future plan is for this situation. Intelligent people do their research seeking truth, but fools speak with no knowledge and other fools accept and follow them!
11. In all situations the formula for discovering truth, is as simple. 1. Gather ALL the facts (as much truth as possible from several sources, as the Bible says of 2 or more witnesses). This will help you to never make predisposed judgments and accusations. 2. Contact the sources. Be willing to engage with the leaders or authorities (Jesus engaged in conversation the evil people in his time). 3. Finally, Pray and be objective. This would imply a willingness to change your position according to the discernment God gives through the Holy Spirit.
Common reasoning skills are being distorted on purpose in society. In the end, those who govern in spiritual wickedness in high places are not interested in truth and transparency, honesty, righteous judgment and fairness in the community; they are interested only in subduing others to their line of thinking to complete their own political agenda which gives them more power and wealth. This seems to be the repeating policy of Satan throughout the ages who influences men of power throughout time in all cultures.
12. What’s the ultimate purpose of confusing thinking skills and not allowing truth? It is for the discrediting the gospel of Jesus Christ, the supreme authority in heaven and earth! The evil people of today are trying to set their selves up to be the absolute truth who givers through and they enforce their politically correct thought by their “truths” to control and manipulate the masses. In revelation where it speaks of the Beast flooding the world and the world swallows the flood, maost believe this refers to how the people of the world will drink up Satan’s lies and it seems strange today how many people just drink in so many lies not questioning anything! Rev. 12:15And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood. 16And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth.
Satan hates people who have faith and loyalty to God and his Son, and loyalty to support the church doing God’s work! He uses lies to deceive and control others to not believe in Jesus. He is always trying to get people angry, unhappy, and to strain at a gnat, while they swallow a camel. And what does this mean? He can even often times influence weak Christians.
13. We all know a gnat is like a little fly and they usually fly around your eyes and pester you. You have to keep moving your hands to make them go away. They are a bother but a small one. Now imagine, well, we can’t really, because it is figurative speech, a person swallowing a camel? It would destroy them! The multitude of words, accusations, opinions are often a diversion tactic drawing attention to something tiny in order to keep the attention away from the gigantic deception! Matthew 23:24 Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.
I hope you are now illuminated that flawed thinking reveals a personal hypocrisy and it works like this; people will complain about the smallest things as if these were all that mattered in the world, harbor big sins, camels in their lives, and they let it pass on as if nothing is wrong!
Jesus was not cruel as they were, he forgave the prostitute and he loved all the sinners and received everyone without discrimination! All except who? The hypocrites! What is different about them? The hypocrites accuse of sin and yet they have greater sins and have no intentions of giving them up! The prostitute caught in her sin knew she was wrong. She also was willing to “sin no more” and make it right! She accepted the truth of who she was, they did not!
Accusations, guilt, sin: It begins with each of us and gets passed on! Adam accused that his guilt was provoked by Eve’s disobedience, Eve accused the serpent of deceiving her, the serpent accused God of being a liar (yet he was the liar) and all three were punished. 3 minds damaged!
14. We have to be careful with how we think since what people accuse others of; they may be guilty of or worse. Listening to damaged minds can damage yours! Like the serpent saying that God was a liar, and that Adam & Eve would not die, when later it was proven that he was the liar to contradict God! Like the hypocrites claiming Jesus had a demon, and like the many people who do nothing to do good in society and yet condemn others who do. To change, Prov. 16:6 By mercy and truth iniquity is purged: and by the fear of the LORD men depart from evil.
If you are feeling like you may have been wrong in the past in your way of thinking or about a judgment you had of someone, now is the time to correct it and pray. Do you need more of the Holy Spirit, or more discipline to study God’s word so you don’t make big mistakes in judgment, come ask God to help you! Ask God to guide you to seek all the truth on all matters, as He is in the truth and nothing is hidden from Him. Ask God for a healthy mind full of the truth!
