© Buck Stephens
Thinking Like God...The Mindset of Success
In my book The Coming Financial Revolution, in the Chapter entitled “The Ultimate Identity Theft” I talked about the ways that Satan attempts to steal the identity of the children of God. One way he attempts to do this is to attackour mind with false information about ourselves and the world around us in hopes that we will believe it and allow God’s concept about who we are to be lost and considered invalid. He desiresto render God’s people culturally irrelevant so they do not advance the cause of the Kingdom. How does he do this? First he gets us to tell ourselves lies about ourselves, secondly he sends others into our lives to tell us lies about ourselves and thirdly, he causes us to seek other identities in an effort to make ourselves feel better about whom we are. It is for this reason that God calls us to renew or transform our minds (Romans 12:2), to reset our minds(Romans 8:5-6) so that we would have a resurrected mind as we would have the mind of Christ (I Corinthians 2:16). We can then because of Christ see ourselves through God’s eyes, according to His Word. I referred to this in the book as “the three R’s of the mind” (See The Coming Financial Revolution, pp.171-191). In those pages, I list 25 things that God says about what He thinks about us. Few of us ever come to the knowledge of all that God says about who we are. Instead we listen to the lies of the enemy.
In order to be successful in our Spiritual walk and in our lives in whatever we set our
hand to do, we must think like God thinks! We cannot understand God if we rely on our own intellect and attempt to match wits with the very One who created us.
What do I mean, we must think like God thinks?
We who live in the western world have a disadvantage in understanding the mind of God
because of how we have been taught to reason, using our intellect in understanding all we have been taught. Western thought has its roots in Greek philosophy where reason is the root to all
truth. The logical mind revered by the Greeks and adopted by westerners place intellect above any spiritual understanding. Logic is based on that “if –then” premise…if A equals B and B equals C, then A equals C. The Apostle John appealed to the logic of the Greek mindset in the Gospel of John Chapter 1 when He referred to Jesus as the “Word”. The mindset of the Western world embraces the thinking that truth exists when everything lines up intellectually. If one cannot understand through reason, well then we can conclude it is not real! This is the main reason why
westerners have difficulty expecting the miraculous, where eastern thinking allows room for the
extraordinary.
This is best illustrated by a study which was done shortly after World War II by western
psychologists, of people from the eastern part of the World. One question they were asked illustrates the difference in thinking. They were asked to solve a logic problem (of course, westerners developed the test). Here is the problem. They asked; “Cotton can only grow in a warm climate, England has a cool climate, Can we grow cotton in England?” Westerners, showing their superior intellect as concluded by the study answered “No” as I am sure you did if you are a westerner. The eastern thinkers often responded; “We don’t know, we have never been
there!” By their response, they were indicating that eastern thinking allows room for the extraordinary to happen and until you try and experience something, you never know if it is possible or not. Eastern thinking is more likely to expect the miraculous, than western thinking which is based on a set of facts accepted as truth which cannot be changed! This produces the pessimistic attitude of “What has been will be, there is nothing new under the sun”. So westerners may now see why we struggle to “expect a miracle” and have put God in a box to fit our western thinking. Human reasoning is supreme, and we will not accept that which we cannot
understand.
The Hebrew mindset, an eastern mindset, gives us an idea of how God thinks…why because He
established their way of life and their way of thinking as He set out on His master plan to redeem the world when He called Abraham. This is the mindset that God desires for His church as He has grafted his church into the promises of Israel. God gave the Hebrews a revelation of His
nature and taught them righteousness and repentance. He made a covenant with them and gave them practical wisdom to succeed and to demonstrate to the world how God will bless His people. Most Jews today still have that mindset. While Jews make up less than 2% of the world’s population, they hold 25% of the Nobel prizes. It has been shown over and over that Jews, where they are allowed to in a society , tend to rise to positions of authority and wealth. Why? Jews possess a special mindset as they have been taught to think like God thinks and when you think
like God thinks… you prosper!
In the functioning of this Hebrew mindset of success we may not understand God, or be
able to logically reason out a situation but we will still love, trust and obey Him.
In western logical thinking, when God does not act when we think He should or in the manner we think He should, we tend to analyze or find a reason for what is wrong or what even perhaps what we may be doing wrong. I am all for inspecting ourselves and our heart as to whether there is an issue to be corrected in our lives, sometimes however the answer is that God is just doing His will and that we may not understand! It is at that moment that so to speak the “rubber meets the road” of faith and trust! That is the real test of faith! In other words, when a prayer is not answered
as we ask, or things are not working out as we want, we look for “cause and effect” and a solution. What is wrong with our way of thinking here is that we have laid out a formula in our mind and
that formula is not working! When we cannot come up with a logical answer, it is then that the “accuser of the brethren”, Satan will have us tell ourselves lies or send someone else for him
to speak through, that “we are a failure”, that we are not successful, or that we are just not capable or worthy of receiving what we are seeking”. Lies then become the answer to our dilemma. Why? Because it’s logical! This then becomes what is known as a “logical fallacy”, when a false conclusion is reached through logical thinking! How do we know that it is false? We know because it does not line up with the stated will of God in the Scriptures that tell us who we are in His eyes (See pp 171
to 191 in The Coming Financial Revolution).
You see, sometimes the answer is as the Word of God says that “my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways, your ways, says the LORD” (Isaiah 55:8). It is then that we
need to recognize how our western, Greek, logical thinking can get in the way of God’s ways in our lives. Instead, we must employ the three R’s of the mind, and develop a new mindset, the mindset
that God instilled in His people Israel and in these days wants to instill in His church. It is a mindset of success, a mindset that thinks like God thinks and expects the miraculous, the
impossible, and the extraordinary when logic says, they are incomprehensible!
“For with God, all things are possible!” (Matthew 19:26)
©-Buck Stephens
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Having my mind renewed has dramatically changed my self worth and perspective on life. I so agree with your blog. So now I feel even more like a fish out of water, being a westerner, but thinking more like an easterner ... Or like God. Phew... Thank God for His daily communication with me to continue spurring me on. Thanks Buck and Andi for your insights and encouragement.
Posted by: Jlivi | 01/02/2013 at 08:29 AM