Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - Grant Horner - How do we Renew our Minds?

Episode Date: January 3, 2022

Jonny Ardavanis is the Dean of Campus Life at The Master’s University, a Camp Director at Hume Lake Christian Camps and hosts the podcast Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis. He is passionate about the Gospel and God’s Word and desires to see people understand and obey it. Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis: Big Questions, Biblical Answers, is a series that seeks to provide biblical answers to some of the most prominent and fundamental questions regarding God, the Gospel, and the BibleIn this episode Renaissance scholar, rock climber and Professor Grant Horner answers the question: "How do we renew our minds?"Subscribe to stay up to date with each episode! Watch on YouTubeFollow on InstagramVisit Our Website

Hey guys, my name is Johnny Artavanis and this is Dial-In. Happy New Year to you guys. I'm excited and looking forward to what God has in store for us in 2022. You know, so many people have different resolutions as they begin the year and much of those resolutions for the Christian has to do with a consistent and steady Bible reading plan in order that they might have an exalted view of Christ and a deeper commitment to the Word of God. And much of that has to do with the reality that our minds are renewed through Scripture. And in this episode, I sit down with Professor Grant Horner, who has played an instrumental role in my life through his Bible reading plan, the Horner Bible reading plan.

And I ask him, how can we renew our minds? Let's dial in. Well, Professor Horner, thanks for sitting down again. You know, as I think about the Christian life, we're saved, but we're not instantaneously changed. So much of the Christian life has to do with changing our behavior, but not just our behavior, more importantly, changing and transforming our affections. But the question is, how can we transform our affections? How do we actually love doing righteousness and hate sin? It's not just stay away from sin, stay away.

No, no, no, no. There should be, as Jonathan Edwards talks about, a transformation of our affections so that we love to do what Christ has commanded. And much of that has to do with the renewing of our mind. And as I think about your life and even what you've done with the Bible reading plan that has impacted my life, I think so much about what it means to have our minds renewed. Can you explain that to us? What does it mean to have our mind renewed? Why is it necessary? And how does that even interact with your own story and testimony? Sure. Well, you know, when I was a believer,

I mean, I was converted in the dorm room alone. I'd never really heard the gospel with any clarity. I had never thought about God in a serious way. I didn't know who Jesus was. I'd seen, you know, Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth miniseries movie on television in 1977. I thought, oh, that was interesting. So now I know about Jesus, but didn't really know anything about him. I'd never seriously read the Bible. I mean, I'd picked up and read a little bits and pieces of Genesis. And so I knew some vague outlines about the Christian story, but not very much. And then coming off of three or four days of being just completely out of my mind on drugs, I was alone in my dorm room in college, 18 years old, very unhappy, very…not depressed, just

sad, just unfulfilled and desiring something better. I knew that there had to be something better than what I had. And I was just lonely, like my soul was lonely. And I had been given a Bible and I picked it up and I began just lonely like my soul was lonely and I had been given a Bible and I picked it up and I began to read it I was like oh yeah Genesis 1 yeah this is the whole God created the heavens and the earth I've heard that one before and I read through Genesis 2 yeah okay it seems like more of the same kind of thing and then Genesis 3 oh that one I've heard of this is the whole Adam and

Eve and the serpent and the Apple and the you know and then Genesis 4 oh yeah this guy kills his brother I could identify with, you know. And then Genesis 4. Oh, yeah, this guy kills his brother. I could identify with that, you know, because I would always get annoyed with my little brother. And then, you know, I go a little further along and I'm like, wait, who's this long list of, you know, dead Jewish people? I can't even pronounce the names.

So I flip forward, you know, to Exodus. Okay, here's some stories. Oh, yeah, I saw that movie, The Ten Commandments. Okay, I know this. But then I end up, and then I go to Leviticus and i have no idea what's going on right i'm an english major right and i'm like i should be able to read this they're like okay i don't understand these genealogies and so then i flipped forward oh the new testament that's that jesus-y part right and so i opened up to matthew 1 what do i have a genealogy i'm like wait why do people read this book what was going

on here and then i made the terrible terrible mistake of opening up the Gospel of John, which I had never really read, never heard of, didn't know anything about. And I'm an English major and I think I'm smart and that I can read things. And I read through that opening of John 1 and it was like a bomb got dropped on my head. I read it over and over and over, and I didn't know what to do with it. I couldn't know, who is the Word, and what is the Word? What is God and the Word?

What is all this? And he made everything, but is that God? Is God a Word? I thought, well, what is this? And then, who's this John the Baptist guy? I was just completely, completely confused. But I kept reading, and when I read John 2 and then John 3, I was like, wait, I know that part. My grandmother used to write that in my birthday cards and Christmas

cards, John 3, 16. And then I realized that what I had been hearing from a few of the friends that I was hanging around with, that I wasn't a Christian. I wasn't a good person, that I was selfish and sinful and destined for hell, and that I was not a good person, which is what I desperately wanted to believe that I was, and that there was a God who was good, who had made everything, and was the ruler and the disposer of everything, would judge me in my sin, and I became terrified. And I realized that everything about myself that I thought was good was actually selfish, was actually bad, and I just saw myself in a way that I had never conceptualized myself before. And you have to understand, my head is all fogged up from three or four days of speed and marijuana and LSD. And my mind is just kind of

all over the place. But now I'm galvanized. I'm gripped by this thing that I'm reading. And it just felt like God was talking to me and saying, you are in very deep trouble. I mean, I felt very much like a child who was about to be severely disciplined by his father. I knew my father loved me, but I also knew I was in really big trouble. And I cried out to God to save me. And I remember, I don't remember much because I was in kind of a drug fog, but I do remember saying, I don't know if you're real, but I think you might be, and I'm kind of a little afraid you are, but I am willing, I'm not willing to believe, but I'm willing to be willing if you'll help me. Now, what I didn't understand by saying I'm willing to be willing,

I'll believe if you help me, was I was quoting scripture, right? Lord, help our unbelief. We believe, but help our unbelief. I would say, I mean, and God was just kind of guiding me through that. And I went through a process of conversion. And right then, I was just kind of miraculously delivered from the drugs. And I lost all my desire.

I'd been doing it for four years, almost five years. All that desire was gone. I had a bunch of LSD and speed and pot in my room, and I just got rid of it. I didn't want anything to do with it anymore. And that was just a definitive moment where you never wanted to do it again. Absolutely. I mean, some people don't have an ultra-clear conversion moment. I did. And then I began the process of finding out how deep down the well the sinful nature went. And that occurs certainly by being around believers, but it occurs in its most powerful effect as you're exposed more and more to the Word of God.

Left-hand page, left-hand column on the outside. In my Bible, highlighted pink, the Word of God is living and active. It's a sword. And it goes in and it cuts and it lays open the heart. It separates the joints and the marrow. It pulls you apart. It cuts you. It fillets you. It lays you open so you can see yourself. It's like being awake when you're having open chest surgery and you begin to see yourself. I began reading the Bible over and over and over again.

And, you know, I was very confused with a lot of it. I had no idea. I remember the first time I went to a Bible study, you know, the whole day I was like, oh, I want to go to a Bible study. I guess it'll be like a class, like a literature class. So I better study and do my homework. So, you know, I can say clever, intelligent things, which is not what a Bible study is.

But I remember, you know, it was a Bible study on Job. You were rehearsing for it. I tried because I wanted to impress people. And I tried to read the book of Job. Well, that did not work out too well. I could not follow. I was like, if this is what it means to be a Christian, to have everything taken away, I don't want that.

That was my first reading of the few chapters of Job when I was 18 years old. And I realized that I didn't understand what I was reading. So I kept reading and kept reading and kept reading. And over time, God used that to hammer and chisel and in some cases dynamite some things. And when things were just lodged deeply, he would really bring out the big guns and cause some kind of a public humiliation and exposure with sin that I was holding on to. And that is what God uses. I mean, it's kind of like, you know, Michelangelo sculpting a gigantic block of stone. He starts with the big hammer and the big chisel and he starts

removing large chunks. And then he goes to the smaller hammers and chisels and he keeps finding it down and finding it down. And finally, with kind of like a sandpaper, smooths it. And at the end, you're going to have something beautiful. But the process for the stone is you're being you're being hammered on yeah so then if if your life was you know your mind begins to be renewed by the scripture and that's only possible by the scripture you would say right there's only that's the only thing that really can transform your mind everything else will be ancillary to scripture right if you're getting counselor advice i mean i've always sought out older men that I spend, I still do, people that are 10, 20, 30, 40 years older than me that I spend time with.

But that's ancillary. I mean, if I'm just hanging around somebody because they're old, that doesn't help me. It's they're old and wise because they know scripture or listening to sermons or listening to people explaining something about a biblical text, right? But it always has to be grounded in the text of Scripture, always. So then if our minds need to be renewed because our minds are naturally polluted, and we are only renewed by the Word of God, how then do we implement practices and habits in our life

where the renewal of our mind by the means of scripture is not optional but our main priority how have you done that how has it become I must and I want to yeah well bad habits take about well good habits they say take one to two months to form you do something regularly in 30 to 60 days it becomes habitual and you know I mean it's actually almost an electrochemical process in your brain and you're used to doing something regularly so you do it working out eating your broccoli you know getting your work done on time those kind you know always being uh punctual those kinds of

things it takes a while to get now forming a bad habit takes about 12 seconds because because we're naturally depraved we we get we get a pleasure hit in many cases when we do something that's wrong or bad. It appeals to our selfish nature. And so it's very, very, it's like drug addiction. It's a very, very difficult thing to beat and it takes time. And the problem is it will always spring back, right? Your sinful nature in this life does not go away, but according to the Puritans, who everyone

should read, you need to learn what it means to increasingly mortify the flesh, or as Paul would say, to crucify the flesh. To say, this is a problem. I need to drive those nails in every single day to crucify that part of the flesh. Which isn't a one-time event, even if our salvation is. That's right. Yeah, sanctification is something that is progressive. It takes place over time, and we tend to slip back. I mean, there were times when, you know, I'd been a believer for five years, and I was out rock climbing with a friend out in the mountains, and I didn't know it, but he smoked pot, and you know, we sat around the campfire, and he rolled a joint, and he

passed it to me, and I took it in my hand, and everything came back, and I was like, oh yeah, I remember the smell, the taste. I remember the rush. I remember the buzz. I remember the come down. And then I was like, oh, no, I don't do that anymore because I don't want to. And I just handed back and said, oh, yeah, I quit a long time ago. But it was so habituated to me. Yeah, it was almost more of a moment of forgetting than tension. It was like, oh, let's get high.

It was this natural, you know, it was like hitting the knee with the hammer and the leg flies up. The doctor's office. It was more natural, you know, it was like hitting the knee with the hammer and the leg flies up for the doctor's office. It was more reflexive. What happens is you want to become reflexive toward the teaching of Scripture where your mind is so saturated with Scripture. Like, you know, in the passage that a lot of people think is really only about marriage in Ephesians 5, you know, the washing of the water of the Word, right? Reading the Word and meditating on the Word and memorizing the Word and reciting it to yourself and hearing it and speaking it, that actually becomes analogous to, I should say, taking a shower or a bath is analogous to that, right? Every day you go out and you work, you get dirty, or you need to clean up a little bit.

That's what Scripture is like, right? You go through your life, you're going to have moments of temptation, moments of tension, moments of fall, moments of deliberate sin or less deliberate sin, and then you need to be going back to Scripture because that would take you to, let's say, 1 John 1, right? Where He is able to and willing to and more willing to forgive us than we are willing to ask for forgiveness. That when we confess our sins to Him, He's just and righteous to forgive us. But if we say that we have no sin, I was really good today.

You probably weren't. But what happens is you want your mind constantly as you walk through your life to be referencing Scripture. And not in a legalistic way, but you want to... The way you develop the mind of Christ is your mind is so saturated with scripture that you begin to think as he thinks. And in a weird way, his thoughts, they don't really replace your thoughts. It's not that you become an automaton that has had the hard disk wiped and then something else uploaded. You're still you, but you become, in a sense, kind of reprogrammed. And your memory and computer language is kind of overwritten by this new set of structures that begins to guide your behaviors, your words, your thoughts,

and your desires. Because you are a better follower of Christ if you desire what is good than one who is filled with desire for what is evil, but you're just self-control. Self-control is not Christianity. Self-control comes when God rewires the desires for what is good as opposed to what is evil. It's a changing of your taste. Yeah, so even if we resist the flesh at moments the goal of the christian life isn't just to resist and run it's to renew so that we're not just living a life of duty-driven christianity where like if you take sex or whatever it might be like don't have sex you're supposed to have an exalted supreme understanding of intimacy with christ that where you find great enjoyment, and it's not just

no to this, no to that, no to that, which I think is, in large part, how many people view Christianity today. I may say we have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, but I can ask many people, does it feel personal to you? Yeah, it's a grace-driven life, as opposed to a life driven by law. So if you're driven by grace, then the law is written in your heart and you want to do it. Yeah. Which I think is obviously a theologically affirmed, but practically denied by so many people because part of renewing your mind. I struggle with it. Yeah. 40 years on, I struggle with it. Yeah. And that's a lifelong battle until we meet him, but you see growth over time and you'll see it even, I mean, and you would be able to say over the last 40 years that God continually, continually chips away at your heart. Would you say that? Or sometimes blast it with dynamite. Yeah. Yeah. Just removes entire things. He's like, oh, you're not going to let that go.

Boom. Now it's gone. And I think that's so helpful. And even as you, as I think about you and the habits you've set up, part of renewing our mind is predicated upon positioning moments of just thoughtfulness and stillness in our life that isn't bombarded by distraction. And so you've, you know, set up different, you know, I think about you up in the mountains or a long walk or whatever you're doing athletically,

you have time to contemplate. And part of renewal, I'm assuming you would say, is contemplation and consideration of the truth that you've read. And so I want that for my life. And I've been thankful just in watching you and the priority of God's Word and how it's renewed your mind and even as you're saying, but I'm still such a sinner. I think we'll all be that way until we meet Christ. But I'm thankful for the clarity that you've provided so thank

you Prof Horner.