Today many people do not know God's will. The reason they do not know it is that they do not have the organ to know God's will. Today is the Lord's Day; it can be considered the busiest day for the radio stations in the whole world. All the big denominations in the Western countries have radio programs to broadcast their messages. These radio waves bring the sound from very far away. Why can we not hear anything? The only reason is that we do not have a radio. In the same way, the will of God should be very obvious. But because there is not an organ to know God's will, we become ignorant of His will. It should be as easy for us to know God's will as it is for us to tell the wheat from the tares. Why do we not know God's will? It is because we do not have the receiving organ. It is because we do not have a renewed nous. At the time we were saved, our nous was new; we received the revelation of God. But not very long after that, it became no longer new.
How about our thoughts today? Our thoughts have become corrupt. After we are saved we think that Christians should have a good heart. We think that if we harbor hatred toward others in our heart, if we sin, if we commit fornication, we will offend God. Therefore we think that we should keep our motives from being improper. However, we forget that our thoughts should also be proper. Are our minds, our language, and our thoughts the same as they were before we were saved? For the time being, I will not touch on our motives and the purpose in our heart. I would just like to ask about the condition of our mind after we were saved. It is very amazing that before a man is saved, his mind is very unorganized, and even after he is saved, his mind remains the same. His language is the same as when he was first saved. His thoughts are the same as when he was first saved. If we cannot overcome our thoughts, we fail in everything.
In a letter to Miss Dora Yu, Miss Barber once wrote these few words: "If Satan can take hold of our thought life, he has taken hold of all our life." This is a fact. Do not think these few words were loosely spoken. She had over fifty years of very deep experience with God before she spoke these words. O brothers, do not think that as long as our motives are good, everything is all right. Even though the people we think about and the things we perceive may have changed, if our thoughts and perceptions toward others are the same as before we were saved, we will still make decisions the same way as before. If we cannot overcome our thoughts, we are in the hands of Satan, and we have no way to overcome the enemy.
A person with an unrenewed nous is absolutely unable to manage his own thoughts. The mental energy of many Christians is wasted. If our hands can only work for eight hours a day, and what we do during these eight hours is improper, it becomes a waste of energy and a hindrance to proper work. Likewise, we can only use our mind for so many hours a day. If we waste our thoughts on meaningless and improper things, we cannot think about something proper. A brother once asked me, "Why can I not concentrate? After I pray for five minutes, my mind starts wandering." I asked him, "Does your mind wander all day long or just at the time of your prayer?" I could answer for him that his thoughts were never concentrated during the day; they were always touring the world. His thoughts were entirely in disarray. If our mind is in disarray twelve hours a day, how can we concentrate while we pray? If we cannot concentrate all day, why is it strange that we cannot do the same when we read the Bible or when we pray? Therefore, if our nous is not renewed, we cannot manage our mind. Friends, I must emphasize again that if we cannot manage our own thoughts, we are not very useful in the hands of God.
It is said that if all the heat generated from the sun in one day was collected together and put into all the factories on the earth, it would be enough for all the factories to use for ten million years. But people cannot use solar energy because it cannot be collected in one place. If we use a magnifying glass to collect the light from the sun, the heat can burn a finger underneath the glass. It is very regrettable that many believers waste their thoughts in vanity. They think day and night without producing one good thing. They waste their entire day in their disorderly thoughts. It is no wonder that God cannot use them. They can only be proper believers when their nous is renewed.