Renewing the mind - part 1
Part 1 of a 2 part series
Be careful what you think, because your thoughts run your life.
Maybe you’re perfectly happy with the person you’ve become, but most of us have things we’d like to see changed; we have attitudes, habits, and behaviours that don’t reflect the person we want to be, or know we were created to be.
Scripture tells us that our mind is powerful, that what we think will determine the kind of person we are, and that all transformation in our lives, both good or bad, starts with our mind. Rom 12:2 reaffirms that truth, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”
Without renewing our minds, the only two options for good transformation to take place are – to work, sweat, and strive in our own strength, or to hope and pray that God will do a sovereign work and change us ‘magically’, as it were. Neither of these is what God has in His mind for us.
The mind God gave you is powerful and creative. What you think releases power within you to create and shape everything about your life. It’s the vehicle by which your heart, imagination, and brain, work to turn thoughts and ideas into emotions, beliefs, and actions. Prov 4:20-23 tells us this, “My child, pay attention to my words. Listen closely to what I say. Don’t ever forget my words. Keep them deep within your heart. These words are the secret to life for those who find them. They bring health to the whole body. Be very careful about what you think. Your thoughts run your life.”
Jesus promised in John 10:10 that He would give us an abundantly rich and satisfying life. He said, “The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life” (NLT). Scripture also tells us that as Christians we have been gifted the mind of Christ – that means all the wisdom, knowledge, and understanding contained within the Godhead is ours to access. “But we have the mind of Christ [to be guided by His thoughts and purposes]” (1 Cor 2:16 AMP).
When we come to Christ our past is dealt with by Him, and He gives us the power that we need to walk in newness of life. The process of mind renewal begins at that point, and He invites us to submit to His wisdom, cooperating with Him, and allowing that renewing to take place. Instead of viewing, and living, life through the lens of our old experiences, through our woundedness, our preferences, and desires, we now get to allow Christ to reform us so that we can truly live as one who is made in the image of God. The more our mind is renewed the more we become increasingly patient, kind, merciful, loving, generous, etc. – all the things that Galatians 5 tells us are fruits that will be evident in our life as the Holy Spirit works within us. And, as new creations in Christ, we can choose to access, and live by, the mind of Christ which has been gifted to us and is alive inside us, rather than operating from our soulish mind the way we did before we were born-again into Christ.
While Jesus promised us this sort of abundant satisfying life, there are, no doubt, many reasons why we don’t experience it. Two of the main reasons being…
We don’t know what Jesus actually did for us – the covenant we now live under (the New Covenant) and the promises contained in that.
We don’t know how to cooperate with Him in the renewing of our mind, so that our life can be transformed.
As Christians, many of us struggle with the concept of renewing our mind. We’ve often had very little teaching on the subject and consequently, we muddle along, often feeling frustrated and confused about how to actually achieve it, and how to live the type of life we long to live. We need to understand that we cannot achieve it on our own, and God will not do it for us, on His own. It will take a partnership between the two of us for the renewal of our mind to happen.
God’s plan in the renewing of our mind
In 2 Pet 1:3-4, the Bible says, “His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these, He has given us His precious and magnificent promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, now that you have escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.”
God’s plan in this work is to make us partakers of the divine nature, and He has already made available to us all the power needed to affect that transformation in us. When we cooperate with the Holy Spirit, allowing Him to challenge and change our thinking, it creates not just a fundamental shift toward seeing our life and the world from God’s perspective, but it works to change our very nature and character. Instead of seeing and interpreting the world through the lens of our experience, woundedness, trauma, preferences, or the opinions of others, we learn to see and interpret life through the lens of God’s Word, the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and the mind of Christ. That affects how we see ourselves, others, God, and especially what’s possible for God to do in and through our life.
Prov 23:7 confirms it this way, “As a man thinks in his heart, so He is.” Our thought life creates your beliefs, which produce thoughts and feelings that determine your attitudes. This determines our actions – how we treat others, and the way we live our life. This literally creates and sets the boundaries of our life – what we can achieve, experience, and ultimately how our life ends. If we want to experience a different life – the abundant life Jesus promised – we must learn to cooperate with God in the renewing of our mind, in an intentional way.
There’s a spiritual battle raging
The renewing of your mind is not just a cognitive process, it is also a spiritual battle, an ongoing one that can be tough at times. 2 Cor 10:3-5 are critical verses in showing us this. “For though we live in the flesh, we do not wage war according to the flesh. The weapons of our warfare are not the weapons of the world. Instead, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We tear down arguments and every presumption set up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.…”
There is a spiritual battle that rages around your thought life. Just as God knows the power of your thought life, so does the devil, so he seeks to control your life by influencing your thoughts and imaginations. From the time you are born, and when you are part of his kingdom, the devil makes use of the things you see or hear, and the experiences you have, to seek to influence your imaginations and shape your thoughts. That influence can continue throughout your whole life, even as a Christian, if you let it, and he will not give up that influence easily.
Habitual reactions, and ways of approaching life scenarios, create strong thought highways and patterns. The Bible refers to these as strongholds (of thought and reaction). Thought life strongholds need two things to dismantle them – they need the power of God and our cooperation, so that new thinking patterns and new ways of behaving can be established.
Christ has given you spiritual authority because you are in Him, and because of that you become a partaker of His authority. All authority on earth and heaven has been given to Him (Matt 28:18; Col 2:10; 1 John 3:8) and He gives authority over the demonic realm to you as a Christian (Eph 2:6; Luke 9:1; Mark 16:17; James 4:7).
Your power over your thought life.
The autonomy God gave you as a human, as well as the authority Christ gives you as a child of God, mean that you have power in your life to determine who you submit to. You are the steward of your life, and one of the areas you need to steward well is your thought life. Your mind is hugely influenced by sight, sound, and interaction with others. Every day, advertising tells us that we are in need of something bigger and better to be happy. People seek to tell us who we are and what they think we should be doing. We also have a very real spiritual enemy who seeks to dominate us, and who works to convince us that we are not worthy of love, that God is not loving, is untrustworthy, and that we can never really have all that God has promised us (John 10:10).
Your mind is bigger than your head brain and the thought processes that go on inside it. Neuroscientist Dr. Carolyn Leaf gives a good explanation of that in this article where she says, “For many people, the mind and brain are interchangeable. They use one word or the other to talk about the same thing: the organ in our skull that we use to think. However, the mind and brain are actually two very different, but interconnected, entities. Knowing your mind and brain are separate puts you in the control seat because you can learn to manage your thoughts and actions. Ultimately, it means you can choose what you build into your brain and how you choose to change what's already built in.”
Part of renewing your mind is taking back the power of control over your thoughts. You’ve been given that power of control by God, and if you don’t use it then your brain and thought life will automatically seek to control you, or the devil will seek to control you through your thought life. And while you cannot always control what thoughts pop into your head, you can, and should, take charge over whether they stay there, and how much influence and control they have from then on.
Renewing your mind will take commitment and work on your part, and sometimes it will be a battle; that’s because you have an enemy that wants to destroy your life. God has not promised to magically transform us by taking over our lives and removing our power of choice, autonomy, and will. He asks instead that we cooperate with Him in the renewing of our mind so that our life can be transformed. Part of that process comes through having a good understanding of Scripture and the ways of the Kingdom of God; it also comes by learning to hear God speak to us, talking things through with God, and getting His wisdom and input on things, as well as allowing the Holy Spirit to lead us through each day, guiding, prompting and training us to walk in wisdom. The renewing of our mind also means unlearning things that are unhelpful or untrue, and learning new things, as well as establishing new ways of seeing, thinking and understanding that lead to new ways of living.
God does not leave us to do this work on our own; Holy Spirit will be there, giving wisdom and counsel, giving us strength, and the power to endure, and never leaving us or forsaking us in the process!
In the next article I’ll get real practical and give you some tips on how you can cooperate with the Holy Spirit in the renewing of your mind.