Renewing the mind- part 2

In the last article, I gave some foundational understanding in regards to the renewing of our mind and what God’s plan in doing that is. In this article I want to give you some tips I’ve learnt along the way about how we can cooperate with God in that process.

Invite

God will not force you to change; love does not work like that. But as you invite Him to, He will willingly work with you, leading and guiding you, giving you wisdom and understanding in that process of change. Ask Him to show you what mindsets need changing, what lies and deceptions you’ve lived under, where you need to be set free from strongholds of habitual thinking and reaction, and where you need to learn new ways of thinking.

Remember.

The renewing of your mind is spiritual warfare. The devil will not just sit back and allow you to take back control of your thought life from him without a battle. And he certainly won’t like your thought life being yielded and aligned to God’s will and the work of the Holy Spirit. Renewing of the mind is an ongoing battle where you need to take authority over the demonic powers that seek to influence, torment, and shape your thought life, or that want to create bitterness and offense, as well as repeatedly taking captive thoughts that do not align with godly principles, and God’s heart for you. You will need to capture them and bring them into submission to your spirit and to Christ, tear them down, and replace them with godly righteous thoughts and wisdom; and with Holy Spirit’s help in that, you can prevail in doing so and establish righteous strongholds or thought patterns in your mind.

Learn.

Learn what Christ did for you. This is an ongoing process but it’s an essential part of the renewing of your mind. Here are just a few of the things he has done for you. He has cleansed you of sin and a guilty conscience and made you righteous and holy in Him. His work gives you the confidence to come boldly before the throne of grace in your times of need. He has given you the power to overcome, to be victorious in life. He has promised an abundant rich full and free life. He has promised healing and wholeness and made provision for you to experience that. Jesus, the Father, and Holy Spirit have promised to never leave you or forsake you. There’s a whole lot more but for now, that’s a starter.

Become aware and capture.

Become aware of your thoughts; don’t let your thought life run itself without any observation or control by you. Learn to recognize which thoughts line up with your new creation reality as a child of God, with His Word, which thoughts are helpful, and which are harmful, working against you being all that God has planned. In other words, as Scripture says in  2 Cor 10:5, we take our thoughts captive. “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ…” 

Taking a thought captive literally means to take hold of a thought and ask these questions – “How does this line up with who God is, who He says I am, and what He wants for my life as a Christian?” “Does this thought agree with God’s promises over my life, or not?” “Does this thought that I’m having right now reflect what God’s Word says about this situation, or does it reflect a lie that I know doesn’t represent God’s heart for me?” If it doesn’t reflect what God says, then reject it, and plant in its place one of God’s promises from His Word.

Reject and replace.

You have the power to change your thoughts and replace them with better ones. You don’t have to put up with negative thoughts, damaging ones, or lies. Reject thoughts that don’t line up with God’s Word, His ways, or with wisdom and truth, and replace them with ones that do. Ask Holy Spirit to highlight to you some Bible verses that apply to your situation, or look some up online. Read them often, memorize them, paste them on your mirror, listen to them on an audio Bible, etc, whatever helps you establish them in your heart and mind.

Reinforce. 

Reinforcing good information is an important part of establishing new thought patterns and beliefs. Your mind is designed to help you get what you want out of life. Each day you can, and do, train your brain to focus on what’s important to you by what you give your focus to or think about a lot. This tells your brain that thing is important to you. There is a part of your brain that is important in this reinforcing and establishing process. It’s called the Reticular Activating System (RAS).

This part of the brain focuses on what’s important to you and helps you ignore what isn’t, and in doing so, your RAS helps to determine your thought life, attitudes, and ultimately actions. You can train your RAS to focus on building healthy and godly thinking patterns and habits or unhealthy and ungodly ones by the things you give your focus and time to. Make time each day to focus on godly things and godly character traits that you’d like to develop in your life. Put Philippians 4:8 into practice “And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honourable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.” Ask the Holy Spirit, “what fruits (of the Holy Spirit), and what godly characteristics, need to be developed in my life?”. Focus your attention on those things; your RAS will then point you toward noticing what aligns with them and will begin to ignore what doesn’t. Some other ways you can reinforce the renewal process is by spending time reading and seeking to understand the Bible, God’s nature and character, and the realities He has for you as a New Covenant believer, and also through talking with Him (prayer) and experiencing His love. Again, this tells your RAS that these things are important and need to have a major influence on your life.

Visualize.

Visualization is not a new-age idea, it’s a God idea! God created your imagination so that you can see, sense, feel and create Kingdom realities in your mind before they ever come into the physical realm. It’s one of the primary ways we co-labor with the Holy Spirit to release His Kingdom in, and through, our lives. Paul told Timothy to do this in 1 Tim 4:14 when he said, “Neglect not the gift that is in you given by prophecy and the laying on of hands, meditate (dianoya) on these things, give yourself wholly to them that your profiting may appear to all. In this verse, the original meaning of the word ‘meditate’ is ‘imagine’ (create and frame up pictures in your mind, see yourself doing it)! Imagine what your life will look like, walking in the fullness of being a new creation in Christ – because if you can’t see it you certainly won’t become it. Use your God-given imagination!

Make a habit of affirming truth.

Habits take time to form, but once established, they work very strongly in our life. New thought life habits are the same. The more you continue to reinforce the truth of God’s Word in your heart and mind the stronger that way of thinking will become, until it becomes habitual.

As this process of mastering and stewarding your thought life well becomes established, you will find that your life becomes transformed, accessing the mind of Christ will become easier, and living an abundant life will become more and more your norm.