Renewing Your Mind

In 2014, God has promised a new beginning, among many things. Just like a loving father prepares good things for their children to ensure they do not suffer, God has good thoughts and plans for us, to give us a hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11), and says that His thoughts for us are more than the grains of sand (Psalm 139:17-18). For 2014, God has this many number of thoughts for you, and they are all thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a hope and a future. Knowing that God has these thoughts for us is not enough. We have to desire to know these thoughts and possess them, and see ourselves the way God sees us, which begins with a renewing of your mind. It is not enough that we know that God wants us to prosper and have a new beginning this year; it calls for us to align ourselves to receiving from God.

As much as God wants us to enjoy a blessed life and have a new beginning this year in Him, we have an enemy, who is out to hinder us from getting what God wants us to get, and being who God wants us to be. The moment we believed in Christ we became enemies of Satan. Before, we were enemies of God (Ephesians 5:10, Col 1:21). We are in a war. The sooner we realize this, the sooner we will walk in victory, and overcome the enemy, getting what God wants us to get and be who He wants us to be. No one can stop God, but they can stop us from receiving from God.

Ephesians 6:12

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

2 Corinthians 10:3

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh.                

Our battle is not a physical battle; it is a spiritual battle. The most effective way the enemy wins the battle over us is by influencing our thoughts, and making us think that our thoughts do not affect us. If we are not aware of the fact that our thoughts affect us, then he has already won the battle, as he will influence our thinking, our actions, and thus make us who he wants us to be.

Proverbs 23:7

For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.

You are made by your thoughts. No one forces you to do the things you currently do, things you do without thinking e.g. dressing up, eating, bathing etc. You were taught to for a short while when you were little, and when your mind was programmed to do this naturally. Your mind is like a computer; at first entering data and programming it is not so easy but once you get it going then it runs with much ease. Getting you to do the things you do today was not easy but once your mind was programmed to think and influence the body to act in a certain manner then from there it became easy. It all began as a thought, which is the software that programs the mind. Someone suggested a thought to you that this is how you bathe, this is how you eat, this is how you dress and so on, and after this was done a few times your mind picked it up and now you do it without much struggle.

Your mind was programmed by the thought and now it controls your body. I believe now you have started to get understand that truly as a man thinks, so is he. Getting you to stop doing what you are used to doing and do it in a different manner will be harder now but once you adopt to the change then it becomes easier. For example, if you were taught to eat with just a spoon and a fork, when you go to a culture that uses chopsticks to eat it will be extremely hard to adopt but with time when you adopt and train/ program your mind to the change then it becomes easy and you start doing it naturally. Someone who wants to change you will simply change the way you think. Someone who wants to control you will simply keep feeding your mind with the software that will change the way you think, and eventually the way you act: thoughts. As long as you cannot control your thoughts, you cannot control your life.

The first step to winning any battle is knowing who your enemy is, then knowing your enemy’s tactics. We have known that our enemy is the devil, and his tactic is influencing our thinking.

The enemy can never force you to do anything. You have a free will, and even God respects that. No one can ever force you to do anything that you do not want; they can influence you, but they cannot force you. You only do what you have decided to do. The devil cannot make you sin, but he can suggest sin, and once you pay the sin attention it will affect your feelings/ emotions, which in turn will affect your actions, and you will end up doing what the devil wants.

Satan did not force Eve to eat of the fruit, or even to give her husband, in Genesis 3. He only suggested that God was hiding something from them, and that the fruit was actually good for them. Once Eve thought about it, she saw the fruit in a different light, and her emotions were stirred towards sin, and she ate; she soon gave it to her husband, who also ate.  If Eve ignored Satan, she would have never ate the fruit, and the enemy would have lost. Jesus was also tempted the same way, when the enemy suggested a thought that since He was hungry he should turn the stone into bread (Matthew 4:3). Jesus turned down the thought through the word of God, and thus the enemy lost, even the two other temptations. As long as you ignore or turn down a thought from the enemy, he can never influence you, and thus never win against you. The first step is in recognizing who your enemy is, and his tactics.

Matthew 12:33-37

“Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for a tree is known by its fruit. ³⁴ Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. ³⁵ A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. ³⁶ But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. ³⁷ For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”

Mark 7:20-23

And He said, “What comes out of a man, that defiles a man. ²¹ For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, ²² thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. ²³ All these evil things come from within and defile a man.”

As Jesus is saying, it’s what’s in the heart that defines who we are. So, how does it get in the heart? The answer is in Proverbs 23:7, that as a man thinks, in his heart so is he. The ones who translated the scripture put a comma after “heart”, which implies that it is the heart that thinks. The heart does not think, it is the mind that thinks. Putting the comma after “thinks”, we see that as you think in your mind, so does your heart become. The content of your heart is determined by the content of your mind.

Whatever is in your heart got there through your mind, through your thoughts. We are born with a sinful nature, but no one is born evil. So how do we end up having the things listed in Mark 7:20-22, and other evil things, in our hearts? By thinking them in, by allowing the enemy to influence the way we think, by accepting the thoughts he suggests. Once they are in the heart, they define who we are, as we see in the above verses.

Proverbs 4:23

Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it springs the issues of life.

Keeping/ guarding our heart starts with guarding our thought life, and controlling our thought life.

So now that we have established how important it is to take charge of our thought life, how do we actually do it?

2 Corinthians 10:3-5

“For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. 4 For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, 5 casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” 

We walk in the flesh, meaning we are physical beings. But we do war according to the flesh, meaning we do not fight physically. You are a spirit, possessing a soul, living in a body (1 Thessalonians 5:23). Your spirit is the image of God in you, and is what gets born again; it’s your connection with the spiritual realm. Your soul is where your mind is, and this part of you contains your emotions, desires, lusts, and intellectual abilities, and judgmental abilities, cognitive and thinking abilities among other functions. Thus your soul is your connection with the intellectual realm. Your body is your connection with the physical realm. There is a battle that constantly goes on, and it's in your mind.

You cannot win the war in your mind by physical means, as some think, for example that by yielding to the thoughts they will go away. If you yield to the thought, you only feed the flesh (the human nature), which cannot ever be satisfied and will want more. The more you do this the more you will find yourself programmed to the thought. The flesh is subject to your thoughts, and will do what your mind tells it. So how do thoughts come by? The mind is programmed to read and interpret messages sent by the five senses: what you hear, see, feel, smell and touch. This is how thoughts come by. If I want to influence your thinking, I will influence either one or all of your senses. For example, if I want you to think about a banana, I will either show you one, mention one to you, make you smell one, make you feel one, make you taste one or all. Just the word banana gets you to think about a banana.

The number one way through which negative thoughts are induced to our minds are through words and pictures. For example I want you to start thinking about sex, I will either talk about sex or show you pictures suggesting sex. When you start thinking about sex and dwell on the thought for a while, the thoughts will invoke feelings, which will prompt your body to act. Once the body gets the signal, it becomes hard to stop it as it has been trained over time to obey the feelings. It’s easier to stop a thought than to stop the body. Still, it’s easier to stop the word/ picture than to stop the thought. All in all, it’s easier to avoid the provoking picture/ word than to stop the resultant action. You may say you can entertain the words/ pictures and still have self-control over the body, but this for how long can you do this? Like Paul said in our key text, though we walk in the flesh we do not war according to the flesh. To win the battle you have to fight it spiritually. 

As Paul is saying in the verse, the our weapons of warfare are not carnal, which basically means that the weapons we will use to win the battle in our minds are not physical. We are spirits, and because the battle is spiritual, our weapons are spiritual. You are a spirit (Genesis 1:28). God is Spirit (John 4:24). The word of God is spirit (John 6:63). Prayer and worship/ praise is a spiritual act (John 4:24, Ephesians 6:18). Fighting spiritually means fighting with your spirit, with the help of God, using the Word of God, prayer and praise.

Prayer and praise defeat the enemy, but they should be based on the word of God. The word of God is what makes both prayer and praise powerful. Paul says that these weapons (the worship, prayer and praise) are mighty in God. God backs these weapons. So, how do you use the word of God to defeat thoughts? By SPEAKING.

When that thought comes, speak what the Word of God says to neutralize the thought. E.g. When you remember unpaid debt or rent or that you are broke, say that 'My God shall supply all my needs according to His riches in glory (Philippians 4:19).' What happens to the thought? It's neutralized. When you get thoughts on lust, say 'I have the mind of Christ and my body is a temple of God, such thoughts have no place in my mind'. Simple as that! Why? Because the Word of God has POWER. This is why Jesus fought the enemy’s temptations with the word of God, and overcame as He knew that the word of God, which is the truth, has power (Matthew 4:3-10).

Hebrews 4:12

For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

The word of God is not only powerful, but is living meaning it is active and will go to work when you speak it.

One of the most powerful ways to live a life of an overcomer is to be spiritually minded. This means that you focus more on spiritual matters than physical matters. It means to live and walk in the spirit, rather than in the flesh.

Romans 8:5-8

“For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”

Being carnal minded is allowing your mind to follow after your five senses. It means that whatever your five senses suggest is what will occupy your thoughts. The above verse tells us that if you set your mind on the things of the flesh you will live according to the flesh, and when you do this it will lead to death, and you cannot please God if you do this. The alternative is to be spiritually minded, which calls for living according to the Spirit and setting your mind on the things of the Spirit. This means that you walk in obedience to the leading of the Spirit, and when you do this you cannot gratify the desires of the flesh, which of course are brought about by setting your mind on the things of the flesh, being carnally minded:

Galatians 5:16-17

“… Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things you wish.” 

Make the word of God your friend this week. Improve your Bible Study time, and meditate on God's word day and night. This will help you learn to identify the voice of the Spirit more, and help you see things God's way, as you renew your mind. 

Amen.

-- Sam Gitonga.



(12/01/14 Sunday Service Sermon, Teaching Transformation Ministry.)

Brother Sam Gitonga is a Youth Leader at Teaching Transformation Ministry. We are located along the Thika-Ruai Flyover Junction (at the Thika Rd./ Bypass intersection), Next to Eastgate Restaurant.