Renewing Your Mind
Have you every had difficulty knowing the will of God in your life? What if the will of God for your life was not meant to be mystery?
When I was growing up our TV was a lot thicker than the TV’s we have today and on top of the TV sat a rabbit ear antenna. On a good day we could get the six or seven local Houston stations with ease and clarity. Other days we would have to to point and twist the antenna so that it would get reception. We would fight the analog static for clarity, and somedays we’d settle for watching through the static. Slow to make the move to cable, we fought for a glimpse of the clarity the our cable-watching neighbors had.
Jesus repeatedly said things like, “I only do what I see my Father doing” (John 5:19) and “I only say what I hear my Father saying” (John 8:28). Jesus lived the most normal Christian life ever. He’s an example of the type of relationship we were designed to have with the Father. Direct access, no static, totally clarity concerning the will of the Father.
“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is - his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:2). Did you catch that? The renewed mind knows the will of God. It’s true that God is a God of mystery and there is a lot of beauty in the mystery of God. But His will for you is not intended to be mystery - it is in fact His will that you would know His will!
Here’s the problem: we’ve normalized the static and exceptionalized real clarity. Once we normalize a lack of clarity, then we rarely pursue anything greater. What if the process of renewing your mind was the key to clarity around the voice and will of God?
I’m convinced that the human imagination was intended by God to be the projector screen of God’s heart and will for our lives. Perhaps, not that everything we were designed to imagine was to be God communicating to us, but that at times, maybe more often than we would expect, His thoughts and will were meant to show up in our imaginations. The problem is that we haven’t plugged into the right source. We filled our minds with garbage from fear and vain imagination to media and perversions so that the real battlefield for our lives and the world is not lived out in cosmic battle of spiritual warfare between angles and demons, but, instead, in between our two ears.
Over a decade ago I was wrestling with depression. It was hard and isolating. I found ways to numb out, primarily, playing games on my phone and avoiding the risk of rejection. The problem with avoiding the risk of rejection, is of course, that you avoid the possibility of connection. I realized that if I did not start taking my thoughts captive, that they would continue to take me captive - a future reality I refused to live.
Romans 14:17 says “the Kingdom of God is not a matter of food or drink, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” That means that if you are a citizen of the Kingdom then righteousness, peace and joy are supposed to be your normal. Anything outside of those three are evidence of a stronghold and an un-renewed mind. I could not afford for depression to be my default way of thinking. I determined to deal with anything that attempted to infringe of righteousness, peace and joy. This led to a ruthless transformation of my thought-life.
Bill Johnson has regularly said, “I cannot afford to have one thought in my head that did not originate in the heart of God.” This became my mantra. Righteousness, peace and joy became my standard.
Once the problem is identified, typically by an emotion, the starting place to renewing your mind is taking your thoughts captive. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 that we demolish strongholds by taking every thought captive and making it obedient to Christ. A stronghold has been defined as a house of thought built on lies. It’s not just believing a singular lie, but instead that a lie can create whole skewed way of thinking.
I had experienced some significant rejection, and for someone who is wired with a need for approval, rejection can be both painful and disorienting. If I was going to make if out of that season and that pain and pattern of thinking, then I was going to need to change the way I was thinking. That meant taking my thoughts captive by paying attention to them long enough to see the lie and where its root was. The initial lies of rejection hadn’t come in that season; instead that season was simply re-injuring an old wound. So I needed to dig much deeper to find the root of the lie of rejection in my life.
As Dr. Phil says, recognizing the problem is step one. Step one is significant, but wholly incapable of bringing about that mind renewing transformation that Paul writes about in Romans 12. The Passion Translations translates that phrase as “a total reformation of how you think,” which is really what I needed if I was going to experience real freedom and not another round of temporary relief.
Next, once the lie is identified and it’s source is discovered, Paul says that we demolish the stronghold by making it obedient to Christ. That means changing our way of thinking so it aligns with Jesus. Jesus said, "You will know the truth and the truth will set you free (John 8:32). Notice he didn’t say, “You will hear the truth.” He said, “You will know” it. When we believe truth that replaces the lies empowering a stronghold, the stronghold of the enemy crumbles and in it’s place a fortress of thought is built that becomes an anchor for your thought-life. For me that meant declaring and rehearsing the truth that extinguished the lies I was believing until my very way of thinking was transformed.
Here’s the beauty of renewing your mind. At the beginning your start by replacing one lie with one truth, but as the strongholds crumble and the truth begins “the total reformation of how you think” you’ll discover that it’s not simply thought or concepts that begin to change, but whole systems of thought that get reformed.
During that season of depression and mind renewal I developed a tool for identifying lies and strongholds and renewing my mind with truth. In many ways, God used this tool to change my life. I’d like to share it with you and walk you through it. (You might find it best for you to recreate this in a journal or on a piece of paper.)
First you must decide that righteousness, peace and joy are going to be the standard for your life. Then anything infringing on those three has to be addressed. Pay attention to your thought-life and emotions. Your emotions alone aren’t great at diagnosing the problem, but like the lights your dashboard they are excellent and recognizing that one exists.
Next in the left column write down any thought, event or emotion that conflicts with righteousness, peace and joy. What happened? When did it start?
Then, ask God to reveal the lie that you are believing. This is vital. Recognizing the lie allows you to dismantle the stronghold. Write down the lies you are believing about God, yourself, others or your circumstances in the middle column.
Finally, in the column on the right write down the truth that dismantles the lie. This is where you set up camp for your thought life. Truth is the operating system of the renewed mind. Stay meditating on the truth until it becomes integrated into your way of thinking.
