Power Thoughts: 3 Steps to Renew Your Mind
2 Corinthian 10:5
NIV Bible: …take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
Message Bible: We use our powerful God-tools for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers erected against the truth of God, fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ.
Where the Mind Goes, the Man Follows
What you are saying to yourself is effecting you. Crummy thinking = crummy life. If you think about something someone has done to hurt you long enough, the next time you are around them you will not be able to treat them properly or you may tell them off and regret your words.
You can choose your thoughts, you can think things on purpose and doing so will radically change your life. Take responsibility for your attitudes, how you think about your past and how you think about your future.
- Have a think session every day and purposely think about some of the things the Bible tells you.
Stinkin’ thinkin’
You have to deal with your thoughts every day, no matter how long you have been walking with God.
Refuse to let your mind be a garbage dump for the devil. Don’t let just anything fall into your mind.
Three Steps to Renew Your Mind
1. Colossians 3:2 Set your minds on thing above, not on earthly things.
Set your mind and keep it set on things that are above and not things that are on the earth so that your life is hidden in Christ
- Think ahead of time about what you will do in negative situations instead of waiting to see what you feel like doing when the situation arises.
Think in advance about what you will do when you get tempted. How will you handle the situation, for example, gossip. Think ahead and you will have a foundation for resisting gossip or whatever the temptation is. You will not have to decide what to do while fighting with your emotions when the situation comes up. - Think about every day temptations. Joyce’s advice: Tell yourself, “I am not going to overeat, I am not going to eat 4 candy bars…” My advice: there is a better way to phrase these thoughts. When you think in negatives, that is when you think about what you will not do, your mind has to first envision you doing the very think you want to avoid doing. It is better to think in positives; tell yourself what you WILL do. “I will eat an apple with 2 tsp of peanut butter for a snack today” or “Today, I will eat 1 candy bar after supper”, “I will eat a bowl of sweet, delicious melon and strawberries after lunch”.
- Do not hang out with people who are poisoning your life. It takes awhile to recover from those who are negative, mean, or difficult. And while you may need to be around these people and you can even show them a better way through your own attitude, if you do not limit your time in their presence you will be pulled into their world and the devil will delight in it. Decide for yourself, “I am going to spend time with (insert positive person’s name) today” or “I am going to go to (insert positive activity here - the gym, the library, an uplifting event) today”.
2. Romans 2:12 - Be transformed by a renewed mind.
Do not conform any longer 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.
Joyce references two of my favorite scriptures in this step. Some years back, I experience a radical renewing of the mind through Christ, and I really needed that - it was so freeing! I could not find peace without that renewal. The other scripture says to let go of the past and live in today while reaching for the future. Amen!
- Renewing your mind has to be a constant, ongoing process. If you buy a new car and don’t keep it up, it breaks down. So you must keep your mind renewed.
- Be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the entire renewal of your mind. Do not keep one or two areas of junky stuff in your mind, it’s hurting you and keeping you from the best God wants for you.
- You will always struggle with your thought life, just keep working toward making progress. No one has a completely renewed mind, that renewal is an ongoing thing. Be happy about progress, and do not think about how far you have to go.
Phil 3:13-14 Forget what is behind (the past) and straining toward what is ahead (pressing on to the future), I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Pressing on by forgetting what lies behind and reaching for the future. (One of my favorite Scripture passages)
Joyce often says, “I’m not where I need to be but thank God I’m not where I used to be.”
Write yourself some notes telling you how to think according to what the Bible says. Post the notes around the house, on your dashboard, etc. to train yourself to think these things.
3. Gird up the loins of your mind to be ready for action.
In Christ’s time, everyone wore a long, wide cloth wrapped around their body, pants weren’t invented yet. This clothing required one to walk slowly to prevent tripping. When people would need to do their work - in the field, market place or where ever, they would gather up the cloth and tie some parts of it around their waist so that the cloth did not drop below their knees. This was girding the loins, and they did this so they did not trip on the cloth.
- Gird your mind in the same way so that you do not trip while running the race God wants you to have.
- If you will think the way God wants you to think, you will have what God wants you to have, be who God wants you to be and others will notice.
- Think this: I am in right standing with God. I have rightness when I stand before God. To turn off the recording in your head that says, “what’s wrong with me?”
2 Cor 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
Jesus put us in right standing with God. When you decide to follow Christ, you become new inside in your spirit. You will still make mistakes and have old hurts, but you’re like new spiritual clay and you can decide to let God shape you into a new vessel.
You do have self control. In God’s economy, you believe first, then you see (this is faith). We walk by faith in God’s world, in the human world we want to see the proof before we believe.
Accept Christ as your savior and you get God’s seed planted in you, and that seed is Christ. You need to water and nourish that seed with the Word so that it grows.
Tell yourself, ‘I’m not where I need to be,but thank God I’m not where I used to be”. Celebrate the progress you have, and keep renewing your mind.
Listen to Joyce Meyers’ message Power Thoughts: Where the Mind Goes the Man Follows.
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