Renew Your Mind

Our minds are incredibly strong. In order to renew your mind you must train it to think of the good (Philippians 4:8) rather than the bad.

Renew Your Mind Again

When we are saved the Lord takes our heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh. This happens only once. Once you are born again you don’t need to keep being born.

The old has gone the new has come. We are new creatures in Christ. However, we do need to grow. We cannot stay babies. We must learn and get stronger.

Part of this is training our minds. We are in the habit of thinking in a worldly, selfish, sinful way. This practice of thinking of ourself first or our sinful desires more than the good works God has called us to is what we have to continually renew.

The prefix re- means to do again. The process of renewal is not a one and done thing. We must do it again and again. Training our self to think on what is good and not our sinful desires. (Heb. 5:13-14)

Candy and Honey

We just celebrated Easter. My little nephew who is almost 3 was having a hard time being told he couldn’t have any more candy. Watching him throw a fit about his parents taking his candy basket away reminded me of a thought I shared with my ladies group at our church. This is what I said:

I just wanted to share how great and wonderful our Heavenly Father is. He is so faithful and forgiving and loving.

Like a spoiled toddler, I have been holding on to a candy basket that the Lord has been taking from me. I have fought him and run from him and screamed at him. I’ve tried to hide it away in my closet and sneak in there to gorge myself on the sweet taste of it.

But he knows. He knows it makes me sick. He provides fruit covered in honey that is far better and more nourishing.

Even though I do love His fruit and have tasted and seen that He is good, I see a piece of candy and still run after it. But He is patient and has promised to grow me. I could grow much faster if I would just hand over my candy basket.

I pray that I might grow in knowledge and maturity so that I can learn to be satisfied with the sweet honey that my Father gives me and not chase after the candy that is so empty and only brings rottenness.

Killing sin to Renew Your Mind

Matt 12:34-35 “For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil.”

We must wage war and kill our sinful desires. What comes out of our mouths proceeds from our hearts. (Matt 15:18) If we are full of rotten, empty candy, we will produce evil rotten deeds. But we can train and renew our minds to think differently. We can train ourselves to deny the sinful desires of our hearts and rather reach for the sweet nourishing honey of God’s word.

The Minds Eye

Our minds “eye” is every thought we think. 2 Cor. 10:5 tells us that we must take every thought captive. We must take hold of our thoughts, remove the sinful ones and replace them with ones that are true and pleasing to the Lord. We must hand over our candy basket and instead reach for the honey that our Heavenly Father has freely and lovingly given us.

As we see in Psalms 119:97-104 it is through loving His word and meditating on it all day that we eventually learn to hate our false ways. Through renewing our minds and filling them with God’s word we will eventually grow to hate the taste of candy and much more prefer honey.

Any time we start to indulge in candy, we must stop, throw it away, and instead reach for the honey. Ezekiel 3:30 “And he said to me, “Son of man, feed your belly with this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it.” Then I ate it, and it was in my mouth as sweet as honey.”

One day, after constant training we will naturally reach for the honey and not even want the candy anymore. But it takes lots of hard work to get there. We cannot let our guard down or our enemy will trip us up.

Why do You Need to Renew Your Mind?

We serve a new Master now.

Romans 6:15-17 “For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed,”

We have been bought and paid for by our Lord Jesus Christ. He calls us to a life of service to him and not ourselves. One day I want to hear from my Heavenly Father, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.” So I will “discipline my body and keep it under control,” (1 Cor. 9:27) But thanks be to God that even though my best is woefully short of His glory, I have a savior who is the perfect servant who has covered my iniquities and given me his perfect righteousness. Praise the Lord for His perfect salvation!