Everyone needs their brain washed, cleansed by the Word of God. The Word of God is the only way to get rid of stinking thinking. What is stinking thinking? It is the intentional or sub-conscious thinking we choose to live our lives by.
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We wonder why we are not seeing the power of God in His fullness operating in our lives or the church as a whole, it’s the choices we make, the thoughts we have which cause the actions we do. Allow God to renew your mind today.
Any truth that God reveals to you comes with the need for mind renewal. A lot of people have been deceived to think that just because they have received a revelation from the Lord, that revelation has renewed their mind. Every revelation is not the end, but the beginning of a journey towards knowing more about God in your Christian walk. Our minds have been programmed by sin, death and corruption. God wants to reprogramme our minds so they can match the truth about God’s Word.
Ephesians 4: 17-24 (NLT) states that “With the Lord’s authority I say this, live no longer as the Gentiles do, for they are hopelessly confused. Their minds are full of darkness, they wander far from the life God gives because they have closed their minds and hardened their hearts against Him. They have no sense of shame. They live lustful pleasure and eagerly practice every kind of impurity. But that isn’t what you learned about Christ. Since you have heard about Jesus and have learned the truth that comes from him, throw your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. Instead let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, created to be like God, truly righteous and holy.”
Paul was saying that we have to not only reprogramme our minds with new information, but also allow these new truths to change our attitudes. Synonyms for “attitude” are outlook, feeling, sentiment and disposition. Our perspectives have to change. Many people have heard biblical truths and can recall them, but often they don’t dwell upon them to the degree that those truths change their attitudes.
It should be noted that the fact that you are a born-again believer doesn’t mean that all your thoughts are pure. Most of us born-again, spirit-filled tongue-talking believers, our thoughts are polluted and it takes that conscious effort to discipline oneself in terms of ensuring that they are pure.
We, therefore, have to be renewed in terms of how we think and what we think. Ephesians 4: 23 (Amp) states that “Be constantly renewed in the spirit of your mind (having a fresh, untarnished mental and spiritual attitude) and put on the new self (the regenerated and renewed nature) created in God’s image (god-like) in the righteousness and holiness of the truth (living in a way that expresses to God your gratitude for your salvation)”.
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This means that mind renewal is a daily affair and it is a journey. As the Spirit renews our mind, the fruit will be evident. Mind renewal is the work of the Holy Spirit. It is not natural, but spiritual. The Bible says in Proverbs 23:7: “As a man thinks in his heart so is he.”
Your thoughts are important in your life and having them renewed to God’s thoughts is extremely important in one’s Christian life. Many people get born again and they forsake their wicked ways, but not their wicked thoughts. By wicked thoughts, I am not just referring to perverse thoughts. The devil is very good at corrupting our thoughts and so we end up with thoughts that contradict God’s thoughts.
Most Christians continue to think the way they used to before they received Christ and so they don’t fully experience the power of God in their lives. Most of us as believers know Jesus, but our thinking doesn’t line up with God’s thinking because we have not renewed our minds. I want to line up my own life with God’s thinking and I want my attitudes to be fully influenced by God’s Word and this is a process which can’t be achieved overnight.
The Bible in Ephesians 4:24 states that we have been made “righteous and truly holy”. This means that we have the righteousness of God and we are truly holy before God. However, it is not enough to know this scripture. We have to know how it feels like now or how it looks like in our minds. How does this work in our daily work? This is the process of mind renewal. There are preachers who share that now that we have been made righteous, sin no longer matters.
We have been forgiven our sins, past, present and future. Indeed, this is true. However, if you still think that sin doesn’t matter, then your mind hasn’t been renewed. There are Christians who are taking the message of grace too far and they are teaching that people don’t have to repent anymore. Indeed, it is true that once we are born again, we don’t have to repent to be saved because you don’t have to be born again and again. You don’t have to repent to go to heaven.
However, we need to repent if we mess up. Jesus in the book of Revelation told five out of seven churches to repent. If repentance wasn’t that important, why did Jesus tell these churches to repent?
Most of us are aware of 2 Corinthians 8:9 which states that while Jesus was rich, “He became poor for our sake so we could be rich”. Most believers have this revelation that God’s desire is for us to be rich or live prosperous lives as we see in 3 John 2. However, your mind has to be renewed to this reality. Why prosperity? What does it mean to be prosperous? It may take a long time for some of us to have this reality be part of our thinking. We have to take off poverty thoughts out of our mind. This is part of the renewal process.
Some of us still don’t realise that we don’t own anything and everything we have comes from God and we are only stewards. Failure to appreciate this could be as a result of a mind that has not been fully renewed. We hang on to things that don’t belong to us. It may take some time for some of us to change our thoughts about money. We have to learn to give and also to receive.
It is also important to know why God is prospering you. Is it because He wants you to boast and show the whole world how rich you are and how beautiful your houses or cars are? Does He want you to demonstrate to the whole world how expensive your clothes are or that you have an expensive taste? Some of us we look down upon other people “because they are poor and they don’t have money”.
We find the answer in Deuteronomy 8:18: “And you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers as it is this day.” We can see from this scripture that the whole purpose of prosperity has nothing to do with me. It has to do with the promise that God gave to Abraham long before you and I were here. God wants to give us more, so we can give more. It is a good feeling to tithe. It is a good feeling to give to the poor. We need to prosper. Our businesses need to prosper.
However, I am sure some of you could be struggling with this statement that God wants us to prosper and you may think the church is after your money. This is because your mind has not been renewed to why God wants us to prosper. You have not renewed your mind to the fact that poverty is a curse, it hurts people and destroys lives and legacies.
It should be also noted that the power of a Christian life does not come from the mind, but it flows through the mind. If you don’t get your mind renewed, you will hinder God’s power in your life and the flow of the Spirit from your life. You have to agree with God’s Word about your life. You have to displace the thoughts that disagree with God’s Word.
The reason Satan can work is that the Christian has not been liberated entirely from a carnal mind. Following the change of mentality, there must be the bringing of “every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10.5).
God wants to “rewire” some of our brains so we can fully enjoy His blessings on this earth. He desires a mind that is totally renewed, which is in sync with His Word.
Dr Doug Mamvura is a graduate of Charis Bible School. Feedback: [email protected] or Twitter @dougmamvura
