The mind: Your greatest asset or liability?

Obituaries
The mind can be your greatest asset or liability depending on how you use it. Our success or failure depends on how we utilise this asset. with dr doug mamvura Man is made or unmade by himself in the armoury of thought he forges — the weapons by which he destroys himself; he also fashions […]

The mind can be your greatest asset or liability depending on how you use it. Our success or failure depends on how we utilise this asset.

with dr doug mamvura

Man is made or unmade by himself in the armoury of thought he forges — the weapons by which he destroys himself; he also fashions the tools with which he builds for himself heavenly mansions of joy and strength and peace. By the right choice and true application of thought, man ascends to the Divine Perfection; by the abuse and wrong application of thought, he descends below the level of the beast. Between these two extremes are all the grades of character, and man is their maker and master.

As we navigate through the murky waters of Covid-19 and a plethora of other challenges, there are some of us who have almost given up while others have decided to light their candles in the dark environment and not curse darkness. You and I have a choice. The Bible says “whatsoever is born of God, overcomes the world” (1 John 5:4). We are victors not victims. We have to align our mind with what the Word of God says.

Unless we deliberately work on our mind, we will find it very difficult to navigate in this current terrain whether we are believers or not. Our mind will detect what we speak, hence the topic over the last two weeks has been on the tongue. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. All these emanate from our thoughts.

The way we see the world is not the way it is, but the way we are. Proverbs 23:7 says “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he”.

A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts. As the plant springs from, and could not be without, the seed, so every act of a man springs from the hidden seeds of thought, and could not have appeared without them.

This applies equally to those acts called “spontaneous” and “unpremeditated” as to those which are deliberately executed. The best way to assess the quality of our thoughts is through assessing the quality of our lives. This is a challenge to all of us as we go through what are going through to examine our thoughts and perception about the world and its challenges.

There are two actual outlooks on the world possessed by every man and these determine the quality of life you will have.

They two outlooks are called  “the carnal mind,” and the other “the mind of Christ.” We recognise these two centres of thought in the statement: “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Cor. 2:14).

The good news is that you and I as believers we have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16). All we have to do is apply it in our daily living. Unfortunately, most of us are led by the carnal mind.

We actually have the mind of Christ. Our born-again spirits have been renewed in knowledge after the same image of Him that created us (Colossians 3:10). We have received an anointing in our spirit so that we know all things (1 John 2:20). Isn’t it so sad that with all this treasure we still find ourselves gravitating towards our carnal mind?

The spiritual portion of us as Christians has the mind of Christ, while our physical brains do not. This is why the renewing of our physical mind is so important (Romans 12: 1-2). We already have the perfect wisdom of Christ on the inside, but we need to transfer that knowledge to our physical mind and thereby change our physical emotions and actions.

It is not our spirits that we are trying to train in the Word of God. Rather, the Holy Spirit is trying to train our physical mind to let the perfect wisdom of Christ, which is already resident in the spirit of every believer, prevail over our carnal thinking. With this kind of attitude, Covid-19 or no Covid-19, economic challenges, sickness or lack will not scare you as a believer because you know you are an overcomer.

How can we tap this mind of Christ? God’s Word is Spirit and life (John 6:63). God’s Word has written in print what is written in our hearts in the mind of Christ. Therefore, as we study God’s Word with the revelation knowledge of the Holy Spirit, this mind of Christ is reproduced in our physical minds and the life of God is released in our bodies.

To the natural mind, reality is confined to the instant called now; this very moment seems to contain the whole of reality, everything else is unreal. To the natural mind, the past and the future are purely imaginary. In other words, my past, when I use the natural mind, is only a memory image of things that were.

To the Christ mind, the spiritual mind, which Neville Goddard calls the fourth-dimensional focus, the past, the present, and the future of the natural mind are a present whole. It takes in the entire array of sensory impressions that man has encountered, is encountering, and will encounter. The only reason you and I are functioning as we are today, and are not aware of the greater outlook, is simply because we are creatures of habit, and habit renders us totally blind to what otherwise we should see, but habit is not law.

It acts as though it were the most compelling force in the world, yet it is not law. We should never allow ourselves to be led by our five senses especially if we are believers. The Bible makes it very clear that the righteous shall live by faith. We should walk by faith not by sight.

Who is the righteous? It is every born-again believer who believes in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5:21, that “He who knew no sin became sin so that we would become the righteousness of God”. We are the righteousness of God and so we are supposed to walk by faith not by sight. Righteousness is a gift. You don’t work for righteousness. I often hear people saying I have to go on a fast so that I can be righteous. Others say I am working towards my righteousness. If you tell some people that you are righteous, they can easily accuse you of blasphemy. This just shows ignorance of the Word of God. No wonder the Bible says “My people perish because of lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6).

We can create a new approach to life. If you and I would spend a few minutes every day in withdrawing our attention from the region of sensation and concentrating it on an invisible state and remain faithful to this contemplation, feeling and sensing the reality of an invisible state, we would in time become aware of this greater world, this dimensionally larger world. The state contemplated is now a concrete reality, displaced in time.

This is where faith comes in— the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. God is so gracious. God has already given us the “same measure of faith” (Romans 12:3). Did you know that you and I have “the same precious faith” like Peter (2 Peter 1:1). We all know the kind of miracles that Apostle Peter performed which included people being healed by his shadow (Acts 5:15). There is nothing that can stop you from performing those miracles as long as you don’t walk by sight. By the way you don’t have to be prophet, Papa, bishop, evangelist or pastor to do that. God doesn’t look at who you are. All you need is faith and obedience to the Word of God.

I, therefore, beseech you brethren by the mercies of our Lord Jesus Christ to move by faith not by sight and get our minds renewed through the Word.

  •  Dr Doug Mamvura is a graduate of Charis Bible School. Feedback: dr[email protected] or Twitter @dougmamvura