establish | encourage | energize

While on your journey of self-discovery, you probably had this question ringing in your mind. How can I change my life’s circumstances? Now that’s a great question.  A story is told of a man who was walking down the road next to a mental hospital. As he went by he heard the patients chanting, “Thirteen, thirteen, thirteen!” Curiosity got the better of him and soon he was peeping through a crack in the wooden fence, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever was going on. One of the patients poked his eye with a stick and immediately they began chanting, “Fourteen, fourteen, fourteen!”

We are creatures of habit, and sooner or later we will do things out of impulse to resolve our inner appetites. A new mentality is a thought-life directed by God’s spirit not human self. If this resonates within you, then you are ready to learn three lessons why you need a new mentality. Naturally, this list is not exhaustive (and I could never claim it to be so):

1. Our thinking patterns must shift from the old to the new
2. Our natural minds are resistant to change
3. Our thought reinforces the status quo

First, it is a Biblical injunction that we shift our mentality. The Bible starkly demands that shift in Romans 12:2. Apostle Paul charged the Roman Christians not to be conformed to worldly standards but to be transformed by the renewing of their minds. This is the only way we can prove the perfect will of God. The necessity of this demand is based on the fact that you cannot serve God effectively with an earthly mindset. All that we are and know is based on our rigorous learning and past experiences. These are important to daily living but they touch only our human element, which at its best is extremely poor at serving God’s interests. We need a new mentality, a different set of values, a higher way of interpreting our experiences and defining our realities. What Paul told the Roman Christians was basically this: You cannot discover the will of God if you continue thinking the way you do.

Secondly, we can agree that our natural minds are instinctively resistant to change. That is the way we guard against the mind’s perceived risks of getting involved with the unknown. We love to play it safe, so we don’t immediately accept new concepts and processes if we detect the slightest chance of risk. It’s our natural defense mechanism. This could save you from a bad mortgage plan, but will also likely cause you to resist the Word of God. The Lord spoke a parable in Luke 5:37-39 about putting new wine in old wineskins.  Old methods cannot contain new concepts. The two are mutually exclusive. If you try to force a union you will lose the two. That is to say, if you bring in yesterday’s failed methods into today’s new project, you will habitually be introducing failure into what was poised to succeed. Spiritually, our minds do the same thing. We cannot walk in victory with God when we keep interpreting His Word only in the light of what we know and are comfortable with. Life is no much more than what we know or like. Many times, God brings us to situations over which we have absolutely neither control nor experience. We talk ourselves out of God’s favor for fear of the unknown. Faith cannot thrive in such a hostile environment for it keeps denying her the opportunity to call out to God. Romans 8:7 is another stern warning on the sate of our natural minds, which are hostile against the Lord, and unable to be submitted to His law. A natural mind has the obedience button disabled.

Thirdly, our thoughts reinforce the status quo. We agree that we cannot act differently from our thoughts, the wellspring of our belief system and subsequent actions. You cannot act differently from your belief and you cannot believe differently from your though-life. Our new nature in Christ comes with a renewable mind so that we can now respond correctly to God’s requirements.

You are your biggest struggle and if you master your thoughts and bring them into subjection under power the Spirit of God you will begin to experience true peace and victory. Proverbs 16:32 celebrates the man who has control of his spirit and places him above the mighty warrior who captures an entire city. Now that’s a renewed mind, operating under the influence of God and not self.  It is only in God’s Spirit that our minds take up our new nature in Christ. And it is in that state of submission to His will that we can find true meaning and value in life.