The Power of a Renewed Mind
Galatians 5:16 16 I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.
AMP 16 But I say, walk habitually in the [Holy] Spirit [seek Him and be responsive to His guidance], and then you will certainly not carry out the desire of the sinful nature [which responds impulsively without regard for God and His precepts].
What is the answer to not walking in the flesh?
Some people think that being spiritual means being spooky. Or being over emotional about the word.
How do you walk in the Spirit?
Our spirit works through our soul and our soul works through our body. You are first a spirit. Your born again spirit is only gonna be as effective as your soul.
If your soul is not being renewed or lining up with the Word your mind is not being lined up with the Word. It then limits the capacity of a born again spirit. There’s only so much that you’re gonna get out of your born again spirit if your mind remains carnal.
Your physical body simply does what it’s told. If your mind doesn’t line up with the word then your body won’t line up with the word.
Walking in the spirit is a mindset. That’s lines up with the Word. If your mind is not renewed neither is your spirit.
Walk in the spirit or Walk with the mind set on Gods word and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh or the strong intense appetites of the flesh.
The flesh has its own intense appetites based in selfishness.
What is the flesh? Your physical body is based in your mindset. It’s also based on a mindset that either goes against or it does not line up with the Word of god. If you’re tempted to do something that does not line up with the Word, then simply set it to do something that does line up with the Word.
However your mind is set (programmed), whether it’s on the Word or not… That’s what you will end up doing.
Colossians 3:2 (AMP) 2 Set your mind and keep focused habitually on the things above [the heavenly things], not on things that are on the earth [which have only temporal value].
Your mind is the battleground for faith. If your mind is set on the Word you will end up walking in the Word. Just like an alarm clock. It’s set to go off at a certain time it will do it. If your mind is NOT set on the things of God then your body and spirit will NOT go off to do the Word of God. If your mind is set ON the Word of God then you will be set up to go ON the Word of God.
This is not just about sinning. It’s about believing the wrong way too.
How do you think people may believe they are doing right by the Word but they are not?
When we renew our minds with the Word of God we need the Holy Spirit to guide us into doing so. Without the help of the Holy Spirit we can end up cherry picking scriptures and trying to make it conform to our life. Ask the Holy Spirit to guide you every time you study the Bible.
Do you want to see results in your life?
Romans 12:1-3 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith.
Don’t be conformed to the world’s ways of thinking, operating, ways of doing things. It is based in selfishness operates by fear and Satan is the lord of that system. The worlds way will contradict and twist the things of God. It is set against the Word of God. Sometimes by ignorance.
Don’t conform to the worlds ways but be changed, be transformed. How?
When you renew your mind you change. Change (transformation) will not happen if you don’t renew the mind. Your life will not change if your mind won’t change. There is no transformation if your mind is not renewed.
If your mindset stays the same then your marriage, life, struggle, sickness.. Stays the same. Nothing changes until the mind changes.
It doesn’t matter how much you go to church, read books, listen to sermons.. If your mind does not change with that information, nothing else will change.
Renew your mind: change your life and understand and prove the perfect will of God. Some people plainly do not want to change. They give excuses and their spiritual life remains in the same place it was ten years ago.
For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith.
Soberly means to not be under the influence. Think of an intoxicated person. When you have sober thinking, it’s thinking along the things of God. When you are intoxicated, its thinking that does not line up with the Word of God. When you are not thinking along the ways of God, you are intoxicated. You are not sober.
Sober thinking is thinking in line with the Word of God. Once you have been born again, the most important thing is renewing the mind. To the unsaved world, the answer is being BORN AGAIN. But to the person who is already born again, the most important thing to do is RENEW YOUR MIND.
Everything about success, faith, failure in your life will be based on whether you renew your mind or not. Christian life does not just stop or just involve the spirit, but also the mind and the importance of being smart with the Word. The only time you talk about being smart is in the world, but you need to be smart in the Word. You need to know how to rightly divide the Word of Truth. Most people are unsuccessful because they are just plain lazy. The bible calls this spiritual laziness. They can be industrious in other aspects of their life but when it comes to Spiritual things they are lazy. They won’t bother reading or studying the Word. Understand how the blood cleansed you, what Jesus did on the cross. You can’t have faith in the blood of Jesus if you don’t KNOW what the blood has done for you. So you if you want to plead the blood of Jesus, because you saw sister so and so plead the blood, but you have no idea what the even means. You don’t know, you’re just copying what they say or do. So there are no results.
When you understand, you KNOW what belongs to you. You have boldness. You use it with that knowledge. YOU’VE GOT TO KNOW what is YOURS. Until you know what you know, you will not change. All you will do is complain, and that will make it worse.
You can’t be casting out demons in the name of Jesus that your pastor says. You have to know something about the name yourself. We must train in it. Learning is not necessarily renewing the mind, but rather learning and doing. It’s not enough to fill your notebook full of notes and throw it in the back seat until you need it, your gonna have to DO IT and act upon it. You must train and keep training until its deep in your conscious and you start doing it automatically once your mind is set.
You can cuss me out, for example, but I’m trained to forgive and walk in love.
Christianity is about being transformed in the image of Christ. The Christian walk is not just a spiritual walk but an intellectual walk. Christian progress and success is not possible, will not happen unless you renew the mind. 20 years will pass you by and you will remain the same if you do not renew your mind.
Renewing the mind is not just a one-time event. The day you stop renewing the mind, your life stops, the success stops. You need to always be in the process of improving your walk with God. Every issue you face will require what you know about the Word. I need to think differently about this.
How do you do that? You line up your thinking to what the Word says about that situation.
Renewing the mind is simply exchanging the thoughts, ideas and beliefs you have to change to Gods thoughts, ideas, and beliefs. It’s that simple. Don’t change the Word, let the Word change your thinking.
Some people get into problems and then want God to fix it, just to get in another problem because they refuse to renew their minds. This includes financial, healing, any area. Some people get miracles, and slowly, because of their un-renewed mind, they lose it.
Romans 8 5 For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. 6 For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. 7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
What are the results of an un-renewed mind?
For example a person gets a nicotine spirit cast out, and they are free. On the way home they throw the cigarettes out of their window and the next day they out there looking for the cigarettes. They failed to renew their minds. When a demon goes out of a person, it comes back with 7 spirits more wicked and finds the house swept clean. Notice its empty. It hasn’t been filled with the Holy Spirit, it hasn’t learned anything new.
The Results: They think well maybe it didn’t work. Maybe I’m just too bad that God don’t wana deal with me. And all he needed was a new way of thinking about those cigarettes.
Wrong thinking will get you back in bondage. Right thinking will keep you out.
Before you do something you gotta think it.
John 8: 31 Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; 32 And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
Remember Romans 8 said what’s on the line if you refuse to renew your mind. Remaining carnally minded is death.
Remember the prodigal son? What changed his situation? Was it power that fell from heaven? Did his father go after him?
Luke 15:24 11 And he said, A certain man had two sons: 12 And the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living. 13 And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. 14 And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want. 15 And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. 16 And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him. 17 And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! 18 I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, 19 And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. 20 And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. 21 And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. 22 But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: 23 And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: 24 For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry.
When was he dead? When he was separated from his father and His provision.
The new thought, the new mindset turned him. Wrong thinking got him in the problem, but right thinking brought him out of the problem to the father and his provision.
You can be separated and going to church, separated from your father’s provision because you have not changed the way you think. You can shout, jerk, cry, but it will leave you with no provision because of your wrong thinking. When the prodigal son came back he repented. He did not come back with excuses. Even Adam blamed eve. Some people want to come up with rationalization, or blame their DNA, or bloodline for their problems.
Excuses and Rationalizations is just preparation to do it again.
Repentance means to change the way you think. Most people think repentance and asking for forgiveness is the same thing. We mean father forgive me, but we say I repent. It’s not repentance until you change your thoughts. Most people never repent, they just say forgive me. They failed to change the mindset.
Ezekiel 18 30 “Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, each one in accordance with his conduct,” says the Lord God. “Repent (change your way of thinking) and turn away from all your transgressions, so that sin may not become a stumbling block to you. 31 Cast away from you all your transgressions which you have committed [against Me], and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! For why should you die, O house of Israel? 32 For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone who dies,” says the Lord God. “Therefore, repent and live!”
Matthew 17 From that time Jesus began to preach and say, “Repent [change your inner self—your old way of thinking, regret past sins, live your life in a way that proves repentance; seek God’s purpose for your life], for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
