Romans 12:1-2 | TPT (1) Beloved friends, what should be our proper response to God’s marvelous mercies? I encourage you to surrender yourselves to God to be his sacred, living sacrifices. And live in holiness, experiencing all that delights his heart. For this becomes your genuine expression of worship. (2) Stop imitating the ideals and opinions of the culture around you, but be inwardly transformed by the Holy Spirit through a total reformation of how you think. This will empower you to discern God’s will as you live a beautiful life, satisfying and perfect in his eyes.
The word “transformed” is the Greek word that we get the English word “metamorphosis”.
Metamorphosis – a change of the form or nature of a thing or person into a completely different one, by natural or supernatural means.
- God is interested in something supernatural happening on the inside of us that changes us on the outside.
The Bible is very clear in teaching us that the way that we change is by changing the way that we think.
So, if there are behaviors, habits, etc. that we have in our lives, then they can be changed or eliminated by changing the way that we think.
- You can change defeat into victory by changing your behavior and you can change your behavior by changing your mind.
- Your victory in this life will follow your right decisions and your right behavior.
The Choice Is Yours
Deuteronomy 30:19-20 NLT (19) “Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live! (20) You can make this choice by loving the LORD your God, obeying Him, and committing yourself firmly to Him. This is the key to your life. And if you love and obey the LORD, you will live long in the land the LORD swore to give your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
Remember that whether we are experiencing life and blessing OR death and cursing is dependent upon the decisions that we make in life.
- The quality of life that we have today is a result of the choices or decisions that we made yesterday.
Often we try and blame the quality of our lives on others or circumstances but ultimately the responsibility is ours. In order to make any positive change in our lives, we must start by accepting that truth.
- Whatever is influencing our lives the most, is what helps shape the decisions that we make.
- God works through your recreated spirit to influence your decision making process.
The location of our free moral agency is our soul.
1 Thessalonians 5:23 NIV (23) May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We are a spirit, we have a soul and we live in a body.
- Your soul is the seat of your decision-making process.
Your soul is comprised of your mind, will, and your emotions.
- Our decision-making process is based on: I think, I feel and therefore I choose.
Your mind interacts with your emotions or how you feel to produce desire and desire is the foundation of your decision-making.
Your desires are based on what you think about that situation and how you feel about that situation.
- God has created you so that if you have the right information and process it correctly, you will not make bad decisions.
You have reasoning ability given to you by God. You can take information and process it and come to a logical conclusion.
- Your mind was not created to arrive at the wrong conclusion. Most people do not have enough of the right information to come to the right conclusion.
They mostly have enough of the natural information and not enough of the spiritual information.
If you have enough of both types of information you have the capacity to come to the right conclusion.
Wean Your Mind
Before you can change your thinking and come to the right decision, you must identify and wean your mind from any destructive thoughts – any patterns of thought that generate internal agitation.
Psalms 131:1-2 | AMP (1) LORD, MY heart is not haughty, nor my eyes lofty; neither do I exercise myself in matters too great or in things too wonderful for me. (2) Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with his mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me [ceased from fretting].
Fret: to feel or express worry, to move in agitation
Examine the analogy of the infant and its mother. The infant is totally and completely dependent upon its mother for sustenance and life itself. There will come a time when that growth and development will demand that the child be weaned from that dependency so that it can fully mature.
There are things that your mind says it is dependent on to be able to live, be happy, be content and be satisfied in this life.
The weaning of the mind is weaning your mind from the wrong thinking that you think must be there for you to be happy and at peace.
To be weaned means that you are free from fretting (agitated, turmoil, bothered). We are talking about any kind of mental activity that produces agitation.
- Self-centered thinking.
A child only thinks about “me”. We must be concerned with the needs of others above our own needs.
1 Corinthians 10:24 | NLT (24) Don’t be concerned for your own good but for the good of others.
Concentrating on you will always cause agitation.
- Comparison thinking.
Hebrews 12:1 | NIV (1) …And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us,
- Feeling sorry for yourself.
This kind of thought will always lead to depression and then oppression and eventually death.
Philippians 4:4 | TPT (4) Be cheerful with joyous celebration in every season of life. Let joy overflow, for you are united with the Anointed One!
- Prideful thoughts.
God gets all the glory all the time. You must come to grips with the fact that we don’t get any of the glory.
John 15:5 | NLT (5) “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in Me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from Me you can do nothing.
- Negative, defeated thinking.
The glass is half empty…
Romans 8:35,37 | NKJV (35) Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? (37) Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.
- Natural reasoning that is contrary to God’s Word.
Sometimes God does not give you enough information to come to a logical conclusion but our minds always want a logical conclusion. When He doesn’t give us enough information, we try to come up with our own conclusion and that is called natural reasoning and it takes you to a natural answer.
You will then move over to agitation and frustration.
A mind that is weaned from carnal reasoning will stop at the question and moves over to trust of God. God said don’t lean to your own understanding. We must arrive at the place of maturity where the questions don’t matter.
Proverbs 3:5 NKJV Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding;
How do we wean these thoughts from our mind?
Replace those thoughts with thoughts from God’s Word.