Romans 12:2, And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. Scripture teaches us that when a person receives Christ into their heart from that moment on that person becomes a child of God. They instantly become a new Christian. However- although that person has been born again into the Kingdom of God and given their heart to Jesus, their mind and their thinking can still be and usually is not in line with the teachings of Gods Word. Its possible to love the Lord with your heart and still have a mind filled with wrong thinking. Satan has lost more than one heart to Jesus but managed to keep influencing the mind. Many a Christian (sad to say) received a new heart at conversion but kept their old head. Moving down the aisle in response to the altar call means we step over to the Lords side and our fight with God is over and peace is declared. Although our fight with God may be over, our fight with the devil is not. The battle now rages for control of our thought life. The new life in God requires a disciplined mind. God expects a change in our thinking. Philippians 2:5, Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. Now Satan works to prevent this from happening. The last thing he wants is for us to have a changed (renewed) mind because it produces a changed life. He hates to let go of a heart, but he is pleased when he can hang on to a Christians mind and dominate or influence the thought life. A mind, we are told, works much like a computer. A computer is programmed with all kinds of information being fed into it. It will only do what it is programmed to do. Thats all it can do because what goes in is what comes out. It responds to what has been fed into it. Feed our mind computer with thoughts on Jesus and out comes his image in our life. Feed in the Word of God and the thought life produces a constant changing person. But if we allow our minds to be filled with thought patterns of this world, a carnal person will be produced. Since Satan cannot touch our wills, he comes against that which influences our will. A persons thought life so affects their will they are said to be a product of their thinking. Proverbs 23:7, As he thinketh in his heart, so is he. Our minds have been programmed with all kinds of information being fed into it from the time we were born. After we got saved, God started a reprogramming of our mind with the truth of his Word. Our new birth was instantaneous but the renewing of the mind is progressive. As God re-programs our mind with his Word, he is re-educating and training us to think right. When a computer is reprogrammed, the old program is deleted from its memory and a new one is installed. Its out with the old and in with the new. When God saved us he took us out of the worlds manner of living. When God renews our mind, he takes the worlds manner of living out of us. As we renew our minds with the Word of God, we stop being reactors in the way we respond to crisis situations that come into our lives. With a renewed mind, we now choose and initiate a response based on the Word of God. We now think different. Therefore, we act different. I learned early in my Christian life that if Im going to enjoy the blessings and provisions God has promised in his Word, then Ive got to co-operate with him. Let me give you an example of what I mean by co-operate. I was born in a small town in southeast Missouri. The water supply in our house was an old cast iron hand pump in the back yard. Even yet today, I have memories of how cold that water was and how good it tasted. But to get the blessing of that water, we didnt turn a spicket on like we do today for water supply. No--We had to grab the pump handle, prime the pump by pouring water down the pump head. We used an old canning jar to pour some water down the pump head. Then we would pump as fast as we could. You see, for us to enjoy the reward of the taste of that water, we had to co-operate with the water producing principles of that pump. That principle was; if you dont prime and pump then you dont drink. Now, likewise, when we co-operate with the principle of renewing our mind with the Word of God, well be rewarded with the flow of spiritual blessings God has promised. Thats why Satan wants to keep the Word on the page and not in your mind. Hes aware, more than some Christians are, that until the Word of God gets off the page and into the mind and spirit, we wont walk in faith, we wont grow spiritually, and we wont have a renewed mind.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 21:08:11 +0000
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