There are a lot of things in life you cannot change. But there is something you can! You have the power to change your mindset! You can change your mindset by renewing your mind through the truth.
Romans chapter 12 verse 2 is the cornerstone passage on the renewed mind.
“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
Romans 12:2 NIV
Today I want to talk about something that can transform your spiritual life, family life, financial life and your professional life. I have been serving God for almost 40 years and have been in the ministry as a pastor since 1999, for almost 24 years.
What I have seen after all these years of serving the Lord is that many are inside the churches but their minds have not been transformed by the word of God.
They changed their attitudes, changed some of their behaviours, but they still have a mindset shaped by their family’s traditions, by the culture of their country, by the teachings of their father, their mother, teachers, internet and things they learned in the world.
In the Bible a renewed mind is the key to transforming your walk with God. You will not experience the novelties of God with an old mentality.
“Without the renewed mind, we will distort the Scriptures to avoid their radical commands for self-denial, and love, and purity, and supreme satisfaction in Christ alone.” John Piper
I see Christians who do not have a renewed mind, using the Bible to defend their lack of commitment to the Kingdom of God.
Jesus of course illustrates the renewed mind very well. I do not know if you ever have made a list of how different His way of thinking is from ours.
– Jesus thinks you live by dying, (for you to live, you have to die) can you believe that?
– He thinks that for you to receive, you have to give.
– He says you will be exalted if you humiliate yourself. (you are exalted when you go low)
– He said the greater, the more mature, is the one who serves. (It’s the one who is working in his kingdom).
A renewed mind is the mind of Christ.
God is a God of miracles and our story is a gospel of resurrection and if God can bring Jesus from death He can give you the power to change the way you think.
If we change the way we think then our lives will change as a result.
Your mind is either moving you towards your wishes and plans or moving you towards God’s.
Your thoughts are either moving you toward what you think, what you want and desire or they move you towards what God think, what God wants and what God’s desire.
Your mind is the most important thing about you. Your life is built by a series of things that you do. The decisions that we make are informed by the way that we think .
The most important thing about you is what you think about yourself.
It’s your mind that determines what you think is possible, what you think about God, what you think He has for your life. Without a transformed mind you will have a defeated life and you will not fulfil God’s plan for your life.
Some people think: if I fix this problem in my life, then I will be happy. If God performs this miracle, then my life will be wonderful! No, that’s not true!
God is far more interested in changing your mindset than in changing your circumstances.
I know that you are much more interested in changing your circumstance, you want to see your problem solved, but this is not God’s priority, because if you can change your mindset, you change the way you experience your circumstances.
There is a battle for your mind and it’s been going on every day. Your mind is your great asset and satan wants to control your mind.
Why do you need a renewed and transformed mind?
Because Your thoughts control your life
Every single action always begin with a thought. If you don’t think you don’t do it. If you have good thoughts you do good things , if bad thoughts you do bad things.
“Above all, be careful what you think because your thoughts control your life.”
Proverbs 4:23 ERV
“Be very careful to keep your mind safe. The thoughts that you think make you the person that you are.” Proverbs 4:23 EASY
Be careful how you think, your life is shaped by your thoughts for good or for bad.
Next point : I need to change my mindset because my mind is the battleground for sin.
All temptations happen in the mind. We usually think of temptation as something external, when you see something that tempts you. But no, all temptations starts in the mind and as result sins happens.
Sins of lust, pride, hatred, anger, fear , resentment, envy , worry. All these things are in your mind. If you learn how to control and renew your mind you will know how to manage your life.
“I love God’s law with all my heart. But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me.”
Romans 7:22-23 NLT
I love God ….. BUT there is another power at WAR with my MIND and this power can make you slave ! (Slave to alcohol, slave to cigarette, games, internet, gambling, slave to laziness , slave to porn, etc)
Here the Bible is saying that there is a battle within your brain. Sometimes you may be conscious of this battle and sometimes you may be completely unaware.
Satan wants to control your mind. The World wants to control your mind. And this battle is all about the way you think.
If you can manage your mind and if you renew it with God’s truth you will have peace and happiness, confidence and security and you are going to be a person who will please God and be used by God
If you don’t have this mindset you will always be in conflict, chaos and distress.
The renewing of the mind is not something that you do one time in life or in one season of life. It is a constant process, it is a daily opportunity for you and me be changed by the renewing of our minds.
What Bible is setting up for us is a situation where we are either going to be conformed to and influenced by the patterns of this world, shaped into the mould of the way this world functions or we are going to be changed by the renewing of our minds and become the person that God intends us to be.
What is interesting in this text is that there is no middle ground, there is no neutral stance in life.
I think a lot of us live like this: it wasn’t a really a great day but it wasn’t a terrible day either. I’m not living like the world but I’m not living fully for God either.
But there is no neutral in life. CS Lewis said : There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second is claimed by God or counterclaimed by satan.
In other words, every thought, every morning, every day, every opportunity, every step, every place, is a contested space, in that space you and I are either going to gravitate towards the way the world thinks, or we are going to renew our minds into the way that God thinks.
We are either going to be conformed to the pattern of this world and we are going to talk like , think like, look like, this world or we are going to be renewed with the mind of Christ and we are going to talk like, think like and live like Christ himself would live. These are the only alternatives for you and me.
What is powerful about this is that no one can stop you, no circumstances, no past, no failures, nobody’s opinion, no one can stop you from renewing your mind.
So today’s message is : you have the power through Christ to change the way you think, and When you change the way you think, your mindset is going to change the way you live. And you can do that through the power of Christ today and no one will stop you.
Nothing can stop you, no voice from the past can stop you, nobody’s else opinion can stop you. So today you have the opportunity to change your life and to start down the road to having a transformed mind
This word “transformed” in the Greek is the word “METAMORPHOSIS” , a word that we know well. It brings up the picture of a butterfly. You too can change your life. God is inviting you to transform your self by the renewing of your mind.
You can come from whatever past and fly off in beauty. You can come from a place of death and change or “morph” if you will by the power of the Holy Spirit into something beautiful and amazing. You have the power to live a different kind of life.
The word “transformed” from Romans 12:2 is the Greek word “Metamorphosis”:
Metamorphosis means CHANGE THE FORM or CHANGE NATURE
What is all of that about?
If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you are a new creation. That’s the first renewing of the mind. I’m not the old me. I’m not just flesh and blood, I’m not just a product of my environment.
I’m born again, I’m saved, brought from death to life by Jesus Christ. I’m a brand new creation in him.
Therefore I have got a new destiny, a new identity, new possibilities, new power. I have got a new plan, I’m in God’s will and I’m going to live my life in the way the Bible says, I’ll live the good and perfect plan that God has for my life. I’m going to live by that.
If you are saved today something has happened to you and Romans 12:2 say that you can experience the will of God in your life if you have a transformed mind.
“Yet God, in His grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.”
Romans 3:24 NLT
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 6:23 NKJV
“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.”
Romans 8:1 NKJV
“For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 8:38-39 NKJV
“And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.”
Romans 8:28 NLT
Paul the apostle spend 11 chapters in Romans declaring who we are and when he gets to chapter 12 he says that you have been invited into the salvation story and when you says YES by Faith you became a brand new creature.
Therefore renew your mindset about who you are and renew your mindset to what God has done.
God’s will has changed you through faith in Christ into a new creature. United with Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, purposed on earth and destined for heaven. That’s who you are !
By God’s will you have been changed through faith into a new creature. You’re United with Jesus, you’re filled with the Holy Spirit, you’re purposed on earth and destined for heaven.
Renew your mind to who you are in Christ and where you’re headed in life.
I’m telling you, the most powerful thing in your life is in your mind, not the power of positive thinking, but the power of the truth informed by the spirit of Christ that transforms you by the renewal of your mind.
You can start a path to a new life now and see the metamorphosis happen.
God bless you, see you next week with the second part of this message.