One gentleman said he met a young man not long ago who dove for exotic fish for aquariums. He said that one of the most popular aquarium fish is the shark. He explained that if you catch a small shark and confine it, it will stay a size proportionate to the aquarium you put it in. Sharks can be six inches long yet fully matured. But if you turn them loose in the ocean, they grow to their normal length of eight feet. ¹ You can be a six inch Christian or you can become a six foot tall fully matured full grown believer. To expand, to grow, to develop you have to go bigger in your thinking. Get out of the small tank of worldly thinking and jump into the great ocean of the knowledge of God found in His Word.

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The Need for Mind Renewal

Romans 12:1-2 (KJV)
1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. 2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

• Romans 12:1 challenges us to offer up our bodies as a living sacrifice to God.
• The language Paul uses is dripping with the Israelite system of animal sacrifice.
• Sacrifice involves personal cost.
• It means it costs you something to engage in the activity you’re involved in.

2 Samuel 24:24 (KJV)
24 And the king said unto Araunah, Nay; but I will surely buy it of thee at a price: neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the LORD my God of that which doth cost me nothing. So David bought the threshingfloor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.

• David said, “I will not offer an offering to my God which costs me nothing.”
• He understood a walk with God which costs nothing is worth nothing.
• Your walk with God is no different from David’s walk.
• Your salvation is already paid for.
• There’s no personal cost to you to come to God.
• Jesus paid that cost for you.
• It’s free.
• Saying it succinctly.
  • Salvation is free but discipleship costs.
• If Christians would just put this verse in Romans 12, completely into operation in their lives, my, how different Christianity would look.
• Are you willing to make this offering of yourself unto God?
• So, Romans 12:1 encourages you to offer your body unto God.
• Romans 12:2 tells you how to do it.
• So, how is it done?
  • By not allowing yourself to conform to the world, but instead allowing yourself to be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
• In last week’s podcast, we covered what the word ‘conformed’ means.
• Israel learned what that word meant the hard way.
• Their great sin lay in their desire to be like everyone else.
• They wanted a king so that they could be like the other nations, like the world.

[Tweet “The psalmist David understood a walk with God which costs nothing is worth nothing.”]

1 Samuel 8:20 (KJV)
20 That we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.

• This is not your goal.
• Believers in Jesus understand they are to be conformed to the image of Jesus.

Romans 8:29 (KJV)
29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

• This is not some special holy spiritual pinnacle which only a few ever aspire to.
• This is not living on the edge Christianity.
• Not being conformed to the world is everyday ordinary walking with God.
• It’s part of growing up in God just like going to church, praying or any of the other spiritual disciplines.
• There’s a dedication involved in staying on top of your mind.
  • The world operates twenty-four seven.
  • We are inundated with it’s thoughts.
  • The world’s thinking tries to creep in and leach onto our thinking.
  • In addition to the world trying to bombard you from without, there are the internal issues.
  • You haven’t always been a Bible believer all your life.
• The world’s thinking has already made some inroads into your thought processes before you came to Jesus.
• It takes a full-time commitment to our full-time God in order to root out worldly thinking so you can walk as He desires you to walk.
• Our minds have to be renewed.

Defining Terms: What Is Mind Renewal?

• What does the word renewed mean?
• The Greek word for renewed means to restore something in a like new and often more improved condition.
• Renewing the mind is like reprogramming a computer.
• It’s reprogramming yourself to think like God thinks.
• Why is this important?

Amos 3:3 (KJV)
3 Can two walk together, except they be agreed?

• In order to walk closely to God, you have to think like He does.
• Because those points where you defer from God is where you cease to enjoy a close fellowship.
• You must agree with God.
• He is always right.
• This process of learning to think like He thinks is a daily and a life long enterprise.
• The idea of renewal should be familiar to people of planet earth. Why?
• Consider the fact your body undergoes a renewal process daily.
• Even though the cells of the physical body renew, yet it’s all in a downward spiral.
• The outward man perishes.

2 Corinthians 4:16 (KJV)
16 For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.

• So, the physical body undergoes renewal.
• But, man is more than body.
• Man is three parts.
• What about the spirit part of your being?
• Your spirit man is also renewed daily.
• It’s renewed because of the life of God within.
• That life in the Bible is called ‘zoe’.
• Zoe is Greek for life.
• It is eternal life.
• It’s the life Jesus came to bring us.

John 10:10 (KJV)
10 The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

• This is the life which came into your spirit the day you said yes to Jesus.
• The Father has this life and so does the Son.

John 5:26 (KJV)
26 For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself;

• And now, you have this same life.
• This life renews your heart.
• So, both body and spirit have a renewal cycle.
• This only leaves one more part of man, the soul.
• Mind renewal, Holy Spirit style, is new and improved thinking.
• It is God thinking.
• It comes from the Word.
• It comes by meditating the truth of God’s Word.

Colossians 3:10 (KJV)
10 And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:

• Your mind is renewed by the knowledge of God’s Word.
• When the Holy Spirit illuminates a verse of scripture to your heart, such light brings transformational change.

Renewing the Mind in the Old Testament

Psalm 23:1–3 (KJV)
1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. 2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters. 3 He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

• The Lord performs the role of Shepherd in your life.
• That role includes supplying your needs.
• That role includes bringing you into good places in life.
• That role includes leading you by His Spirit and bringing you into places where peace reigns.
• But, it also includes restoring the soul.
• Restoring the soul, that the psalmist speaks of and renewing the mind that Paul refers to, are the same concept.
• Man was created in the image of God.
• In the beginning the only input man had for his mind was God’s input, God’s thinking.
• The only thoughts Adam had were God’s thoughts until the day he entertained a different thought from a different source.
• You know how that turned out.
• Satan, through the fall, introduced a new way of thinking for man.
• It was a carnal way, a selfish way, a me first way, a what can I get out of it for me way.
• God’s thoughts are completely opposite.
• God is a giver.
• Instead of what can I get, a renewed mind thinks what can I give?
• How can I be a blessing?
• What can I do to help people?
• Walking in love is renewed thinking and restored living.
• It will help bring you into the fulness of your potential in Christ.

Isaiah 55:8-9 (KJV)

8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, Neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. 9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are my ways higher than your ways, And my thoughts than your thoughts.

• The dilemma of Isaiah 55 is plain to see.
• God’s Mount Everest size knowledge versus our mustard seed understanding of all which pertains to life.
• How can man aspire to walk with a God who so totally up there and so completely out of our class mentally?
• Man knowing God’s ways on his own is like Steven Hawkin discussing theoretical physics with a one-year-old.
• It’s a hopeless affair.
• But, it’s never God’s style to leave His creation hopeless or helpless.
• God’s solution?
• Unveil His ways and His thoughts little by little in various ‘encounters’ with man and have those engagements recorded in a book.
• Then, send an all-wise and all-knowing teacher, named the Holy Spirit, who already knows the mind of God to unveil those recorded thoughts to man.
• God had a book written so you can know His thoughts and so you can discern His ways.
• How does mind renewal take place?

How Mind Renewal Takes Place

• The renewing of the mind does not take place in the mind alone.
• It is not a mental exercise.
• If it was mental, than those with college degrees should have more of God than those who don’t.
• Seminarians have spent years cramming Bible facts into their head.
• And some of them have no more clue about the things of God than an unbeliever.
• You shouldn’t educate your head at the expense of your heart.
• This is what happens with a lot of self-help stuff you see today.
• It fills the brain with facts.
• God’s Word is more than fact; it’s truth.
• There is no delivering power in facts.
• Jesus didn’t say, You will know the facts, and the facts will set you free.
• He said, “You will know the truth and that will produce freedom in your life.”
• Truth is the facts of God’s Word which have been illuminated by the Spirit to your heart.
• It’s a fact of God’s Word that healing has been provided for you.
• The Bible clearly lays this out.
• But it won’t work for you until that fact becomes real to you in your heart.
• The only way it becomes real is for the Spirit of God to illuminate that fact in your heart.
• Even spiritual facts are only brain filler if your spirit is not engaged.
• So, your spirit is involved in the process of mind renewal.

[Tweet “God’s Word is more than fact; it’s truth. There is no delivering power in facts.”]

Illumination, Revelation and Mind Renewal

• Light is important to the ecosystems of planet earth.
• Plants develop with light, with illumination.
• People are the same.
• They also need light to develop.

Psalm 119:130 (KJV)
130 The entrance of thy words giveth light; It giveth understanding unto the simple.

• You need the light of God’s Word, or revelation, in order to develop in God.
• Revelation is available for you.
• Paul prayed about revelation for the Ephesian church.

Ephesians 1:17 (KJV)
17 That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him:

• Paul is addressing the Father in the Name of the Living Word so the Ephesian church might know the written Word Jesus.
• Why does the Word of God have to be revealed anyway?
• What is revelation all about?
• Why can’t we just read the Bible and then just go with we understood through our reading?
• Revelation is a big Bible word.
• Again, in order to see, perceive and understand, you need illumination. You need light.

2 Timothy 3:16 (KJV)
16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:

• Scripture is God ideas wrapped up in human words.
• That’s what the Word of God is. The wisdom of God injected into the human vehicle of words.
• Because the Word is divine, you need divine input in order to understand it.
• This is God’s Word right? God inspired it. So, if you want to know what a certain portion of scripture means, why not get that info from the one who originally inspired it?
• ‘Inspiration’ means ‘God-breathed, God injected or God infused.’

2 Peter 1:21 (AV)
21 For the prophecy came not in old-time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

• The Bible was received by inspiration of God.
• Holy men spoke and what they spoke was recorded under the influence and direction of God.
• That’s what the Bible is, a collection of God-breathed information.
• So, what is revelation then?
• Revelation is the reverse process of inspiration.
• Inspiration is putting the divine into a human vehicle.
• We know that vehicle is words.
• Revelation is the process of extracting the divine from that same human vehicle.
• It’s kind of like a juicer. A juicer extracts the juice from the fruit or the vegetable.
• Revelation implies by its very definition, to uncover, which means seeing something that is already there.
• Here’s another way of saying this whole thing.
• Inspiration is how WE, as a human race, received the Word at the hands of 40 different authors.
• Revelation is you how you individually get the Word into your life when the light comes.
• It all comes from meditating on the Word.
• It comes from setting your heart on things above.
• Mind renewal is not just information imparted to your head.
• The renewing of the mind is a spiritual activity born in the Spirit of a man and energized by the revelation ability of the Holy Ghost.
• When an individual feeds into his spirit the uncompromising Word of God, then depends upon the Holy Spirit to unveil it then and only then can the mind be renewed.
• When the Word becomes real to you, your mind is renewed at the same instant.
• When the Word is revealed in your spirit, you automatically think differently.

Call to Action:

What is your plan? How will you respond to the call for mind renewal? If you haven’t yet, will you make the dedication to feed on God’s Word? Will you begin to allow the Holy Spirit to help you transform your thinking?

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References:

Related posts:

Why Renewing the Mind is Important for Soul Development [Encore Podcast]