Renewing Your Mind

By: Sarah Martin

What if I told you that renewing your mind is a complete game changer in your walk with God. We are instructed to renew our minds (as stated in Romans 12:2), but do we really know the importance of doing so? To be completely honest, I didn’t really understand or know the importance of renewing my mind and how it affects everything else in my life until the Holy Spirit revealed it to me recently.

In Romans 12:2, it says that you will “be transformed by the renewing of your mind”. It doesn’t say body, soul, or even heart and spirit, it specifically states “the renewing of your mind”. Now why is this? Perhaps there is a deeper reason behind it. We know that when we accept Jesus Christ into our lives we are spiritually born again, transformed and renewed, where our sins have been washed away. But what about the mind? When you dedicate your life to Christ, you are acknowledging that He is your Lord and Savior; you are looking towards Him and setting the focus of your life upon Him. With this decision, you also must change your mindset from the mind of the sinful nature to a Christ-like mind.

The big question is why must we continually renew our minds to be like Christ’s? One, in order to truly fulfill the will of the Father, we must have a Christ-like mindset. Secondly, our minds are the main battlefield in life and it’s where the enemy hits us the most. Ultimately, our thoughts can determine our mindset and where our focus is, resulting in the words we speak, our actions and even the motives and beliefs in our hearts. Let me illustrate with an example. When someone wants to get in shape, they must switch their focus in order to achieve that goal. Because their mind is set on this specific task or lifestyle, it alternates the rest of their life, habits and actions, but it all started with the thought process of getting in shape.

Now let’s take this example and put it into context with everyday battles of the mind. Just as it took one thought to get in shape, it also takes just one thought of negativity, doubt, worry and fear from the enemy to affect our beliefs, our motives, how we live our lives and even taking our focus off Christ, that is if we allow those thoughts to roam freely in our minds. It says in Romans 8:7, “The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so”. That is why it instructs in 2 Corinthians 10:5 to “…demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we TAKE CAPTIVE EVERY THOUGHT to make it obedient to Christ” (emphasis mine).

When we meditate on God’s word, it feeds our spirits and becomes planted in our hearts, the same principle applies for negative thoughts of doubt, fear, etc. When we give a foothold to the thoughts that the enemy plants within our minds and dwell upon them, they too can become planted within our hearts. Without even knowing it, we can end up centering our focus upon the bad and take it off Jesus. It says in 1 Peter 1:13, “Therefore, PREPARING YOUR MINDS for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (emphasis mine). We must learn to be the masters of our minds rather than it mastering us. If we are completely honest, renewing our minds daily can be quite challenging and a journey. The amazing thing is that once we have learned to renew our minds to be Kingdom-thinking, we can so freely walk in and fulfill the perfect will of the Father because we begin to walk more and more like Christ. We have to have a Christ-like mind in order to walk as He did.