The Remarkable Power of the Brain to Transform Your Life

04 Dec The Remarkable Power of the Brain to Transform Your Life

Years ago, the United Negro College Fund had a well-known advertising slogan:  “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

I always thought that was a powerful and compelling slogan.  And while it is true for college students, it is true for anyone and everyone.  A mind is, indeed, a terrible thing to waste.

It applies directly to Christians striving to live an authentic Christian life.  The battle of life for Christians takes place in the mind. Romans 12:2 says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…”

The way a Christian’s life is transformed is by the renewing of his mind.

Yet the world is a more dangerous place for the mind than, perhaps, at any other time in history. The constant bombardment of the mind with secular values through media and education is so formidable that many Christians are loosing the battle, often without even realizing they are losing it.

The Power of Your Thought Life

Dr. Caroline Leaf, a Christian neuroscientist, uses her education and training to help Christians understand how they can begin to win that battle.

The brain always changes in the direction of what is put into it.  Therefore, what we allow into our brain shapes the very course of our lives. Dr. Leaf writes in her very helpful book, Switch on Your Brain:

When you understand the power of your thought life, you truly begin to get a glimpse of how important it is to take responsibility for what you are thinking. God was so serious about us capturing our thoughts and renewing our minds that he gave us science as an encouragement.

Whatever you think about the most will grow, so the more you think a particular thought, the stronger it grows. You can’t just apply a thought once and think change has happened.

 After a period of repeated thinking about a choice over and over, the new thought moves into the subconscious level, where it becomes part of our internal perception. It is at this level that we are deeply changed. (Switch On Your Brain, p. 123-124)

So, repetition drives truth deeply into our subconscious where it changes our fundamental attitudes, values and behavior, and as Dr. Leaf says, it is at this level that we are deeply changed.

3 Steps to a More Powerful Brain

In her book, Dr. Leaf also teaches that

1. Structured repetition of helpful information
2. Guided and focused attention
3. Strategic feeding of our minds…

…will foster

1. Improved cognitive functioning
2. Emotional health
3. Mental and spiritual perception.

Think of that! Would you like to have improved cognitive functioning, emotional health, and spiritual perception? Well, you can!

• Structured repetition includes memorizing Scripture and other important information/truth.
• Guided and focused attention includes meditation (not emptying the mind, but filling the mind with truth).
• Strategic feeding of our mind includes a game plan for maximum cognitive benefit (read good books, watch good movies, spend time with good friends, take courses that feed you, spend time alone in nature, spend time teaching/mentoring/or simply helping others, engage in hobbies or activities that feed you).

When we do those things, it improves:

• Cognitive functioning (you get smarter and have a better memory)
• Emotional health (you get more mature)
• Spiritual perception (you get spiritually stronger)

Four Remarkable Results

When we engage in structured repetition, guided and focused attention, and the strategic feeding of our minds, it does four things:

•  The truth comes to the surface of our conscious thought, affecting our decisions and emotions.  It enables us, for example, when we get angry, to recall verses and truth about anger, and to use that information to help us keep from acting in anger.
• The truth sinks deeply into our subconscious where it lodges as controlling beliefs, and begins to alter our basic attitudes, values and behavior. When that happens, it takes spiritual growth to a whole new level… and instead of enabling us on a conscious level not to act on anger… it now, on a subconscious level, changes us so that we don’t get angry in the first place.
• It triggers our Reticular Activating System, the part of our brain that chooses what to let into the brain and what to keep out. As a result, we start perceiving truth that escaped us before. It helps feed new insights, revises estimates of importance, sees relative significance, connects dots… making us more aware, more insightful, more in command of our lives.
• Finally, the subconscious bubbles that mental gold back up to the conscious where we can also intentionally act on it, multiplying its power.

Conclusion

Matthew 22:37 says, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment.”

We can love the Lord with our mind by taking the three steps to a more powerful brain, releasing the remarkable power of the brain to transform our lives.

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