Are You Ready to Make the Grand Choice?

12 Oct Are You Ready to Make the Grand Choice?

Blog Series:

Renew Your Mind ~ Transform Your Life

We have covered a lot of information in this extended blog series over the last nearly ten months! Now what? Now that we know that the brain can change, and the brain does change, always in the direction of

• what is put into it
• what it believes
• what it dwells on,

now what?

Knowing this, we can either float like a cork down the stream of life:

1. learning whatever “chance” puts into our brain (including all the misinformation of Satan that is embedded in the world-culture)
2. believing whatever we are told (including all the deceit that Satan has embedded in the world-culture)
3. thinking about whatever pleases or consumes us (including the self-destructive things Satan has embedded in the world-culture)

Or, on the flipside, we have a Grand Choice we can make!

We can swim like a salmon up the stream of life,

1. learning what Scripture and reason reveal to be true (counter to the misinformation of Satan that is embedded in the world-culture)
2. believing what Scripture and reason reveal to be true (counter to all the deceit that Satan has embedded in the world-culture)
3. thinking about what Scripture and reason reveal to be true (counter to the self-destructive things Satan has embedded in the world-culture)

This Grand Choice creates an unparalleled opportunity for Christians.

We can cooperate with how God created us, joining Him in a plan for us to become all that He desires of us, and to achieve our God-given potential in life.

The choice and the opportunity are ours.

If we choose the opportunity, what is the bottom line of what we need to know and understand about the brain, to make the most of it?

Here is a 12 Point Summary of the Principles of Mental Renewal we’ve been looking at in these posts on the brain.

1. The brain is a marvelous mental machine. There are over 100,000 miles of electrical wiring (neurons, dendrites, synapses) in the brain. Each time we think a thought, it takes a specific path in that wiring, and if we think a thought 1,000 times, it takes the same pathway each time, deepening that pathway, making it easier to think that thought the next time, and strengthening the memory.
2. There is a difference between the brain and the mind. The brain is physical. The mind is spiritual. When the body dies, the brain dies. The intellect that goes to heaven is the mind. When we get to heaven, look around and say, “Is this great, or what?!?” it is the mind speaking. Not the brain. The brain is dead.
3. The brain can change and the brain does change. And it always changes in the direction of what is put into the brain, what the brain believes, and what the brain dwells on. This ability to change is called “neuroplasticity.” We can build new neural pathways that carry memories and information, we can build greater storage capacity (memory), we can connect dots more effectively (insight), we can become smarter, wiser, mentally stronger. But while we can change our brain in good ways, our brain can also change in bad ways if we are passive or careless about how we use our brain.
4. Our beliefs control everything about us. We get our earliest beliefs the same way we get the measles – by being around others who have them. This includes family, education and culture (electronic media, friends, etc.). Therefore, we can end up believing things that we hear first, or hear most often, rather than things that are actually true. As a result, we often end up with beliefs which, upon further reflection, we might have chosen to avoid. When we wake up to that fact, we must become ruthless in our pursuit of truth, prepared to embrace new truth, and be quick to kick out what is not true.
5. We always do what we believe will make us happiest. A driving motivation of humans is to be happy. This, in itself, is not wrong. God created us with a deep longing to be happy, but has created us so that He alone can fulfill that longing. When we believe that, we will turn to God as the central source of hope, and pursue Him with our whole being.
6. Our subconscious brain is where most of the mental activity and power are. The subconscious is a million times more powerful than the conscious. It processes information faster than the conscious, it never forgets, and it is the actual location of our true attitudes, values and beliefs.
7. Sometimes our conscious beliefs and our subconscious beliefs conflict. For example, Philippians 4:19 says, “My God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” In our conscious brain, Christians would usually say that that is true. But when we are faced with a serious financial crisis, we usually respond with great anxiety. Why? Because in our subconscious, we are not sure it’s true. Therefore, one of the great challenges is to bring our conscious and subconscious into harmony. That is when our true spiritual health and power are realized.
8. Mental renewal is the “do-or-die” issue for Christians today. Because of the power of culture in distorting our true subconscious beliefs, and because we often try to live the Christian life with those distorted beliefs, we often struggle to escape the riptide of modern culture, and we live a weak, conflicted Christian life. Committing to mental renewal is the only way to overcome that. Romans 12:2 tells us that we can be living demonstrations of the fact that God’s will is good and acceptable and perfect, but only if we are transformed. And we will only be transformed as our mind is renewed.
9. The brain requires repetition to fully change. Repetition builds neural paths in our brain along which thoughts travel. Because of how the brain is constructed and functions, with axons, dendrites and synapses, the more we repeat something, the deeper the path is and the stronger the memory is. Repetition also drives information into the subconscious, where the brain begins to start believing it, changing our fundamental attitudes, values and beliefs.
10. The brain requires focused attention to fully change. Focused attention of the brain by Bible study, self-reflection, memorization and prayer, leads to impressive improvement in brain function, such as memory, insight, and greater emotional health. Focused attention also increases the effectiveness of activity in the subconscious, further integrating our conscious and subconscious beliefs, bringing about greater spiritual health and power.
11. The brain requires strategic feeding of the mind to fully change. Strategic feeding of the mind simply means reading, learning, studying, and experiencing things that put into the mind helpful truth that leads a believer into a deeper knowledge of, and experience with God, the Bible and His truth. This further feeds the subconscious and spiritual integration.
12. We feed our subconscious and then our subconscious feeds us. As truth sinks into our subconscious through repetition, focused attention and strategic feeding of the mind, it lodges there as controlling beliefs and begins to alter our basic attitudes, values and behavior.  When that happens, it accelerates spiritual growth. We start perceiving truth more completely, it creates new insights, revises estimates of importance, sees relative significance, connects dots, and makes us more aware, insightful, smarter. Finally, the subconscious bubbles that mental gold back up to the conscious where we can intentionally act on it, further multiplying its power.

Conclusion

This tight condensation of many thousands of words of elaboration in the previous blog posts in this series on the brain is designed to help us consolidate our understanding of mental renewal, see the big picture more completely, more fully embrace it, and more willingly make the Grand Choice to employ it.

I am working on an online membership site called The Change Zone, which will provide information, strategies, and resources to help motivated Christians renew their minds and transform their lives. If you’re looking for help implementing the principles we’ve been talking about in this blog series, and if  you’ve not yet done so, I encourage you to sign up for The Change Zone mailing list to get updates on the progress of the site development and to learn when it will be open for membership.

Until that site is available, I encourage you to be aware of things you might do that apply these principles we’ve been looking at. Remember last week’s blog post that identified 7 ways that neuroscience can guide your daily walk with God. Use those principles to enhance things that you may already be doing, so that you can discover your own ways to strengthen your walk with God.

If you’ve not yet laid a strategic, basic foundation of Bible knowledge on which to build, check out my 4-course video & workbook resource The Brave new Discipleship System, that is on a special sale right now.

Make the Grand Choice to renew your mind and transform your life!

In case you’re new here

This blog post is part of a series titled “Renew Your Mind, Transform Your Life”, introduced on January 5, 2021. As the series continues, each succeeding post will be added to and available in the blog archives at www.maxanders.com.

If you know anyone who you think might enjoy joining us in this study, please forward this blog to them and encourage them to go to my web site (www.maxanders.com) and sign up for the free video, “Master the Bible So Well That the Bible Masters You”, available there on the home page. This will put them on my regular mailing list and they’ll receive my weekly blogs on this subject.

In addition, I am creating a new online membership site, The Change Zone, that will provide information, strategies and resources to help motivated Christians renew their mind and transform their lives. If you would like to learn more about this and get updates to know when The Change Zone will be available, click here.

I look forward to going through this life-changing journey with you.

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