How Do I Put It All Together?

19 Oct How Do I Put It All Together?

Blog Series:

Renew Your Mind ~ Transform Your Life

Last week we looked at a 12 Point Summary of the Principles of Mental Renewal. This week, I want to put everything together on a practical level so that it will be easier to create a personal plan for mental renewal.

I’ll review past material and then provide a personal example from my own life of how I used the mental renewal change process to transform my behavior in the area of anger. My hope is that, in seeing the process in action in someone else’s life, you can see how you too can create your own plan of action in your “Grand Choice Opportunity.” If you have not read all the articles in this series on mental renewal, I encourage you to do so to make the most of this blog post.

What we believe controls everything about us.

Though we typically don’t realize it, our beliefs control everything about us. If there is something that needs changing in our behavior, it is because there is something that needs changing in what we believe.

The book entitled Up to No Good: The Rascally Things Boys Do (As told by perfectly decent grown men), is a compilation of stories recalling childhood years. I have referred to a particular story from that book a number of times in this series, but it provides a powerful lesson that fits this subject:

“Lou was playing with some friends and decided to try flying. So they climbed up onto the roof of the barn, and Lou strapped some heavy wooden boards onto his brother’s arms. Then they counted down, and he jumped. He was lying on the ground, groaning in pain with several broken bones, and Lou yelled, “Hey Shorty! You forgot to flap your wings!”

You see, Lou’s brother, Shorty, – momentarily persuaded by Lou – believed he could fly! Based on that belief, he jumped off the roof of the barn. But what he believed was wrong, and Shorty paid the price.

That’s the power of beliefs. They control everything about us. They control our attitudes, values and behavior. The problem is, as Shorty found out, our beliefs don’t always match reality. And when they don’t, we can pay an awful price. That is why it is so important for us to be sure that what we believe is true.

We don’t necessarily believe what is true.

Psychologists have identified many biases that affect what we believe.

• We tend to believe what we hear first.
• We tend to believe what we hear most often.
• We tend to believe what we want to be true.

It has been said that we get our beliefs the same way we get the measles; by being around others who have them (starting with parents, then education, then culture). Because we live in a world highly influenced by Satan, the Great Liar (John 8:44), Christians inevitably end up believing all kinds of things that are not true, radically impairing our readiness to live by faith in God’s truth.

So, one of the great challenges for Christians is to reject the lies of the world and embrace the truth of God.

We always do what we believe will make us happy.

It is as Blaise Pascal once wrote:

“All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attending with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.”

We always do what we believe will make us happiest (even if that means hanging ourselves).

Another great challenge, then, is to change our beliefs about what actually will make us happy. We must learn what the Bible says, and we have to choose to believe what the Bible says is true.

Mental renewal is the key to life transformation.

Romans 12:2 says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of you mind that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”

This passage 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.

Repetition is the key to mental renewal.

If something is important, we must repeat it until it changes us! 

If we repeat truth often enough, it feeds our subconscious and then our subconscious feeds us.

1. Truth sinks into the subconscious, where our true attitudes, values and beliefs reside, and begins to change them.
2. The subconscious begins to send those changed attitudes, values and beliefs back to our conscious, where we begin to think and act on them.

The Mental Renewal Process looks like this, using anger as an example:

We learn from Scripture passages that selfish anger is wrong: “The anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God” (James 1:20). This is likely in conflict with what we actually believe in our subconscious, namely that our anger is somehow justified. So, we repeat this passage on anger several times a day for at least thirty days (it takes approximately 30 days for the brain to rewire itself into accepting the new truth). We do this so that our subconscious is changed to align with the truth of Scripture.

The truths we repeat don’t have to be limited to Scripture. For example, in Psalm 119, we see David meditating on God’s Word, work, precepts, statutes, ways and wonders. In my repetitions of truths to change my subconscious beliefs about anger, I also included a quote by Benjamin Franklin who admonished us not to get angry at things “common or unavoidable.”

We can also remind ourselves of truths we’ve learned from experience. As a student, I became foolishly furious at something and threw an empty coffee cup against the painted cement block wall of my dormitory room, smashing it into a million pieces. Afterward, the thing that made me so angry was unchanged – and I had to clean up the broken glass. I found isolated shards for weeks after my angry outburst. It has been a powerful parable to me ever since.

So, I use Scriptures, quotes, and stories and repeat them until they change me. The stories can be yours, others’, from Scripture, from history, or fictitious – parables, lessons from literature, etc. The key is to remind yourself repeatedly of the truth.

In my mental renewal process dealing with anger, I would daily repeat the verse in James, repeat the Benjamin Franklin quote, and repeat the phrase “Remember the coffee cup”, which reminded me of the story of my own experience that “my anger does not achieve the righteousness of God.”

After about 30 days of repetition, the truth begins to come to the surface of our conscious thoughts, affecting our decisions and emotions. It enables us, when we get angry for example, to recall verses and truth about anger, and begin to use that information to help us keep from acting in anger.

We continue to repeat (I have repeated many passages nearly once a day, for over ten years) until we reach the next level of spiritual growth. The truth begins to sink deeply into the subconscious where it lodges as controlling beliefs, and begins to transform our fundamental 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 to not act on anger, it now changes us so that we don’t get angry in the first place.

Repetition also triggers the Reticular Activating System, that part of our brain that chooses what to let into the brain and what to keep out. As a result, we start perceiving additional truth that escaped us before. It creates new insights, revises assessments of importance, sees greater significance, connects dots, making us more aware, insightful, smarter.

Finally, the subconscious bubbles that mental gold back up to the conscious where it can begin intentionally acting on it, multiplying its power.

Conclusion

So, spiritual transformation comes through mental renewal, and (as we’ve seen from the Scriptures and explained from neuroscience) mental renewal comes through repetition and meditation on truth. And the repetition of those truths must be consistent and of sufficient duration to change us.

I try to review my truths (Scriptures & affirmations) on Mondays through Fridays until they change me. Some days get away from me, but I never go very long without reviewing them.

I hope this example of the mental renewal process will enable you to put into practice, on a daily basis, your own personal plan for mental renewal and spiritual transformation.

And, as I mentioned last week, 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 the blog post two weeks ago 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.

And, 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, which is on a “re-branding” sale at nearly 61% off right now.

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.

Help spread the message, “Like” my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/maxanders.author and invite your friends to do the same. If you know someone you think may find this blog valuable, please forward it to them. I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at max@maxanders.com. I try to answer all emails, but, if not, I may address in future blogs the questions/issues you raise.

Share this Blog