It’s a beautiful thing to get up every morning excited about what the new day will bring. If you enjoy what you do for a living, it’s the icy on the cake. If you don’t enjoy what you do for a living, it can be a real downer on your day. I had a conversation with a friend of mine a short while ago, and he expressed his dissatisfaction because of this very thing. He doesn’t like his job or his boss. He can’t wait for his day to end so that he doesn’t have to be at his place of employment anymore. I can relate, having worked a few jobs that I didn’t enjoy, but when everything is said and done, there are two critical decisions to make in any situation like this. Either a person will change jobs, or they will change their mindset about the job they presently hold. The latter is a choice that can make a person’s entire life change for the better.
God tells us in Ephesians 4:23 to be renewed in the spirit of our minds. A renewed mind is a powerful thing. I’ve heard it said many times that we would be shocked if we understood how truly powerful God has made us. The mind is our command center, and through it God has given us the ability to change things in our lives. This is not new information. As a matter of fact, it is so widely known that people are very passé about it. One of the reasons that they take this attitude is that changing an entrenched mindset can be challenging at times.
We all derive a certain level of comfort from thinking the way we have always thought. For instance, it’s easier to think that my job is crappy, than to think that something in my own mindset is causing me to see the worse about the job. If the problem is me, and not others, this means I must do some self-examination and figure out how to turn myself around. A lot of folks either don’t want to do this work, or they’ve created such a barrier of lies that they’ve walled themselves off from the truth. Jesus Christ said in John 8:32 that the truth makes you free, it doesn’t keep you chained to misery.
We can’t live our lives successfully by blaming others for the conditions that we find ourselves in. Those who have developed a habit pattern of blame often won’t accept the truth that we live from the inside out, not the outside in. The world surrounding our lives is the one we’ve had a hand in constructing, and many don’t have the fortitude to digest that much truth. This doesn’t mean that every bad thing that happens to us is our fault. Neither does it mean that things will magically get better by thinking a few ‘feel good’ thoughts. It means that by beginning to think like Christ, we are actively walking in faith. We are reinforcing our belief in God’s Word, where He tells us that lining up our thoughts with the mind of Christ will transform us.
The love, guidance, and spiritual tools that God has given us to work with are beyond anything we can imagine. When we pray to Him and ask Him to bless us, we are incapable of imagining just how much more immensely God wants to bless us. The truth is that we limit God when our minds are not in harmony with what He wants to do. This is one of the reasons Jesus Christ tells us in Matthew 6:9-10(NLT), “9 Pray like this: Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. 10 May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” Through our prayers, we invite the Will of the Father to be done. This is one of our responsibilities as God’s children. Through us, God intervenes not just in our lives, but in the lives of others as well. It’s the prayers of the righteous that have great progress and success. So contrary to the thoughts of many, we are not weaklings, powerless to do anything to change our conditions. Through Jesus Christ, we are more than conquerors (Romans 8:37).
Having our minds and hearts in alignment with God’s Will and Word causes us to grow in our relationship with Him. It reinforces our faith and backs it in a powerful way. But we can’t forget what Jesus said in Luke 12:48(NLT), “when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required.” The blessings that we expect must be parallel to the level of accountability and responsibility we are willing to accept. We can’t expect faith to produce good results in a situation, when all we do is speak negativity. We must hold ourselves accountable to speak what God says, and not interject our own opinions into it. He told us in Philippians 4:8 (NLT), “Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.”
Jesus Christ said in John 10:10 that he came to make a more than abundant life available to us. Individuals that dedicate themselves to put on the mind of Christ will receive the benefits that go along with this extremely powerful, loving, and giving mindset. Does everyone you know live an abundant life? I will venture to say that the answer to this question is ‘no’. This is in large part due to the reality that everyone will not hold themselves accountable to putting on the mind of Christ.
Again, it can be challenging to change entrenched negative thought patterns, but God has commanded us to do it because this is the way we become more like our Big Brother, Jesus Christ. Nothing in our lives is supposed to have dominion over us, because through Christ, God has given us dominion over every influence and condition. We were created to reign in our lives, and to accomplish this, Heavenly Father has told us to renew our minds by tossing out those old negative thought patterns. Then, we are to introduce new thoughts that are in line with the mind of Christ. When we change our minds, and renew them to God’s Word, our conditions have no other choice but to follow our mind’s lead.
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
“First Change Your Mind, Your Condition Will Follow Take It by Faith”, written by JMack. 4theChristianMan.Com© 2018. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.