You Can Change Your Mind

In Ephesians 4:23 it says, “Let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes.” (NLT)

Lasting change requires new thinking. The battle for change is won or lost in our minds! Ephesians 4:23 says, “Let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes” (NLT). Spiritual renewal takes place in our thoughts and attitudes—or, in other words, in our mind.

Here’s how it works: Feelings aren’t feelings in themselves. They are a response to a thought. It’s what you and I think that determines the way we feel. And what we feel determines the way we act.

So, If we want to stop self-defeating behavior by changing the way we act, then we first must change the way we feel. But we can’t just change your feelings and tell ourselves, “I’m just not going to feel that way anymore.” That doesn’t work. The only way we can change a feeling is indirectly—by going to the root of it, which is a thought.

In other words, we can change the way we act by changing the way we feel. And we can change the way we feel by changing the way we think.

There’s a biblical word for this process: repentance. The word “repentance” comes from a Greek word, metanoia. Meta means “to change,” and noia means “mind.” Repentance simply means you change your mind. That’s all there is to it!

We tell God that we want to go a different direction, and ask him to help us choose to think about right and good things. If we change the way we think, it will change the way we feel, and the way we feel will change the way we act. It’s a reversal of our mindset—a mental U-turn.

The Bible reminds us in Philippians 2:5, “Think the same way that Christ Jesus thought” (CEV).

What we think is a choice. And choosing is the beginning of changing. When we put on the mind of Christ and begin to think about the things he loves, then we will start to see our defects in a very different light.

So today, I ask God to help me see him, others, and myself the way he does. When I do, I will start to see the changes he wants to make in my life.

Ephesians 4:23-23 says, “throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes.”

Our old way of life before we believed in Christ is completely in the past. We should put it behind us like old clothes to be thrown away. When we decide to accept Christ's gift of salvation, it is both a once-for-all-time decision as well as a daily conscious commitment. We are not to be driven by desire and impulse. We must put on a new nature, head in the new direction, and have the new way of thinking that the Holy Spirit gives.