The Importance of Renewing the Mind Daily

A war is raging all around you, yet amazingly you may not even be aware of it.  The battle is not for a piece of land or for natural resources such as gas, oil, gold or water.  The prize in this war is much more valuable.  The battle is for your mind.

Our mind is the greatest creation on earth, and it can generate the most magnificent happiness for its owner, or it can destroy him.  Yet, although we have been given the secret of how to control it, for our happiness and benefit, we still function completely ignorant of its potential, like the most stupid of animals.

What is the secret of how to control our mind for our benefit?  Simon pointed toward the book stacks.  “It’s all there.  One has only to study the treasures that lay, exposed, all around us.  For countless centuries man compared his mind to a garden.  Seneca said that soil, no matter how rich, could not be productive without cultivation and neither could our minds. 

Sir Joshua Reynolds wrote that our mind was only barren soil, soon exhausted and unproductive unless it was continually fertilized with new ideas.  And James Allen, in his monumental classic, As a Man Thinketh, wrote that a man’s mind was like a garden which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild, but whether cultivated or neglected, it would produce.  If no useful seeds were planted, then an abundance of useless weed-seeds would fall into the land, and the results would be wrong, useless, harmful, and impure plants.  In other words, whatever we allow to enter our minds will always bear fruit. 

Now, man is comparing his mind to a computer, but his conclusions are the same as Seneca’s and the others.  The computer people have a phrase, actually an acronym, “GIGO…garbage in, garbage out.”  If one puts faulty information into a computer, out will come faulty answers.  So it is with our minds, whether one is thinking in terms of a garden or an IBM computer.  Put negative material in, and that’s what you’ll reap. 

On the other hand, if you program in, or plant, beautiful, positive, correct thoughts and ideas, that’s what you’ll harvest.  So it’s simple, you see.  You can actually become whatever you are thinking.  As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.  Allen wrote, “Man is made or unmade by himself, in the armory of thought he forges the weapons by which he destroys himself.  He also fashions the tools with which he builds for himself heavenly mansions of joy and strength and peace.  By the right choice and true application of thought man ascends to the divine perfection.  Note those words, “by the right choice.”  They are the cornerstone of a happy life.  Perhaps, at some other time, you will let me elaborate. 

In other words, Simon, you’re saying that we can program our mind.  But how?

Very simple.  We can do it for ourselves or others will do it for us.  Merely by hearing or reading a thought or an affirmation, whether it be truthful or the vilest of lies, over and over, our mind will eventually imprint that thought and it will become a permanent part of our personality, so strong that we will even act on it without consideration or reflection in the future.  Hitler, you may recall, did this to an entire country, and “brainwashing” is a phrase with which we are all too familiar after many sad experiences by our captured troops in the orient.”

We always become what we think.  Always!!

A war is raging all around you, yet amazingly you may not even be aware of it.  The battle is not for a piece of land or for natural resources such as gas, oil, gold or water.  The prize in this war is much more valuable.  The battle is for your mind.

Your enemy’s number one target is in the arena of your thoughts.  He knows that if he can control and manipulate how you think, he’ll be able to control and manipulate your entire life.  Indeed, thoughts determine actions, attitude, and self-image.  Really, thoughts determine destiny.  That’s why the Bible warns us to guard our minds. 

We must be extremely careful not only about what we ingest through our eyes and ears, but what we think about. 

If you dwell on depressing thoughts, you will live a depressing life.  If you continually gravitate toward negative thoughts, you will gravitate toward negative people, activities, philosophies, and lifestyles.  Your life will always follow your thoughts.  Almost like a magnet, we draw in what we constantly think about.  If you’re always thinking positive, happy, joyful thoughts, you’re going to be a positive, happy, joyful person, and you will attract other happy, upbeat, positive people. 

We can choose our thoughts.  Nobody can make us think about something.  God won’t do it and the enemy can’t do it.  You decide what you will entertain in your mind.  Simply because the enemy plants a negative, discouraging thought in your brain doesn’t mean you have to water it, nurture it, coddle it, and help it to grow.  You can choose to cast it down and dismiss it from your mind.

Your mind is similar to a giant computer in that your brain stores every thought that you’ve ever had.  This is not good news when you consider the amount of smut, foul language, ungodly concepts, and other negative input with which we are inundated every day of our lives.  Nevertheless, simply because a destructive thought is stored in your mental computer does not mean you have to pull it up and run it on the main screen of your mind.

Your circumstances don’t have you down.  Your thoughts about your circumstances have you down.  On the other hand, you can be in one of the biggest battles of your life and still be filled with joy and peace and victory – if you simply learn how to choose the right thoughts. 

As you dwell on the promises of God’s Word, you will be filled with hope.  You will develop a positive attitude of faith, and you will draw in the victory.  Like metal filings being pulled across a desk by a magnet, you will draw in the good things of God.

The Bible says, “Don’t get weary and faint in your mind.”  Remember, you must first win the battle in your mind.  Stand strong.  When negative thoughts come, reject them and replace them with God’s thoughts. 

But when you align your thoughts with God’s thoughts and you start dwelling on the promises of His Word, when you renew your mind with thoughts of His victory, favor, faith, power and strength, nothing can hold you back.  When you think positive, excellent thoughts, you will be propelled towards greatness, inevitably bound for increase, promotion and God’s supernatural blessings. 

We have to conceive it on the inside before we’re ever going to receive it on the outside.  If you don’t think you can have something good, then you never will.  The barrier is in your mind.  It is not God’s lack of resources or your lack of talent that keeps you from prospering.  Your own wrong thinking can keep you from God’s best.

Get rid of that small minded thinking and start thinking as God thinks.  Think big.  Think increase.  Think abundance.  Think more than enough.

Kings think differently and we serve the King of kings! We serve the Most High God, and His dream for your life is so much bigger and better than you can even imagine.  It’s time to enlarge your vision. 

To conceive it, you must have an image on the inside of the life you want to live on the outside.  This image has to become a part of you, in your thoughts, your conversation, deep down in your subconscious mind, in your actions, in every part of your being.

Psychologists are convinced that our lives move in the direction of our most dominant thoughts.  If thoughts of joy, peace, victory, abundance and blessings dominate your thoughts throughout the day, you will move toward those things, drawing them to yourself (law of attraction) at the same time.  Your life will follow your thoughts.

Your life will follow your expectations.  What you expect is what you will get.  If you dwell on positive thoughts, your life will move in that direction; if you continually think negative thoughts, you will live a negative life.  If you expect defeat, failure, or mediocrity, your subconscious mind will make sure that you lose, fail, or sabotage every attempt to push above average.  You have to change your thinking before you can ever change your living. 

Watch for those good things to come to fruition in your life.  You must make a conscious decision, an act of your will, to maintain an attitude of expectancy and keep your mind filled with thoughts of hope.

Here’s the key point: You will never go beyond the barriers in your own mind.  If you think you can’t do something, then you never will.  The battle is in your mind.  If you’re defeated in your mind, then you’ve already lost the battle.  If you don’t think your dreams will ever come to pass, they never will.  If you don’t think you have what it takes to rise up and set the new standard, it’s not going to happen.  The barrier is in your mind.  That’s what the scripture calls a “stronghold.”  It’s a wrong thinking pattern that keeps us imprisoned in defeat.  And that’s why it’s so important that we think positive thoughts of hope, faith and victory. 

It’s important that you program your mind for success.  That won’t happen automatically.  Each day, you must choose to live with an attitude that expects good things to happen to you.  The Bible says, “Set your mind and keep it set on the higher things.”  When you get up in the morning, the first thing you should do is set your mind in the right direction.

We must reprogram ourselves with God’s Word; change that negative, defeated self-image, and start seeing yourself as winning, coming out on top.  See your marriage or business as flourishing.  You must see it through your eyes of faith, and then it will begin to happen. 

Many people let doubts take a stronghold in their minds.  We need to reprogram our thinking.  Break free from the strongholds of doubt.  God would not have planted your dreams in your heart if He had not already given you the talent, the creativity, and the determination to see them come to pass. 

God is saying you’ve dwelt long enough on that mountain.  It’s time to go to a new level.  It’s time to get a fresh vision.  Go beyond the barriers of the past.  Tear down those strongholds in your mind.  Remember, you’ve got to change your thinking.  

Your mind is similar to a computer.  What you program into it dictates how it will function.  How foolish it would be to complain, “I hate this computer!  It never gives me the right answer, it never does what I want it to do.”  Think about it. You can have the most powerful computer in the world, but if you program it with the wrong software or with misinformation, it will never function as the manufacturer intended.

Before we were ever formed, God programmed us to live abundant lives, to be happy, healthy and whole.  But when our thinking becomes contaminated, it is no longer in line with God’s Word.  We make serious mistakes and wrong choices.  We go through life with low self-esteem, worries, fears, feelings of inadequacy and insecurity.  Making matters worse, we pass on our negative attitudes to others. 

When you recognize these things happening, you must reprogram your computer.  You must change your thinking.  Understand, you are not defective.  God made you, and He has programmed you for victory.  But until you get your thinking in line with your owner’s manual, God’s Word, you will never operate to your full potential. 

Example of Miss America who rented hundreds of videos of various pageants and watched them over and over again.  A reporter asked if she was nervous walking down the runway in front of millions of people, “no, I wasn’t nervous at all, you see, I had walked down that runway thousands of times before.”  She reprogrammed her mind.  What you keep before your eyes will affect you.  You will produce what you are continually seeing in your mind.

Og Mandino