The following has been adapted from An Enemy Lies Within, a book we wrote to expose the carnal mind as the number one enemy of every Christian and to help them overcome its presence and deception. This renewal of the mind is available to all who will pursue God’s way for thinking.

God cares greatly about the way we think. He has made this obvious in two striking ways. The more obvious comes to us by way of the Great Commandment: “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength (Mark 12:30).”

If we are to love God with all of our thinking, then there must be a way for thinking that pleases God. Loving Him requires our searching it out.

Secondly, we know God cares about the way we think because our thinking is central to both Jesus’ first ministry declaration and Peter’s first sermon.

Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” Mark 1:14-15

Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Acts 2:38

“Repent”, from the Greek metanoeō literally means “to change one’s mind.” Not what you expected? Me either. The discovery was an epiphany. It validated the suspicions I had about my carnal mind and launched the writing of An Enemy Lies Within.

Read the above passages with this new understanding, and you will see what I mean. The difference is striking. Jesus and Peter (and John the Baptist in Mark 1:4) are saying, “Change your mind about the kingdom of God and how you enter into it!”

Change the way you think!

And while we are at it, we would be wise to embrace God’s way for thinking. To do so, we must first come to terms with – and reject – the way we have been taught by the world.

Why Should We Give Thinking a Second Thought?

There is a big difference between giving something a passing thought and thinking critically about a given subject or stimulus. Though we are born with certain innate abilities, the ways we receive, process, and respond to external stimuli are learned over time. Furthermore, the mind, along with its fleshly organ, the brain, is capable of functioning on its own, and will generally keep doing what it prefers if someone does not intervene.

At the impulse level, our brain regulates the amount of attention the rest of the body gives to external stimuli. Examples include our reaction to pain and our response to objects that enter our peripheral vision. In this regard, some people are more easily distracted, while others are highly focused (sometimes to a fault).

Our minds function autonomously at higher cognitive levels. There are the classic examples of the mother who notices her baby’s cry over all others and the couple who are oblivious to surrounding conversations in a crowded restaurant. These abilities seem to come “naturally.”

Our minds can also be “controlled” through training and discipline. Professional athletes excel by learning to block out pain. Some do so by focusing away from the pain, others by confronting it. One of my favorite professional cyclists simply told his pain to “shut up.” Personally, I have found prayer and singing praise songs (in my head) to be an effective pain management technique.

At the highest cognitive level, our minds are highly sophisticated at filtering out facts and feelings, often subconsciously. This is both good and bad. Take dangerous situations as an example. Avoiding danger is generally a good idea, unless you are a fireman, and someone is trapped inside a burning building. Generally speaking, pain should not be ignored. However, those who burned at the stake sang praises to God for being counted worthy to share in the sufferings of Christ. They glorified God in the process and won for themselves a crown of life (Revelation 2:10).

Our Responsibility to Think Rightly

Christians are responsible for what enters their minds and what remains there (Colossians 3:1-3). We are commanded to filter external and internal stimuli in a certain Christianly way, to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5). The world does not teach this. In fact, it teaches something quite the opposite, something at enmity with God. The world teaches us to think like it thinks (i.e., carnally); and it teaches us to trust, not question, our carnal minds.

Consider that for a moment. In our most formative years, carnal patterns of thinking were intentionally placed, nurtured, and developed IN OUR MINDS! It will take at least as much intentionality, and more than a few miracles, to undo the damage.

The individual Christian and the Christian church must take responsibility for the restoration of Christianly thinking and conversation. Who else is going to do it? We are, after all, responsible for our current condition. As much as we would like to blame Satan and the world, we are the ones who have allowed this to happen.

Thankfully, we have the LORD God Almighty on our side. The Father is working in us to will and to do to His good pleasure (Philippians 2:13). His Son is making us into His disciples (Mark 1:17). The Holy Spirit is at work renewing our minds, that we would be transformed into the image of the glory of the Lord (Romans 12:2; 2 Corinthians 3:18).

Our failure to this point has been our passivity. We do not recognize nor appreciate the importance of our diligent participation. This has been the case in the Western Church for at least sixty years. Think about that for a moment. Multiple generations of Christians have allowed the world to define and cultivate our perceptions of reality.

Our Perceptions of Reality

The way we think affects our reception of external stimuli, our processing of it, and our response to it. In other words, the way we think forms and is formed by our perception of reality. Consequently, the way we think has a great deal of control over our lives, including our relationships with God and other people.

The human mind is much more powerful (and tricky) than we might think (perhaps something it is trying to hide). Our minds have an incredible capacity to alter and form our perception of reality. Here are three examples:

1. Living through an alternate reality. Reality TV is popular because humans find entertainment from entering into someone else’s reality. On the Internet, there are people making a very good living by daily sharing videos of their kids and pets. In stadiums and living rooms around the world, sports fans are being emotionally and physically affected by the success or failure of their favorite team.
2. Projecting a false reality. How many times have we put up a front to protect others from our anger or insecurity? Our ability to cast a false perception of reality allows us to avoid dealing with the issues that make us so unpresentable. Let us call it what it is: deception of others and ourselves.
3. Filtering out the truth. We oftentimes struggle to accept the reality of a person, particularly a loved one. For example, parents with mentally handicapped children struggle with the reality of early diagnoses. Similarly, human beings commonly ignore situations and issues when they (or their resolution) threaten their security or comfort.

Christians are not immune to the negative consequences of these false realities. Indeed, for Christians these matters of thinking and perception are critically important, because there is ultimately one reality, the reality of God. Anything else is deception! To live in anything but the reality of God is to live outside His reality. To live outside His reality is to live outside His presence and influence.

Our Desperate Need for God’s Way

The Western church desperately needs a reformation, a returning to the roots and foundations of our faith. Where do reformations begin if not with repentance?

The call to repentance was primary and requisite to the formation of the church. Every great revival in Western church history began with a call and response to repentance. Recently, however, repentance has fallen out of favor with most pastors and preachers. Though metanoeō (repent) and its sister metanoia (repentance) appear 58 times in the New Testament, we rarely hear either word used in Christian gatherings.

It should not surprise us that, through this lack of use, the church has lost the full meaning and purpose of repentance. When we do get around to discussing repentance, we regularly use catchphrases like “turn away from your sin” or “do an about face.” While these phrases sound good, they are a shadow of God’s intention in our repentance. For the sake of God’s kingdom and those who would fully enter in, the church must return to the full meaning of repentance.

Change your mind!

In the interest of full disclosure, we acknowledge that repentance leads to more than a change in our thinking. Repentance begins a process; the change of mind must precipitate a change in behavior. The “about face” and “turning away from our sin” begin with a change of our mind.

With this in mind (no pun intended), the command of Romans 12:2 begins to make much more sense: “… be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Perhaps what is wrong with us is the way we think. Perhaps, in the Age of Reason, we need to start seriously and soberly thinking about the way we think as Christians.

Christians have become lazy with our thinking. We trust our thinking way too much. Those of us who preach and teach trust the thinking of others more than we should. The results are obvious, and they are not good. It is time we tried something different.

Next time, we will explore the way Christians should think by examining the six foundations of Christianly thinking, presented by Harry Blamires in his seminal book, The Christian Mind. In the meantime, give some thought to the way you think and what you think about. Become suspicious of your number one enemy. Ask God to show you the mind of Christ.

God bless you with the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened.

Have a strong day in the Lord,

Rob

#iamjustthepen