Romans 12:2 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Ephesians 4:22-24 22 that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts,
23 and be renewed in the spirit of your mind,
24 and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.
Romans 12:2 talks about renewing the mind, but Ephesians 4:23 says to be renewed in the spirit of your mind. What is the difference?
First of all, in the structure of man we find in 1 Thessalonians 5:23, we are made up of spirit, soul, and body, with the spirit being the “deepest” or most essential and inward part of us. Look at it this way: we are a spirit, we possess a soul, and we live in a body.
Even though we are a spirit, created in the image of God who is also a Spirit (John 4:24), we are not as conscious of the spirit realm as we are the natural realm, or even of our own spirit. Another way to say it is that our consciousness lives in the soul realm – in our mind, will, and emotions. The soul is the seat of our personality. Becoming a spiritually mature person means becoming more aware of the spiritual realm, and the voice of our own spirit. We are then “led by the Spirit”, because the Spirit of God speaks to our human spirit.
So then, our spirit is a voice that is somewhat underneath the voice of our mind. In a similar way, the spirit of our minds is a realm of the mind that is “underneath”. Paul didn’t have the language for it back then, but I believe he is talking about the subconscious mind.
The idea that we have mental processes that are outside of our conscious awareness is not a new one; ancient philosophers like Plato and Aristotle hinted at it. The idea of unconscious thoughts and the subconscious mind was formally postulated in the 1800’s. It is most famously associated with Sigmund Freud, although he wasn’t the first to mention it.
Driving on Autopilot
Have you ever moved, but when you are driving “home” and thinking about something else, you automatically turn down the street of where you used to live? Through habit and repetition, that old location was drilled into your “automatic pilot”. If you are thinking about it consciously, you can head to the new address correctly. But if your conscious mind is on something else (ever daydream while you are driving?), your subconscious takes over and goes where you had developed a pattern of going before.
But if you consciously steer yourself towards your new place a number of times, you will develop a new habit. Developing a new habit is training your subconscious mind. How is it done? By purposeful, intentional repetition of a new action or behavior.
We’ve talked about how neural pathways are built up in your brain by thinking a certain way over and over (more about this later). They become the default way of thinking, your “automatic pilot”. They can be changed, but it takes an intentional effort. And, you have to keep up that intentional effort to think a different way for an extended period of time.
New thoughts are formed over twenty-one days, and these new thoughts are formed into habits after sixty-three days. –Dr. Carolyn Leaf
It’s not good enough to just read about some new principal or way of thinking. You have to act on it.
James 1:22-25 22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror;
24 for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.
25 But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.
James talks about a person that is in self deception. How is that person deceived? They are looking in a mirror – what does a mirror show you? Your image, what you look like. He observes his face in the mirror, but then goes on and immediately forgets what manner of man he is.
The word of God is a mirror, that shows you how God sees you. So many of us read the Bible, that tells us what manner of people we are, but then go away and forget it.
So what is the deception? Hearing the word but not acting on it and putting it into practice. Most Christians will look at James 1:22 and think it means changing their outward behavior and try to work on that. But that is not the context – it is about not forgetting the image of yourself that the Bible paints – your self-image.
So we have to do – act on – put into practice – the word we hear. It is then that vs. 23 says we will be “blessed in what we do”, or have success.
Hearing alone is not enough.
“But doesn’t faith come by hearing the word of God?” It’s not quite worded that way.
Romans 10:17 17 So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
You have two sets of ears – the outward, physical ones that capture sound waves and convert them to electrical impulses. Then a part of your brain turns them into “sounds” that we recognize, like words.
But there is an “inner ear”, which is part of your mind, that interprets these sounds and give them meaning. The Bible calls this our “understanding”.
The word of God gives the ability to hear, deep down on the inside. When you accept it, that produces faith, or belief.
“Take heed what you hear”. Not “in one ear and out the other”, which is you when you hear the words but don’t give them attention or place value on them. I.e., really listening.
Hebrews 4:1-2 1 Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it.
2 For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it.
We are familiar with the story in Numbers 14 of the spies that were sent into the Promised Land and brought back the bad report of giants in the land.
The issue was not that they said that there were giants. That is what they observed. The problem was the conclusions they made about what they had heard/experienced. They judged the situation by their own past experiences and abilities – remember they had been slaves, not an army – and concluded that they did not have the ability to take on the giants. This was in spite of all the miraculous things they saw when God defeated the most powerful military force in the world – the Egyptians.
Joshua and Caleb saw the same things, those same giants – yet they concluded that God was big enough to fulfill His promise to them.
Numbers 14:9 9 Only do not rebel against the Lord, nor fear the people of the land, for they are our bread; their protection has departed from them, and the Lord is with us. Do not fear them.”
What was the peoples’ reaction? They wanted to stone Joshua and Caleb. People in fear and unbelief get angry when they are confronted with people with faith.
Matthew 13:15 15 For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, And their eyes they have closed, Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, So that I should heal them.’
(Quoted from Isaiah 6:9-10)
Changing my eating habits
Back in the mid 2000’s I was way overweight. I got up to a maximum of 272 pounds. I just like to eat (most people do). The big problem is what I was eating and how much of it.
I shopped around a while, and decided on the Nutrisystem diet. In this system, you buy the food from them. It comes in big boxes, some of it frozen (I got to play with the dry ice keeping it cold, lots of fun!). Each item is in a color coded package (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks) with a calorie count on it. You have a target daily count, and you can have whatever you want as long as you keep within that target count. Some of the food was just OK, others were quite good.
For me, it was easy. I didn’t have to think about special meals to prepare, just pick items out of the boxes or freezer. And what was surprising was that I was not hungry. I dropped 12 pounds the first week. It took several months, but I ended up losing 80 pounds.
One of the ways they help you, is that the food supplied is for the 5 weekdays, but on weekends you eat your own food. And that trains you on what kinds of things you can eat when you don’t have the Nutrisystem food. You develop habits that can maintain your calorie intake.
Over the years, you get a bit lax and your weight can creep up again (especially through the holidays). That happened to me in the years leading up to and through COVID. So I went back on the Nutrisystem diet again, but this time only for two months. They had made improvements – the food was a lot better, and they supplied an app to help you keep track of the calories.
The only drawback of Nutrisystem is that it is not cheap. But even that is a motivation – if you spent that much money on it, you’re less likely to cheat and waste it.
What this system did was enable me to develop new eating habits and have a clear and easy way to maintain it.
Not Just Outward Behavior, but Inward Beliefs
Now I’ve said that changing a habit, or learning a new skill, takes a concerted effort and repetition. That is true. But, there is an aspect of this that most people neglect that causes them to fail. That is, it is not enough to just change the outward behavior. You must also change the inward beliefs about yourself in that area.
If you have an inward – i.e., subconscious – belief that “that’s the way I am”, you most likely will not be successful in sustaining that change in the long run. Maybe by willpower and effort you will change your behavior for a time, but that is exhausting.
You will not be able to sustain a behavior that does not line up with who you believe you are.
So a key to successful change is not to start out by concentrating on outward behavior, but by concentrating on changing the inward beliefs. For example, for two months leading up to that first Nutrisystem diet where I lost 80 pounds, I prayed about it, visualized what I would look like thin (or thinner, at least), and confessed that the diet would be easy. And it was.
The Role of the Imagination
So how do you retrain your thoughts and subconscious mind or your subconscious beliefs? Use your imagination, your God given ability to see things that “aren’t there”. Imagination is where creativity comes from. You visualize your condition, your circumstances as you want them to be.
Genesis 11:6 KJV 6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
In this particular verse, the people were in rebellion to God’s command to spread throughout the earth, but the principle is the same: they imagined, and another word is purposed, what they were going to do.
You need to have a specific target or goal in mind. Visualize what you would be like if that goal was already attained. Be as detailed as possible. If you can, get a picture of something that is representative of your dream, and put it in a conspicuous place where you see it every day.
In essence, what you are doing is “rehearsing” your future.
Studies have shown that the brain doesn’t know the difference between imagination and real experience. Therefore you can create “experience” by using your imagination.
Jacob cut sticks so they showed spots and stripes and put it in the watering trough where the sheep came to drink. And they ended up producing spotted and speckled offspring (Genesis 30:37-39).
Your subconscious mind will work to bring about those things you believe. Train your mind to have an inner image of success, and your subconscious will work to bring about success. Train your mind to have an inner image of fear, failure, and inadequacy and it will work to bring about failure – actually limiting your abilities and sabotaging yourself.
Many years ago, I knew someone in our church who owned an insurance brokerage, who had taken the Dale Carnegie course on sales. He said one of the main things it taught was to look in the mirror and tell yourself you are a success.
God gave Abram a picture to help visualize how he would be a father of a multitude.
Genesis 15:5 5 Then He brought him outside and said, “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”
My second oldest son, when he was a boy, used to say “When I grow up I’m going to be rich”. Now he said other things also that were kind of silly, but this one was consistent. He ended up going into the same field as myself, software engineering, and at 37 years old he was already making more than I do after I had been in the industry over 40 years.
I used to think that daydreaming was just frivolous, idle thinking. And some of it was. But it can be harnessed to be a powerful tool. The difference between just daydreaming and active, creative imagination is whether you have a goal in mind.
Inner Visualization and Faith
When I was in Bible school, we were taught about faith from Mark 11:22-24. The context of this passage is that Jesus had cursed the fig tree, and the next day as they walked by the same tree the disciples noted that it was dried up from the roots. This was Jesus’ explanation of how He did it, also telling the disciples that they could do things like that also.
Mark 11:22-24 22 So Jesus answered and said to them, “Have faith in God.
23 For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says.
24 Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.
The underlying principle is, believe it in your heart, and say it with your mouth.
I noticed that this principle is also how you get saved.
Romans 10:9-10 9 that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
There have been those that have taken the application of this principle to extremes and thus been labeled the “Name it and Claim It” bunch, or the “Blab it and Grab It” group. But it does not negate the fact that it exists as a Biblical principle. It is sad that many Christians have thrown out the principle entirely because they saw some that abused it. See my series on Faith.
So if we accept the fact that faith works by believing it in your heart and saying it with your mouth (and you should, because you don’t get saved without it), where we need the most help with is the “believe it in your heart” part. And that is where these practices of visualization and imagination I have been talking about come in.
Proverbs 23:7 KJV As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.
The thoughts and beliefs in your heart are what determine the real you. I’ve taught about what is the heart in other places (see Man in 3D or Where Real Transformation Comes From Part 2), but briefly, the heart is the division, or boundary between soul and spirit, the place where they merge (Hebrews 4:12). It contains elements of both. Basically, it means deep down inside you. People can put on a “front” and act a certain way, but deep down they are the opposite. The front is a defense mechanism.
Is this just Psychology?
Psychology is the study of how the mind works. God created human beings to work in a certain way. Psychology is now discovering truths that the Bible has talked about for centuries. Studying the mind tied to Biblical principles is a good thing.
Science in general has gotten a bad rap amongst some Christians because of the trend of humanization – taking God completely out of the picture. Psychology in particular is looked down on because of the work of Sigmund Freud. But many of the earlier scientists were believers. They saw science as a fulfillment of God’s command to subdue the earth, which they took to mean as to understand it.
In modern day, there is a group of scientists who are believers that have been studying how the brain works. Dr. Carolyn Leaf talks about how they started with what the Bible said about the mind and thoughts and studied it out scientifically, and were able to prove it out. They found that thoughts make tangible physical changes in the brain’s neural pathways, and that the more you think in a certain way, the stronger/wider those pathways become. But they also discovered that the pathways were not permanent – they could be changed. They called this neural plasticity.
Another discovery these brain scientists made was that the brain will take the path of least resistance, of expending the least amount of energy, unless you force it to do otherwise. And those paths of least resistance are the neural pathways that are the strongest and widest.
Personally, I find it encouraging when modern science proves out Biblical principles.
- As a man thinks in his heart, so is he
- You can be transformed – changed completely – by changing the way you think
- Purposeful visualization and imagination are tools to change your thoughts
These principles are also foundational to a lot of self-help literature. I asked a couple of AI’s (ChatGPT and Microsoft CoPilot) to list books that focus on changing your thoughts and beliefs to transform your life. Between the two of them, they came up with “curated lists” of a couple dozen. I’m sure if I asked for an exhaustive list it would number in the hundreds.
One of them that was listed was Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking. Norman Vincent Peale was a minister, and Christians gave him flack about his book when it came out. From Microsoft CoPilot AI:
“Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking was first published on October 1, 1952. It became a foundational work in the self-help genre, promoting the idea that a positive mindset, faith, and affirmations could lead to personal and professional success. The book remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over three years and has sold millions of copies worldwide.”
It is an interesting fact that the working title of his book was “The Power of Positive Confession of God’s Word”. Other sources say it was “The Power of Faith”. His publisher suggested that it would reach a wider audience if he just changed the title.
Self Help?
Christians get bent out of shape when they see the words “self help”, assuming that it must be godless. And for some authors of self-help books, it is.
First of all, what do we mean by “self help”? We want to help ourselves be better people, be more successful, etc. Many of the self-help books concentrate on becoming more outwardly successful. And how do they hope to achieve this? They concentrate on changing the self-image, the inward thoughts and beliefs, and on developing habits that lead to success.
So the way they say you can produce outward success is by first producing inward success. This is a Biblical principle.
3 John 1:2 KJV 2 Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.
You prosper and be in health even as your soul prospers. The Greek word translated even as in the KJV is translated just as in other versions. The word is mostly translated as, but also according as. I.e., outward prosperity flows from inward prosperity.
Prosperity of the soul – isn’t that what renewing the mind is all about?
The self-help authors and books produce success because they have discovered how God created us to operate, even though some of them don’t acknowledge God. But many do.
We will have more success if we place Biblical principles first and foremost.
Three Foundations
Even AI was able to recognize three foundations of the self-help genre, which they pulled from Norman Vincent Peale.
- Positive Mindset
- Faith
- Affirmations
Positive Mindset
Our lack of success most often stems from a negative self image, and/or a pessimistic outlook on life. Therefore an essential part of a positive mindset is building hope. Hope is the happy anticipation of good. Steve Backlund says “Hope is the belief the future will be better than the present, and I have the power to make it so.”
As believers we have an advantage over secular self-help practices, because we have the scriptures.
Romans 15:4 4 For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.
Faith
Faith involves believing something you don’t yet see. That is, we walk by faith and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7). It also involves building hope for the future, because faith is the substance of things hoped for (Hebrews 11:1). You have to change the inward beliefs before you will see the change on the outside.
Affirmations
Different groups use different terminology for this. When I was in Bible school they talked about confessions, which is a word used in the Bible. It comes from the Greek homologeo, which means to speak or say the same thing. The idea is that we are to confess, or say the same thing as, the word of God.
Other groups use the word declarations to mean the same thing. The secular sources tend to use the word affirmations.
All of these are making a verbal declaration of what you believe – or at least what you are trying to believe. The process of speaking it out loud helps change those inward beliefs to what you are declaring.
The Bible has a lot to say about your words and the tongue. See Life is in the Power of the Tongue, and Declaration / Confession of God’s Word.
Conclusion
There are parallels between what the self-help books say, and Biblical principles. And science and psychology are also discovering things about how the brain operates. They will of course have different terminology than the Bible.
Many Christians will reject all of it because it is not “spiritual” – because it is not worded in scripture and it focuses on mental processes. But the Bible in Romans 12:2 says we are transformed by the renewing of the mind, not the renewing of the spirit. The whole reason for that is because when we are born again, our spirits are already renewed. The transformation comes when we get that renewal that has already occurred on the inside to show up on the outside. That is the exact meaning of the root word in Greek for transformed that our English word metamorphosis comes from. And the Bible says that the way to do this is to change the mind – our beliefs and thoughts.
