The Power & Role of the Mind in our Spiritual Walk

30 Sep The Power & Role of the Mind in our Spiritual Walk

When God told the children of Israel to take the land, their response was that they were like grasshoppers. It is possible for God to say something, mean something, plan something and it is very possible for us, because of the state of our mind to stop that thing from coming to pass in our lives. Because of this, we need to study the role of the mind in our walk with God. By the time we turn twelve, most of our minds are already formed. For example, when we take a glass of water, the water will take the shape of the glass, because that glass is already formed, so anything that we pour into it will be defined by the form, the form that is already our mind.

The children of Israel had the Hittites and the Jebusites to overcome in the Promised Land. The Hittites and the Jebusites represent the things in our minds that we have to overcome. The Promised Land is not a type of heaven because there are no Hittites in heaven. The Promised Land is the will of God being done in our lives. And there are obstacles, oppositions and resistances to the will of God being done in our lives. These obstacles are not necessarily physical obstacles or circumstances; they are things that have been formed in our minds. I want to start by introducing us to the mind.

First of all, the mind is very powerful equipment. The mind has, amongst other things, the ability to recall in its memory bank, has the ability to imagine and has a thought-thinking process. So if it wants to analyse, the mind can look at memory, imagination and conscious thought. Within the context of conscious thought there is the sub conscious mind or the robot mind. The sub conscious mind is the part of the mind that regulates our lives.

The mind defines our personalities, defines who we are and how we interact with people. Do you know that our minds also regulate what we receive? If we come to a place where a heated argument has just taken place and at the point of entering the room they keep quiet, do you think we will feel the presence of that argument? What is hanging in the air?

Whatever they release hung in the air and when we came in, we contacted that thing. It is intangible because we cannot touch it, but we cannot deny its reality. Thoughts are things. A word is a thought unveiled.

Thoughts are things that mould us…

Every depression and every mental situation that people face today is an abuse of the laws of the mind. As we were growing up, the enemy built blocks of rejection, hatred, jealousy, envy and selfishness in our minds. Whatever we expose the mind to determines what we expose our lives to, which determines what we experience. The world has squeezed us into its mould. We are already squeezed and formed, even as we read this. In an environment where God is believed in and He is real, people do not have a problem believing God for things because they know that God is as tangible as anything else they can imagine. In other environments, the mould is so set in its ways that God is out of the equation, because He is a foreigner and stranger. The mould says, ‘I can do what I want to do, my lungs are my own,

I can smoke if I want to. I serve God when I want!’ These attitudes are a function of a mould that has been programmed by the world. If we are going to be serious believers in an environment like this we cannot afford to live like everybody else. We cannot afford to live by the way we feel about certain things, because our feelings have been informed by the world which has moulded us.

Reconstruction of the Mind…

1 Corinthians 2:9 tells us that God has prepared some things for those who love Him and that He has revealed them to us through His Spirit. One of the functions of the Spirit of God is to show us the things that have been freely given to us. God has made them available, but it is our responsibility to make sure we have them experientially. We need to embrace the reality of the mind of Christ, because it is the mind of Christ that knows these things. Our greatest enemy is not satan!

The greatest enemy is the man between our shoulders! If we can win that man, we have won the world. How do we change our mind? When a man first goes into the army, they subject him to things that eventually reprogram him. It is a deception to believe that what you see or watch will not change your life. Your mind was designed to take in whatever you expose it to. To reprogram we must submit to God, by submitting to His Word. God has his own way of doing things. God’s way of finances is not the world’s way. The same is true of divine protection, divine healing, etc. We must understand the ways of God. Often we try to force God to abide by our own programming, but the truth is that God is too big to abide by our own programming. It is only when the seed of God’s word enters our hearts, that our minds are forced to be reprogrammed.

We will never change our mind until we change what we believe, what we say and what we do. At every given time there must be something that we are dealing with in our relationship with God and some truth that we are internalizing.

Lord light my candle

If one walks in the night, he stumbles because the light is not in him. (John 11:10.) Our problem is not the darkness of our environment, but rather the absence of light on the inside. This is why the psalmist said “Lord you will light my candle.” (Psalm 18:28)

Do you know that it is possible to have a lamp or a candle that is not lit? When the Bible says “the entrance of your word gives light,” it is talking about the word that has been quickened by the Spirit of God or the revealed knowledge of God’s Word.

The Bible says that the letter kills but the spirit gives life. A lot of times we interpret the bible with the natural mind, and the strongholds and preconceptions in our minds hinder the word from entering. What does it take to have the Word enter us? Our heart must be in a certain condition for the Word to shine in on us.

We must remove offences and pride and we must have an attitude of reverence for the Word of God. (Mark 4:24)

The only way to respect the Word is to respect the God who gave the Word. When we do, the Word will begin to change our lives. Sometimes the word of God comes to us and it doesn’t sound like what we need, but the reality is that it has the ability and capacity to meet every need.

Preconceptions do not allow us to receive the Word of God because we have already decided the kind of solution we want. When we begin to let the Word of God direct our lives, God is going to put thoughts in our minds that He will establish as His will for our lives. (Proverbs 16:3) How will He do it? When the light is inside us, our most dominant thoughts usually come from our spirits, not our minds.

Through meditating in the Word we can begin to tell the difference between our carnal thoughts, desires and the Word of God.

Let us pray, “Lord light our candles and give us the simplicity of heart so that your Word can enter and enlighten us. Let every stronghold that has been built against your Word in my life come down in Jesus name! Amen.

God bless you all.

Rev Kola Ewuosho