Awaken Your Mind!

Okay, so far we have looked at Awaken the Church, Awaken Your Salvation, Awaken Your God-given Love, and Awaken Your God-given Vision, Awaken Your God-given Dream, Awaken Your Joy and the last topic looked at was Awaken Your Purpose! Today we are looking at Awakening our minds. In other words, we must constantly be renewing out minds. Renewing the mind is about a paradigm shift—a complete overhaul of how we perceive ourselves, our actions, and the world around us. It's not merely about changing thoughts but embracing a new identity in Christ that transforms our entire way of living. Renewing the mind is essential for experiencing the fullness of life God has for us. So let’s get into this!

Romans 12:1–2 (NIV)

1Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 

2Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Renewed Minds Follow God!

The Message Bible says this in the portion of scripture,

Romans 12:1–2 (MSG)

1So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. 

2Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

When we renew our minds, we become unadjusted to the culture around us and and well adjusted to God’s culture! This develops an ongoing life of spiritual maturity which in turns gives us a blessed life knowing we are following God in the best way possible!

Joshua 1:8–9 (NIV)

8Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. 

9Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”

Meditating on His Word Renews Our Mind!

Joshua was told to meditate on the Book of the Law, the word that God had given them day and night so that he would always speak the Word and cause him to be prosperous and successful! The Hebrew word meditate used in Joshua 1:8 is the word haga and it means to roar, growl, groan to utter, speak to meditate, devise, muse, imagine. When you and I haga on the Word of God is becomes etched in our minds and however we think cause us to be that way in life.

2 Corinthians 10:3–6 (NIV)

3For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 

4The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 

5We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 

6And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete.

Awakening the Mind Makes Us “Check” Our Thoughts!

The word of God in our minds allows us to police ourselves. We are able to demolish every argument that we might have in our subconscious. And it takes all of our thoughts and makes them obedient to Christ. In other words, not awakening our minds by renewing it with the word of God will cause us to be govern by strongholds in our minds. A stronghold is just what is says it is, a strong hold that prevents us from being what God wants us to be.

Ephesians 4:20–24 (NLT)

20But that isn’t what you learned about Christ. 

21Since you have heard about Jesus and have learned the truth that comes from him, 

22throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. 

23Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. 

24Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy.

Awakening Our Mind Lets the Holy Spirit Renew It!

We need to allow the Holy Spirit to have His way in us. That comes again by not conforming to the world, throwing off all the ridiculous bad thoughts we had before, our sin nature, and be renewed in our thoughts and attitudes.

Philippians 4:8–9 (MSG)

8Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. 

9Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.

Awakening Our Minds Gets God to Work On Us!

When we fill our minds with the things that God wants us to fill it with, He in turn works on our lives and makes us live in His peace because He is always with us. In the Good Times and in the Bad Times! Awakening our minds never ends because once we get one thing down, there are many other areas of our minds that need to be renewed. Remember, mindset doesn’t mean our minds are set and they never change.