“Repenting” Isn’t Always About Sinning…

Transforming the heart is the central vision of renovation, because the heart is where all choices are made. When you actually intend to surrender to God’s will in your life, your heart will try to figure out every way possible why you can’t or why you don’t need to. This will come out of your own nature; fueled by the tempting of the evil one.

This is why as you begin this heart “transplant,” don’t expect it to be easy. It is simple to understand and hard to do. What is necessary is to confess your need for transformation and to continue surrendering to God. In other words, “Repent.”

Now, “repentance” isn’t just about repenting from sin. To repent is to “change our thinking.” “Change our mind.” We repent from sin, indeed, but we also repent when we change direction to new focus in our lives.

God works with us along the way, and makes it more and more possible for us to actually participate with him. There are tools God has set up for transformation. Let’s look at some of these.

Silence and Solitude

“Jesus went out in the desert alone.”

”Lord, where did you go? We couldn’t find you.”

Before most major decisions he makes, as recorded in the Bible, Jesus spends time alone and prays. Why?

Silence and solitude are spiritual disciplines with a rich history. Spending time alone and quiet, speaking and listening to your loving Father, is refreshment for your very soul.

When he was younger, I asked one of our sons why he thought Jesus was so fond of being alone and he said, “To get away from all the sin for awhile.”

Like soldiers at war spending time alone before battle, it is good to get away for awhile. As followers of Jesus, we do battle with the forces of the Evil One.

And also with silence and solitude, we break from all the “busy-ness of business,” the ups and downs of our daily lives, and we begin to give them over to God. We are refreshed and renewed.

How do we do this? Here is one suggestion.

Start with 10 minutes or so at the end of each day, reviewing what happened. Go to a room alone or go for a walk and reflect on the day’s events. Review where you may need forgiveness from God, and pray what is on your mind. Then just spend time listening. After all, you wouldn’t talk to a friend about life and then when you were done, say, “OK, gotta go…”  This practice may turn into more than 10 minutes, but begin here and see what happens.

When can you get away daily and spend some time with your heavenly dad?

“Surrender” Isn’t Always a Bad Thing

God knows every person’s heart. He knows how we deceive ourselves. He sees us as we are, and is ready and able to transform us. This is the only way we can be saved from ourselves. God calls us us to a life of surrender, abandonment, contentment, and participation.

We “surrender” to God and place our complete confidence in him. If we try to hold anything back, renovation isn’t possible. It’s not that God couldn’t change us on his own, but for the sake of our precious freedom he wouldn’t. It’s time for us to surrender.

“Surrender” is not a term that denotes strength, obviously. Yet, in the case of dying to yourself and your own self-worship, into a life of self-denial, the one who surrenders is a giant. For years AA has used a slogan, “Let go; let God.” It is just as meaningful today.

Holding on to the “me” that isn’t really the “me” God designed me to be, well, that’s just plain foolish. We trust God enough to give up and now we are ready to go all the way. “Abandonment” means everything. Every part of who we are. We do this in fits and starts, but the more we give God from what holds us back, the more freeing this becomes.

We will then experience “contentment,” where we are satisfied with what we have and live lives knowing we are completely safe, immersed in God’s Kingdom reality. It doesn’t surprise us nor upset us when we don’t get our own way. We know God will carry out his plans. Our destinies are interwoven with those plans.

When we die to ourselves and live for God and others, God can trust us with his power. More and more he will use us to be beacons of hope and assurance in a world in desperate need of this. The things we do in our lives will look more and more like the things Jesus did when he was on earth. Yes, that kind of power!

It’s not that God doesn’t want us to have this power beforehand; it’s just that without transformed hearts, power without humility is dangerous. By transforming us, God invites us into this life of “participation.”

What is the greatest challenge you face? How do you want to face it?

Change Begins from the Inside

This is the central place for transformation to happen. The renovation of the heart. New life is possible with a change in “character” itself.

Character- Your internal structure that is revealed by your outward patterns of behavior.

Under times of stress and fatigue, our character reveals itself. This is not a widely known fact. We can try to live a positive, gracious image for others when things are going smoothly, but when pressure hits we can’t keep up the defenses. Who we are is exposed by our circumstances.

We have some renovating to do. How often do we say or do something hurtful and then apologize with this kind of line?

“I have been under a lot of pressure lately.”

We also see this line of thinking when someone lashes out violently and injures or kills someone. In the interview of a family member or neighbor you often hear this:

“He seemed like such a nice guy. I wonder what happened to him to cause him to snap like that?”

No, he was not a nice guy. He was someone who was skilled at hiding his dominating self-worship but got caught up in circumstances where his real character was exposed.

Why doesn’t God just force us to do good? Our freedom is what makes us so precious in God’s sight. It is a key part of being created in God’s image. God honors our freedom to choose. He will not force us to love him. Instead, through Jesus, God rescues us and our relationship with the Father can be restored.

We are not a lost cause. Under the power of the Holy Spirit, our true character can change for the good. This takes effort on our part, though we cannot change ourselves by the direct approach.

What excuses have you used concerning your character?

What Will Work to Transform a Life Based on Feelings?

1. Work on feelings that move you away from sin instead of trying not to sin

At the very earliest stages, focus on cultivating revulsion at the feelings you now have that are sinful, even if they don’t bother you. Along with this, focus on being attracted strongly to feelings of good, even if you don’t have those feelings to begin with.

Take anger as an example. I don’t simply try to avoid feeling angry. I begin to look at how unattractive I must appear when I am angry. I focus on the sense of uneasiness I have afterwards, and the uneasiness I see in others. At the same time, I have a vision of what it is like for people to be in my presence, where they are relaxed and comfortable.

2. Remove the underlying condition, not just the feeling

Why do I have the destructive feelings in the first place? What are the conditions that lead up to them? Let’s stay on the anger example.

What conditions lead to the anger? Perhaps it is a sense of privilege. If I think I deserve good things in my life and then they don’t go my way, I am offended by my circumstances. I lash out at whoever is around me. I begin to project my disappointment on anyone whom I perceive as a source of my “injustice.”

It’s time to move myself from the sense of privilege, and realize the whole world isn’t going to end if I don’t get my way.

3. Replacing the underlying condition; the feelings will take care of themselves

It isn’t enough just to remove the underlying condition that fuels the destructive feelings. In the anger example, it isn’t enough to try not to feel like I must always get my own way. I must replace those conditions with healthy alternatives.

One way to start is to set yourself up in situations where you practice deferring to others. For example, letting someone come into your traffic lane is a good place to start. If you live in an urban area especially, you can practice this every day. Of course, the person behind you may then have to start working on anger issues!

What is one destructive feeling you struggle with? What can you do to stop feeling that way?

1. Trying to take on our feelings directly

We don’t know the power of feelings if we think we can just face them directly with willpower. The direct approach at changing our mind at the spur of the moment is not helpful. If we are being strongly influenced by feelings of anger, fear, sexual attraction, the need for approval, ambition, and such, to just say, “Quit it!” to yourself, or to simply give in and allow your feelings to rule, “I can’t help how I feel,” well… There is a better way.

2. Denying our destructive feelings or pouring them out on others

It doesn’t do any good to ignore the fact we do have destructive feelings like anger, greed, jealousy, lust, and the list goes on. The Bible even has these lists in several places (e.g. Colossians 3:5-8). We can’t deny we have these sinful feelings and we can’t just try to keep them inside and then they will naturally go away. There is another way.

The other way is not to act these feelings out. We don’t give in to them and take it out on our others. We don’t scream at someone and then think, “Now, I feel much better.”

The way to transform destructive feelings is to replace them with helpful feelings. This is one of the central keys to living a transformed life. It is only under the partnership of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit that we can become the kind of people who lose these awful feelings, and have feelings that are helpful to others as they build us up.

Think about an example when you used one of these methods.

Feelings are at the front of the line when it comes to our minds. People ask “How are you feeling today?”

Has anyone ever asked you, “How are you thinking today?”

Watching the news after a terrorist attack brings an unfortunate lesson in this focus on how one feels. Newscasters ask “experts” these kind of questions:

Why do you think the terrorists feel the way they do? What is causing them to feel that way about Western countries? What more can we do to understand why they feel the way they do?

No one asks the obvious.

What kind of thinking is the source of such diabolical actions? What are the ideas and images the terrorists use as their sources that fuel this type of response?

Feelings are absolutely necessary because they make us come alive and they drive our activities. We accept we have feelings and we learn to channel them in the right places and in the right way. Dallas says,

“Feelings can be good servants but they are a horrible master.”

So how do we work on a vision to transform our mind’s feelings? Next chapter, we start with what doesn’t work.

Think of an example when you started with feelings rather than thinking.

The Best Brain Medicine…

You have the vision to transform your mind. Next comes intention. The fact that you are reading this, is intention enough for me, so I will continue. How do you give access to the Holy Spirit to transform your thought-life?

The Word of God
Memorizing Bible passages is a practice that was simply a necessity for thousands of years. No books! Then, when writing comes along, it is rare and costly to write things down. In fact, most of the priests of Israel and the leaders of the early church memorized the whole Bible!

For us, memorizing and letting the Word “marinate” in our minds, is a strong defense against the ideas and images that would lead us down the wrong path. Dallas says that passages like Psalm 23 or Colossians 3:1-17, when they fill our thoughts, are like a good “scrubbing down” of whatever else is on our minds.

There are a variety of techniques to enhance memorization, but it usually looks like this:

Read a section, let it sit, read, recite it aloud, read… Lectio Divina can be a very helpful tool in this process.

Sound and Images
You want another way to fill your mind with that which points to our awesome God? Listen to music. Everyone knows how easy it is to get hooked to a song where you “can’t get it out of my head.” Well, if that is a praise song/ hymn, an encouraging or contemplative popular song on the radio, what better way to latch on to God’s Word than to let music fill your mind?

Musical tastes are about as personal as you can get. Whether it is classical, rap, hip hop, alternative, hard rock, soft rock, country, or even screamo, there are ways that Biblical passages and themes can take flight in your car or iPod. Music doesn’t just have to be about how much you hate the world or how much you like a woman’s booty, or whatever. God invented music, and so it can be about him, too, you know?

Godly images and reminders have been used throughout our faith history to connect us to the living Christ, as well. From ancient stained glass windows and icons, to WWJD bracelets, gospel t- shirts and tattoos, visual reminders are powerful and significant. We absorb much through sight that keeps us focused on our walk with Jesus.

Mentor/ Coach/ “Discipler”
Connecting with someone who is further along on the path of self-denial, being discipled and encouraged by them, is the way Jesus designed for us to be in the process of renovation. Who is your Yoda?

If you are fortunate enough to have a parent in this role, that would be amazing. It can be a peer, but there is nothing like the wisdom and model of the elder who is experiencing the joy and challenge of the transforming life.

How do you find a mentor? If you are fortunate, he/she will find you. More and more church communities today are finally doing things the way Jesus designed by focusing on making disciples. You can judge a potential mentor as one who is encouraging, challenging, gracious, and confident in Jesus, and who is authentic in their walk of faith.

What would be reasons you would use to tell yourself you don’t need to open yourself up to this wisdom?

What’s on You Mind Affects Everything Else (Part Two)

How are we to replace the ideas and images that move us away from God and his ways? We take an active role in our thinking, joining with the influence of the Holy Spirit and seeking the truth for ourselves. These are two other aspects of our thinking that make this possible.

Information
1 Thes. 5:19-21 (NLT)
Do not stifle the Holy Spirit. Do not scoff at prophecies, but test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good.

Jesus encourages us to put him to the test. The Christian faith is based on our ability to examine the evidence. We are expected to seek the information that is available to decide for ourselves. The Spirit guides this process, but we are to take the initiative.

Putting the Christian worldview to the test, comparing it to other religions and philosophies, is encouraged. Though less likely today, Christian schools, colleges and universities have historically been centers of learning to compare and contrast competing worldviews in the search for the truth.

Also, God’s desire for us to know his ways helps explain a unique quality of the Christian faith. It is so culturally transferable. The Bible has been translated into over 2,287 languages thus far, according to the International Bible Society. It is a strong mark of the “God-breathed” aspect of the Bible’s writing, that all cultures in every age are invited to read God’s Word for themselves and examine the evidence. It’s as if God is saying,

The information is there. Have at it.

Now, compare this to a religion like Islam, where the holy book, the Quran, is only truly considered the Word of Allah, if it is in Arabic. There is no movement to compare and contrast what the Quran teaches as relates to other faiths and philosophies. In fact, in some countries where Islamic law reigns, Bibles are not even allowed to be examined, and it can be a crime to talk about the Christian faith.

There are also religions that have secret books written in obscure ways, which only the most enlightened can understand. The God of the Bible wants people to understand. Seeking the truth of Jesus is an active pursuit.

Intelligence
Reason is a gift from God. As we examine the information available in his Word and in the world around us, we have the capability of understanding for ourselves that the Christian worldview is the most reasonable view of reality available.

God doesn’t demand our allegiance through blind faith. “Because he said so,” is not a Christian teaching. No, God invites us into relationship, and God creates us in his image so we have the ability to relate. He invites us to use the intelligence he gives us to begin thinking how bad ideas and images, Satan’s strongest weapons, can be replaced by the truth of Jesus.

Test this out for yourself.

The first place we move away from God or toward God is through our thoughts. The devil works through our thinking more than anywhere else. Good thinking or bad thinking are real possibilities because God gives us the freedom to choose our thoughts.

We can’t control what is in the world, but we can control what is in our own thought-life. We can choose the content of our thinking. We can’t do it perfectly, but we can make progress in filling our thought-life more and more with God’s Word and the promises announced there.

Our thinking has four parts. First, there are ideas and images. Then there is information and intelligence.

Ideas
We have been forming an idea system since we were born. We have been influenced through experience, the teachings of others, and watching the behavior of our family and community. We don’t realize what is reality and what is false reality in our lives. When we look at our ideas, we do a reality check.

To transform our personal idea system from one of ruin to one of goodness, we have to replace our ideas with the idea system of Jesus. This is the most difficult and painful process in life. To actually change our minds.

Most people have their ideas firmly established when it comes to life’s values and beliefs by the time they are 12-13 years old. It is extraordinarily rare for us to change our thinking after that. It is essential that we do so, if we want our thinking to be more and more like the thinking of Jesus.

What is an example of thinking that many people hold to, that is destructive in their lives?

Consider “relativism,” for example. This is the belief that one person’s moral ideas are equally good to another person’s moral ideas. There is no right or wrong; only what you think is right and wrong. Your ideas are valid if you are sincere. Relativism has a strong influence in our society. No values can be wrong except, of course, if you disagree with me. Then you are wrong.

Images

Along with ideas, images fill our minds. They are basic and concrete and they have a powerful effect. Ideas and images are Satan’s main tools against us. What preoccupies our thought life? Ideas and specific images.

Sexual images are overwhelming in society. We see sexualized images in advertisement and the media everywhere. Pleasure and power await us as we think of these images. The multibillion-dollar pornography business is a huge tool that Satan uses today to tie minds to an endless cycle of lust and guilt and emptiness.

Jesus uses images to move us from self-worship to self-denial. The most powerful image in this is the cross. To look at a cross is to sense his love, sacrifice, devotion and strength. The cross is a reminder of what he did, but it is also a beckon of hope of what he is doing.

As we are being transformed to be like Jesus, the key is to take the destructive ideas and images we have and replace them with the ideas and images Jesus possesses. We take on the mind of Christ. This is a possibility for life in his Kingdom now.

1 Cor. 2:16 (NLT)
How could they? For, “Who can know what the Lord is thinking? Who can give him counsel?”

But we can understand these things, for we have the mind of Christ.

Where have you had challenges in your thinking?

How can we have radical transformation through the five aspects of who we are?

We take steps to change what keeps us from becoming like Jesus. We have the capability of doing this as we partner with Jesus, and begin transforming on the inside, so we might be like Jesus on the outside.

If we go step by step in each of the five areas in detail, what would this process look like? I will use the example of “anger” (note “mind” is divided into “thinking” and “feeling”).

My Heart
I may have grown up in a family where anger is normal and having a bad temper is expected.

My Mind’s Thoughts
I find reasons why I should be angry about the situation. I make sure I keep focusing on why I have been wronged.

My Mind’s Feelings
I enjoy the rush of emotion that attaches to my anger. It makes me feel so alive.

My Social Relations
I look for ways I can always have the upper hand with my friends and family members so I am the one who gets to lash out at them when the opportunity arises. I try to place them in anxiety-producing situations where they are never really comfortable around me.

My Body
Frowning and scowling are my normal facial characteristics and there is nothing so “good” as to raise my voice or whisper in a bitter tone. I find ways to get the adrenaline flowing and take on a nice red complexion.

My Soul
In all the parts of my being I just keep focusing on my rightness and everyone else’s wrongness. I am like a god of my own universe, and I am looking for every opportunity to lash out in wrath at those who would question my goodness.

Whew! Glad I got that over with!

Where has anger bitten you in the past?