Always Thinking

We are always thinking. Even when we’re not concentrating on thinking, we are thinking. Everyday we ponder, recollect, daydream, analyze, plan. Scripture has much to say about our thinking. Perhaps the most challenging is found in Romans 12:2, Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you by changing the way you think (NLT). Upon first reading that can seem an impossibility, but it can’t be impossible or God would have never given us this instruction. However, we must remember that, in our own strength, neither you nor I can change the way we think. It takes something more powerful than us. It takes the Holy Spirit working within us. When we choose to submit our whole selves to the Holy Spirit at work within us, then we know the truth and joy of Luke 1:37 which tells us, For with God nothing shall be impossible (KJV). We can try and try to be our best selves; becoming a kinder person in the process of our own attempts, but to become holy as God is holy (I Peter 1:16) then we need every possibility in God that is available to every child of God.

Willfully surrendering ourselves to the work of the Holy Spirit is not a one time only decision, but a daily choice. Is it easy? Oh no! It’s hard because our arch enemy, Satan, fights hard to keep us from growing closer to Jesus. Satan never wants any of us to know the depths of peace and heights of joy that comes to us when we allow the Holy Spirit to transform the way we think. Perhaps the writer of Hebrews was thinking about that when writing, Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith (12:1-2 NIV). John the Baptist had to have some inkling of the importance of how we think when he wrote of Jesus, He must increase, but I must decrease (John 3:30 KJV). Jesus cannot become greater in our lives without our minds conforming to that idea or shall we say, to that very thought. Paul encouraged this same thing when he wrote, Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus (NLT&KJV)).

When we are controlling our own thoughts, we end us surrendering them to our feelings rather than to our minds. Our feelings are wishy-washy. Our feelings, sometimes against our own desires, can fill us with tenderness or rage one minute, and with selflessness or self-centeredness the next. Submitting instead to the power of the Holy Spirit, (everyday and sometimes several times through the day as we struggle with Satan’s attacks on our minds) keeps us on a steady path that leads to transformation. As we are being transformed, we are leaving behind willful sinfulness; gradually taking on instead, that family resemblance of Jesus shining in our lives. All this is possible through the power of the Holy Spirit, but the choice is entirely ours to allow transformation of our minds or not.

Let us choose to think on these things because these things are true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable (Philippians 4:8 NLT).