Heart & Mind

"Heart & Mind"

Rom. 12:2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by 

the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and 

acceptable, and perfect, will of God. 

Your mind does according to what is put into it. Your mind can either 
"act" or "react". When things happen to you, your mind will pull from 
what it has been feeding on and address the issue based on what is in 
it! You see, it's like your mind is a tool box and whatever tools you 
have put into it are the tools you have to work with. Thus, when 
circumstances, trials, tribulations, etc. come your way, you have to 
use the tools that you have to deal with the crisis. If all you put 
into your mind is garbage, then your decision making will suffer 
because your mind cannot deal with situations properly. And it will 
also cause you to live according to your thoughts instead of living 
according to the Word. See, the more God we put into our mind, the 
more of him we will have to handle our situations and circumstances 
when they arise. Reading the Word and understanding it will begin to 
saturate our minds and renew us from the wrong thoughts. And our 
thinking will be subject to his Word instead of our own way and we can 
effectively give our problems to him.

To truly give it to God, we have to make sure we have allowed him 
access to our minds as well as our heart. Many of us only allow him 
access to our hearts and therefore, when we talk to him, he feels far 
from us. We sometimes try to carry him around as a tool to use when we 
need him, while we constantly fill our minds with negative things 
via sinful lifestyles, people, places, music, movies, etc. that 
showcase immoral things instead of the Spiritual things from God. 
Eventually, that takes a toll on us. It begins to out weigh the "God" 
in our minds. So, when problems or situations come, our minds "react" 
to them based on what we have filled our minds up with! The more evil 
in there, the more we react evilly. The more God in there, the more God 
can act for us. Sure you may have salvation in your heart, but your 
mind can definitely lead you away from the presence of God and you can 
be a gospel disaster! How many Christians do you know like that? Come 
to church, serve in church, talk about church, but their homes are a 
mess! That's because they have accepted Christ in their hearts, but 
their minds are not sober. To be sober minded requires you to protect 
your mind from corruption so that you do not walk according to worldly 
thoughts, but you govern your life by thinking on things above. Sure 
it's good to have a clean heart, but for your heart to STAY clean, you 
must have a renewed mind.

Suggested Reading: 1Pet. 1:13, Rom. 12:2, Eph. 2:3, Phil. 2:5