Reprogramming Your Brain
New Thoughts can Become Your Thoughts
Jogging. It’s not an activity that has ever entered into my desires. I’ve told people, “If you see me running, you should run too, because something really bad must be coming!”
My father-in-law is a runner though, always has been. He is in his 80’s now, but has competed in the Senior Olympics and used to run a special 6-minute mile on each birthday well into his 50’s.
Can you imagine? Running on your birthday? Me either.
In spite of my attitude toward running, some of that “running gene” has filtered down to my father-in-law’s children and grandchildren and one of our daughters recently began a strict regimen of running at dawn. I admire her tenacity and commitment.
She recently said something that really struck me. It was around 6am, she had just finished a run and confessed that she hadn’t felt like running that morning. “But,” she wrote, “I have to keep the promise to myself that I will run, or my brain will never learn that I’m serious.”
Reprogramming her brain, that’s what she’s talking about. Retraining her brain to know, “This is what we do every morning.”
It made me think of a tweak, a reprogramming, my brain needed when it came to spiritual warfare.
As a recent situation in my life drove me to my knees – in pain and in prayer – I poured myself into prayer beyond the norm. I decreed and declared and renounced and repented. All of those things were good. However, I began to realize that a tweak, a reprogramming, of my brain desperately needed to happen when it came to how I did spiritual warfare. #Prayer #Hurting #SpiritualWarfare #ChristianBlog
As a recent situation in my life drove me to my knees – in pain and in prayer – I poured myself into prayer beyond the norm, into trying to rid my heart and my environment of all that could be causing the pain, into trying to make it through each day without throwing in the towel. I had bound what I could see to bind and loosed every good thing I could think of. I had decreed and declared and renounced and repented.
All of those things were good. There were things that needed to be rooted out and dealt with. However, in my constant and fervent prayer over the issues and in my constant efforts to hear what else the Lord would have me do about them, I began to realize that I was actually lifting up the situation instead of lifting up the Lord.
I needed to reprogram my brain from constantly trying to pray about my situation to praising the God who is Lord regardless of my situation.
My efforts in prayer were focusing me more and more on the problem – how to pray more effectively, how to get at the root of the problem. It all just became a tether, yoking me to my circumstances instead of the easy and light yoke of Jesus that connected me to Him. I had prayed as I needed, now I needed to simply trust and fix my eyes on Jesus.
By continually ruminating on my situation, I was actually reinforcing it, I was programming my mind to the situation. In doing so, I was seeing everything through the framework of what was happening to me. I needed to be fixing my mind on Jesus – His goodness, His faithfulness, His love – to reprogram my mind to heaven’s way of thinking and seeing. I needed my mind to be renewed, transformed, molded to and redesigned to see through heaven’s framework.
This is why we are told that “they who wait for Yahweh shall renew their strength” (Isaiah 40:31). It is those whose eyes are steadfastly focused on God in His greatness that have their minds reprogrammed to see all situations in their lives through the framework that gives strength. The “youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted” because they are trying to do in their own strength what is the Lord’s to do.
We cannot reprogram (renew, in Biblical language) our minds in your own strength any more than we can see your face without the aid of a reflection. Transformation is the work of the Holy Spirit. It is only as we gaze upon the image of God that the Holy Spirit can transform us more and more into His image. #LifeQuotes #Transformation #ChristianBlog #RenewingTheMind
We cannot reprogram (renew, in Biblical language) our minds in your own strength any more than we can see your face without the aid of a reflection. It is only as we gaze upon the image of God that the Holy Spirit can transform us more and more into His image.
With this continual and repeated focal shift from problems to the image of God, we can run our race even when weariness tries to make us acquiesce to the weight of our circumstances. We can face each new day knowing that the Lord, who works all for our good and who fights on our behalf, is not about to overlook a situation. We can pray with confidence that our Abba will answer and then rest as we gaze at this world through the framework of heaven.
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Romans 12:2
For more on “The Fog of War,” click HERE!