This is a scripture I've read many times, but I remember the day it jumped out at me as if it slapped me across the face with a brick. Ever have those "A ha!" moments? You've read a scripture so much, but you never really got it until...BAM! That's the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit. He teaches us, gives understanding of Scripture and how it applies to our lives.
We really don't need false teachers keeping us stuck in the old man to sell books, DVDs and conference seats. We do it just fine on our own. Our own minds are our worst enemies and it's true our minds are a battle ground. Everything begins with a thought. Behaviors, depression, sadness, sin, etc., all have their beginnings in the mind. Action is a manifestation of what's been sitting there.
In Ephesians 5:25-26, husbands are told to love their wives just as Christ loved the church and cleansed her by the washing of the water with the Word. Renewing our minds daily with Bible study is a constant cleansing and changing of our minds. Behaviors, sins and patterns of sin can't survive when they're being washed over and transformed into the image of Christ. When we buy workbooks written by others and DVDs, go to their conferences, pray the prayers they've written for us in their books, they're keeping us locked into our old ways of thinking. Nothing they do, say, promise or sell us can renew our minds and change those patterns. Only Scripture can. The Holy Spirit never operates outside of God's Word or independently of it. He only speaks what He hears (John 16:13) and it's always right in line with Scripture, thus being in the Word daily can't be neglected or replaced.
When Christians look to other methods besides God and Scripture that's exactly what the world does. That's the pattern of the world. The world goes to motivational speakers, psychiatrists, doctors, therapists, seminars and gurus. They take drugs and spend hundreds of millions on self help material that do nothing other than keep them harping on the same issues for years and in the same corrupt patterns of thinking. Are they ever transformed? No and they never will be. If they could then Scripture wouldn't tell us to stop conforming to it. Anything the world offers is like sprinkling perfume on a decaying corpse. We're told to be transformed...to be changed by renewing our minds. Put to death the deeds of the flesh (Romans 8:13) and those deeds come from a sinfully corrupt mind. In order to put them to death, the first thing struck must be the mind.
We're not changed overnight when we're saved. It's a process of conformity to Christ. Christ is the Word of God made flesh (John 1) therefore, we can't be conformed without Scripture. There can be no transformation and cleansing without a washing. If you've been looking to every other method outside of Scripture...therein lies the problem.
Renew Your Mind...
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