RENEWAL OF THE MIND

Isa. 40:31 But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

 We have seen how in Isaiah chapter 40 verse 31 that the word wait comes from the word quavah in the Hebrew, which means to be bound. It is the same word that means to be gathered together in unison.

In Gen. 1: 9 we see how the word quavah has been used to refer to the gathering of the water together. So waiting on God is not just to receive something neither is it to just give some thin although both of these aspect are important. We need to learn to come to God to receive; we need to learn to come to God to give onto God and surrender onto God service too. However, the pure sense of waiting means to come into God’s presence to be one with Him, to be entwined with Him and to be bound together in unison with Him. That is why we spend our time with God waiting on God.

There is a New Testament aspect to that, which we are going to look at today. It is comparative to Rom. 12:1-2 I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Paul starts off by saying present your bodies as a living sacrifice onto God. It’s the act of presenting ourselves to God, that God may be in us and that we may be in Him. There is a sense of bringing ourselves to unity with God. Verse 2 Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

The word renewal of the mind refers to being made new. It is from the Greek word anakainosis. Anakainosis is the combination of two Greek words. The Greek word for new is the word kainos. All things have been made kainos. And the word ana means again.

In church history, you will read about a denomination called the Anabaptists, which emphasize re-baptism or to be baptized again. When you add those two words together anakainos it means that it is to make new again. It is not just to clean up. Today in the English the word renew means to make it as good as new. But in the Greek word, it is to take away the old one and replace it with the new one. Something takes place, which is why the bible on one side talks about the carnal mind and on the other side talks about the renewal of the mind, Christ like mind,

being of one mind with the Lord and the Spirit of the mind. There is a creative force being put upon our mind and our soul.

Kenneth Hagin speaks about that how before he was born again he was quite dumb. He never made the grades; in fact, he always fails in all his exams. I am talking about in the natural failure not just failing in the things of God. He could not do well in his studies. But the day he got  born again something started happening in his mind.

To make it understandable in layman’s terms, intelligence seems to be imparted upon him. And when he went back to school after he was healed he made straight “A”s. God did something to the mind. Sometimes it is hard for us to understand that because we are looking from an imperfect perspective. We are looking at the world from our perspective, as we have known it. We have known the world as it is, a fallen world. We have lived in it; we have grown up in it. And we think that this is the normal.

But if we look at the bible in the original plan of God, God made Adam without sin and with a perfect mind. It was when sin came in that man’s mind was darkened. When man’s mind was darkened, that was the beginning of the sub-conscious mind. Today all men use even geniuses use only about 5 to10 percent of their mind. Scientists have agreed that we have never and we could never be able to tap the vast resources of our mind. For that matter when a person has a brain operation and in the brain operation some cells get destroyed, that person can still come back and live a normal life because they have enough cells inside there that could be trained to take over the work of the old cells. Brain cells are strange in that you cannot replace them. We received a set number of brain cells when we are born. All the other cells in our body can change and new ones are poured about.

But once you lose the brain cell that’s it. They are not renewed or replaceable. However, when you lose some of the brain cells, those brain cells that have not been used at all seem capable to take over the work of the old ones. So man is only using about 5 to 10 percent of their mind. And today all of us understand the concept of the conscious and the sub-conscious mind. We understand that our conscious mind is

only about 5 to10 percent. The rest of our mind 90 percent of that is all in the subconscious mind. And most of our decision seems to be made from the conscious mind but a vast influence is from the sub-conscious level. So let’s build a basis on that background first.

In the book of Eph. 4:17-18 Now this I affirm and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds; they are darkened in the understanding, alienated from the life of God

because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. The bible here talks about the fallen nature and the fallen condition of men. When Adam fell, he was cut off from the life of God. He was alienated from the life of God. The moment he was alienated from the life of God something happened in his mind - darkness reign. And it has been in that way throughout all this generation from Adam till now. Because of that, man could not know the full capacity of what God has made him to be. It takes a long time for us to learn something from this earth. But in heaven, it is different. In heaven, there is no time. But should there be measurement of time. Percy Colette went to heaven for six hours earthly time. He couldn’t play any musical instrument and he saw some huge musical instrument there in heaven, the heavenly type of piano comparatively speaking. So he went there and the moment he sat down on it he knew how to play. What takes a person eight years to master takes just a moment of time in heaven. Anything can be learned very fast in heaven because we are redeemed and God restores us to the stage before the fall. That was the original plan of God.

When Adam saw the animals, he knew their names. That is a marvelous

intelligence. Do you know that today there are zoologists who study one animal their whole life and still they don’t understand everything about that particular animal? Some of them study bears for their whole life. Their whole life is spent on one animal and they don’t understand the animal fully. When God brought every animal to Adam, he took one look and that’s it, he knew it. So there is no comparison to what was available before the fall. We have established the fact that when Adam fell part of his mind could not be available for us to use in the way that Adam has used it before.

In order to understand the soul part let me use the natural understanding

too. Today scientists say that the tiny little organ called the appendix (which lies on the junction of the small intestines with the large intestine) is of no use. Some scientists have made a research on that and found that in herbivorous animals, the appendix seems to process substances that come from a solely vegetarian diet. So it is possible that man was created originally a vegetarian. In the Garden of Eden God told Adam that He gave to him all the fruits of the trees and all the herbs of the

field as food. No animals were mentioned. Meat is permitted today.

The reason is after Noah’s flood four things happened. The first thing is the rotation of the earth around the sun. We have proven from the bible the calculation of the days of Noah. We have calculated and we showed that the earth went round the sun about 360 days. Their months is exactly 30 days. Their year is exactly 360 days. After the flood, some events happened. And the earth was shaken and that is how the rotation of the earth was affected. At the same time, the geographical axis of the earth was affected. And the earth tilted. If you study geography, it is the tilt of the earth that causes the four seasons. If the earth doesn’t tilt it wouldn’t have the four seasons. And notice that when the earth tilted, the magnetic pull did not tilt. So the magnetic North and the true North Pole are different.

Another change that happened after Noah’s flood was the life span of man. You notice man’s life was shortened significantly after the flood. The reason is the covering of water above the earth was removed. If you read Genesis 1, God made the waters above the earth and the waters on the earth. When the water of the earth is separated from the land, there was land and there was sea. But there was a layer of water around the earth. The earth was like in an air-conditioned atmosphere.

Some people ask, “What happened to the waters up there?” After the flood, all the waters from on high poured down. Look at the North Pole and the South Pole. If the ice in the North Pole and the South Pole were to melt, we all would be submerged. So we realized that a lot of things have happened. And so, under what I call “hostile conditions,” God permitted the eating of meat to survive. But I do not advocate that we all go back to be vegetarians. If you ever do that for religious reasons, please examine the bible in Romans chapter 14. Under hostile conditions, you need a different diet to adapt to the new condition after Noah’s flood. So from Noah’s time God said it is permitted to eat meat. If you ever stayed in a cold country, you realize that when you eat a piece of steak it keeps you warm.

Let’s get back to our original topic. We were talking here in reference to the condition that happened. We were talking about the original function of the appendix and according to my theory man was made a vegetarian. And possibly, there were organs within him to take care of this full vegetarian diet. But through time when man began to eat both herbs and plants, fruits as well as animals, slowly the organ becomes disused. And today all you have is a tiny little sticking hook that people say I wonder what is it for. So we see even in our physical body there are organs that are no more in use or underused. How much more? There are four organs within our sub-conscious mind called the dialogismos (the reasoning part of the brain) and its subconscious part called the enthumesis as well as the dianoia (the visualizing part of the brain) and its subconscious part called the ennoia. They are still usable to a certain extend since they are a part of us that affects our dream life.

In Adam’s time, there was no sub-conscious mind. Imagine that kind of mind that he has. It was only after the fall that darkness came in.

For that matter Paul prayed in Ephesians 1 that their minds be flooded with light. When the light of Christ comes into your spirit, there begins a renewal process in your mind. That renewal process is creative. Paul is speaking about the same thing about the mind in Ephesians 4:17-18, This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart. Then he concludes on the tiny sub-section of the mind in verse 23 and 24, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.

What is the spirit of the mind? Do you notice that our brain is connected

intricately to our body? Every nerve system ends up connected to the spinal cord and the spinal cord is connected to the brain. We could naturally say that there is the body of the brain in a sense that the brain is connected to all our bodily organs.

Anything that affects the spinal cord affects your bodily organ. Anything that affects the brain will affect a part of our bodily function. That is in the natural. There is another part that is unseen and very hard for man to conceive. There is a connection between the spirit and the mind. If you could understand that there is a connection between the brain and the body, I want you to stretch your imagination a little bit and see that there is a connection between your spirit and your mind. Spirit influences the mind. There is an intricate link between the spiritual world and the mind. I purposely use the word mind instead of brain. The mind is more a concept. You can’t see it; you can’t look at it through a microscope.

You could look at the brain but you can’t look at the mind. So, the spirit is

connected to the mind in some way. The devil is a spirit being. He puts evil thoughts into your mind. So definitely, on the negative side, you could see that there is a cause and an effect ratio between spirit realm and the mind. The mind is the battlefield. We also know that for God’s Spirit to work, He needs to affect the mind. We can prove it from Romans 8 where Paul said if your mind thinks about things that are wrong they will produce death. If you stay your mind on the spiritual things, they will produce life and peace. If you think your mind on carnal

things, it produces death. If you think your mind on the things of the Spirit, it produces things to do with the spirit realm. I have given enough scriptures to describe what I propose to you this statement that the spirit is connected to the mind. And on this side, the body is connected to the brain. We cannot tell how the mind and the brain are connected because it is an invisible connection. But let me tell you scientists find it difficult to deal with things that are invisible. But knowledge has abounded to the extent that today they realize that the brain seems to be connected to some invisible force. In the book “Hand on the Helm,” the author mentioned some experiments that they have conducted.

Today scientists can measure the electrical activities of the brain by means of an instrument sensitive enough to measure the amount of current, which is actually very minute. They connected some instruments to the brain of somebody who was an unbeliever and an infidel. An infidel is not only an unbeliever but is someone who curses God. Just before he died, he cursed and the needle of the instrument shows to the negative. They said that it was interesting. Then they put it on a dear

lady. This dear lady also was going to die. And she praised and worshiped the Lord. The needle not only moved to the positive side but the needle hit the edge of the positive side. Because of that, the scientist who conducted this experiment accepted Christ and was born again. So, they realize that the mind is connected to the brain in some invisible ways. Thoughts affect your brain signal. I am giving as many natural things to illustrate as much as possible to understand this concept. About six months ago, it came out in a popular science magazine that somebody invented a powerful machine that could detect tiny little magnet signals by using a super magnetic that have just recently been discovered. We all know that electricity produces magnetism. All magnetism can be harnessed to produce electricity and it’s a reversible law. Somebody thought of this and he said if the brain has electric signals (which it has) they could measure it. They even examine how the nerves communicate and they found that the nerves make use of sodium and potassium ions that have electric charges. So there are electric signals going through your nerves. So this person said if there are electric signals there must be magnetic signals.

The only drawback is that since the electric signal is so tiny, to see that

magnetic signal is even more difficult. It’s just like look for a needle in a hay sack. In the end, there came a very powerful magnet that could detect tiny magnetic signals. They saw for the first time that when a person is thinking about something there were signals all over a certain side of the brain. Then when the person thought of something they could see the pattern of activities. We have tried to use natural illustration to show that there is connection between magnetism and electricity.

Electricity is tangible. But magnetism is intangible and you need to use some thing to see it. The magnetism is related to electricity so is the mind related to the brain.

What the mind conceived produces electric signals on the brain. And for the soul area and the brain the reverse is not true. It is more the mind controlling the brain. So there is this intricate connection.

So let’s go to understanding bible verse in Ephesians 4: 23-24 Paul concluded by saying, be renewed in the spirit of your mind. He is telling us to let the spiritual force in our mind area to be renewed and produce in us a new mind. And then your new mind begins to affect your body. Immediately he tells us in the next verse that you put on the new man. So, the new mind is connected to the new man. There is such a thing as a spirit of your mind, where the spirit takes control of a part of your mind where before your mind was all isolated and alienated from the life of God in the spirit realm. Now the spirit that belongs to you began to put forth spiritual nerves into your mind so that the spirit within you could control your mind. As the spirit puts forth its tentacles of spiritual nerves, that part of your mind becomes a spirit of your mind. There is a renewal process, where your mind is touched in the realm of the spirit. When those cells become yielded to the spirit realm, it becomes a part of the new function. Paul says be renewed in the spirit of your mind.

Now let’s see the whole process in Romans12: 2 Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. Your thoughts will produce a change in your body. In fact, today scientists admit that over 90 percent of sickness and disease are psychosomatic. Even the immune system can be affected by your thoughts. A negative person, a depressed person is more vulnerable to sicknesses and disease because their body hormones are affected. So their resistance lower all because of a thought. Definitely, your thought affects your very body. Now let us give you the goody grace. The word transform is from a Greek word metamorphoomai where your get the word metamorphosis”. Metamorphosis speaks not of a physical change but to use the language of chemistry it talks about a chemical change. A physical change is like when you hit an iron rod it turns red.

But when you cool it down it goes back to normal. It is only a physical change. But a chemical change is irreversible. Metamorphosis speaks about a change within our mind that is permanent. You never see a frog going back to tadpole. But you do see a tadpole going to a frog. Metamorphosis is one way and is not two ways. So the mind is being renewed and it is true when you look at your own self today.

Look at the way you think. When you were just born into this world, you didn’t have the kind of mind that you have. You have the potential but look at yourself today. Your thoughts, your ideas, your desires, your conceptions, your abilities, have been the result of years of patterning your thought life so that your thoughts move into a certain direction.

The way you think is also a habit as much as the way you brush your teeth in the morning. We can train our mind to be positive or we can train our mind to be negative. That is a fact. We can choose our thoughts. Satan may offer his realm of thoughts but we can choose our thoughts just as we can choose how we develop our habits. When you get up in the morning, it’s a habit for you to brush your teeth.

It becomes a physical habit of doing things. How come you like certain colors? When you were born as a baby, you don’t know anything about colors. But as you grew up, things developed in your sub-conscious. You associate colors with different things. Then you began to like certain colors. Your conscious mind has lost memory in that. It is still in your sub-conscious. Maybe something sad happened to you when your house was all red in color. And your conscious mind forgot but your sub-conscious mind remembered why you never like red and you don’t understand why you don’t like red. Things like that happen. You are your

personality, your being is where your thought pattern has been trained today. A negative person is a person who has a negative thought pattern. And it takes training to every day to reject negative thoughts and take on positive thoughts until your mind becomes positively geared. And when your mind becomes positively geared, it affects your brain. When it affects your brain it will also affect your body.

When it affects your body, it affects your health also. It affects your body and it affects your performance. When it affects your achievement, it affects your income. It affects your income it affects your success. Everything starts in the mind. Metamorphosis is an irreversible process. There is one time when the bible uses this word metamorphosis.

Let’s turn to Mark 9:2 And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves; and he was metamorphoomai. The bible use the word transfigured. He was transfigured or metamorphoomai in the Greek.

In case you didn’t know why the translators were not consistent in their

translation, it is because when they first translated the Greek bible and the Hebrew bible they divided it into sections. Each section was taken by a different group of translators. As a result, sometimes one section uses a different English word for the same Greek word.

So here is the word metamorphoomai translated as transfigured. The actual happening was this: Jesus’ skin began to change. Even His clothing began to respond to that whatever process was taking place.

And if we apply that same translation to Romans 12:2 we could have

translated it this way. And do not be conformed to the world but be transfigured by the renewing of your mind. Just putting these two scriptures together, we can make this third conclusion. If Jesus’ transfiguration equals to His glory and His kingdom and if Romans 12:2’s transfiguration equals to the renewal of the mind, then we see that being renewed in your mind equals to the transfiguration in your body. Now we understand how people like Enoch can walk with God and be taken up to heaven. Whether you recognize it or not, whether the scientists recognize it or not, the bible recognizes that your mind controls every cells in your being. All things are possible to those who believe if they doubt not in their heart.

These are conditions of the mind too. They are spiritual forces no doubt. Faith is a spiritual force but faith affects your mind. Mark 11:23-24 tells us that if you say to this mountain be removed and be cast into the sea and believe in your heart and shall not doubt. Doubt has to do with your mind. And faith and belief has to somehow cause a renewal of your mind too. It starts in the spirit but it has to get a hold of your mind. Your mind, your thought life, holds a tremendous power to healing, to miracles, to signs, to wonders, to controlling this whole world. If your mind is linked up to God, it can produce anything that you can conceive.

Think about it, no sickness can stand your thought. No situation can withstand your thought. For that matter whenever you are tired and you need energy you know where to tune in. Tune in your thought.

I used to sleep very few hours. I said, “Lord teach me how to sleep less,

please.” Then the Lord said, “The first thing you need to do is to get rid of what you have been educated.” I said, “O God that’s no problem. I am willing.” God said, “You are normally educated that you need about 7 to 8 hours of sleep.” I said, “Yes that’s right.” God said, “The first thing you have to do is to throw that out of the window.” I said, “O.K. I throw that out of the window.” God said, “You only need whatever sleep I tell you, you need.” So, if your mind is trained to accept that you need 7 to 8 hours of sleep I can guarantee you that if you don’t have that 7 to 8

hours of sleep you will feel tired. You told yourself that; somebody also told you. People talk about averages but let me tell you that there is no such thing as average. An average is just a statistic. For example, they will say an average child will reach puberty at such and such an age. It is only a statistic, But each child body has its own biological clock. And if the child reaches puberty let’s say three years later, is that child abnormal? No, that child’s biological clock was working in that child normally. But when that child compares with 90 others then you say she is abnormal. Average is merely a statistic. It is not something that should put condemnation on you.

This is why for example if a woman’s pregnancy period is supposed to be nine months, some could be perfectly normal. There is this lady Nora Lam who is in the United States bringing a lot of missionaries to China. She was pregnant and expecting a child and she was imprisoned in China. Do you know how long God made her keep that child? I remember it was throughout the 15 months and the child was still normal. It is all what we have been told. Averages are O.K. if you

understand its limitation because statistics can be used against people too. If I want to prove to you that the average income of people in this country is very high, I take a survey of one thousand people living in that posh Kenny Hill area. But if I want to prove to you that average income is very low, I do a survey of one thousand people living in the squatter area. So, you must judge all things that you hear. Don’t get blocked by statistics. Examined how they got that statistics. The how is important. Nobody takes statistic of a million people. You know why. They can’t

handle it. Even Time magazine statistics are limited to thousands of figures, that’s all. Only God knows the real average. We have sometimes wrongly educated the mind.

That’s how God dealt with me. God said, “O.K. you got to renew your

thinking.” I said, “Alright Lord.” And God said, “You flow with your biological clock in your body. I have ordained that my people rest once a week. If you go for long periods without that rest, you will need to take it too.” I am not advocating pushing your body beyond proportion. But I am saying that there are times when God requires of you hard work maybe for four, five days. You need a truth a revelation from the Word to push you through. What kind of truth will help you?

You put aside what you have been educated in and then you say, “Whatever sleep I require will be what God tells me I require.” And you tell your mind, “Mind you can rest later. But mind now you work.” And you will be able to refresh yourself like the morning dew every day and your body responds too. You re-educate your mind.

Many times before, it can bring healing to people who face impossible

situations. When I visit them in hospital the biggest battle that I face is to get them to believe. Because the doctors have told them this, friends have told them this, uncles and great aunts have told them this, and it is all in their mind, “You are going to die.” The doctor says that you got a hundred days to live. So everybody tell them that. Their mind accepts it. And they die exactly. They accept the fact. It all has to do with the mind and the pattern of your thought. The awesome power can be released in the mind. I remember in one of Sadhu Sundar Singh’s conversations with the Lord Jesus, He told him this, “The capacity that I have placed in the human mind is beyond what man has ever consumed. If any man or woman could gear all the energy of their desire to what they set their mind to and not doubt they will get whatever they want.” We got a nuclear reactor in us and we are using it for torchlight. Your mind is the atomic nuclear reactor and you are using it for torchlight. You can do more that torchlight. Tremendous resources. The only problem is this: a nuclear reactor needs tremendous resources to control. It is not easy to control a nuclear reactor. And there is only one force I know that can

control the mind: the Word of the living God. That can touch the fullness of the mind’s potential. This is why I delight to meditate on the Word since I know that the Word does something to my soul. It does something to my mind.

The thoughts that the world gives you may be positive and good but they can never be as good as what the Word gives you. Meditate on the Word of God. For this Word can do something in your mind that no education system can do. This Word can do something in your soul that no teaching or discovery and principles good though they may be cannot compare with what the written Word can do to your life. So I will conclude with two major keys to renew the mind. No. 1 is the Word of God. The Word gives you a new way of thinking and a new way of

understanding. The Word is the only philosophy if you are intellectual that you should have. Philosophy is man’s conception of life and what life is about; its beginning and origin of life. If you are someone like that, get all your philosophy in the Word. The Word contains all the laws of success that are necessary for any business. It tells you things and principles that the world only touches on. But here it is completely given. The Word tells us about the family life. The Word tells us about the thought life. The Word tells us the thought that we should think. The

Word warns against fear. Fear is always a thought. All fear is in thought. Think about the things you are afraid of. What was it that held you, a thought. Isn’t it marvelous that sometimes we see a big size fellow afraid to swim? By all scientific analysis, he has the capacity to do it. He has the muscles power to do it. He is not sick. He is not crippled. But he said, “I can’t swim.” What held him? Fear in his thought life. He never ventures into the water to learn. He is capable but the fear held him. It is in the thought. All of us go through life with fear thrown upon us because this is the world system. Fear comes sometimes through the lips of your own parents. You can’t do this. You will never succeed. And you are afraid. What will you do if you fail? You got nothing to eat. You will be a road sweeper. Fear, so we are afraid. Small little children we tell them the wrong teaching. We put fear into the children. So the children learn to fear. They are crippled. In the end, you cripple their ability to relate to people. Fear is in the thoughts.

Faith starts in the thoughts too. You cannot do what you cannot do because somebody said you cannot do. And because you discover you cannot do and because your failure has crippled you, you say, “I cannot do it.” But with God, all things are possible. The Word of God tells you in Joshua 1:8 if you meditate on the Word of God day and night and let not the law of God depart from your mouth, you shall prosper and have good success. People are not doing what they should because they are afraid.

The second way to renew the mind is by prayer. In Luke chapter 9:28-29

Now about eight days after these sayings He took with Him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And as He was praying the appearance of His countenance was altered. Prayer is an important key.

Message by Pastor Peter Tan