From the Desk of Steve Shultz:
I sure appreciate Bill Johnson, his ministry and the wisdom of God he carries. We all need to glean from the wisdom in his article right now.
I sure want to have the mind of Christ, be heavenly-minded and have God's perspective in this season...we all need this!
Read this Spirit-filled word by Pastor Bill Johnson and get ready to be renew your mind! (To Subscribe to the Elijah List subscribe here.)
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The only way to consistently do Kingdom works is to view reality from God's perspective. That's what the Bible means when it talks about renewing our minds. The battle is in the mind. The mind is the essential tool in bringing Kingdom reality to the problems and crises people face. God has made it to be the gatekeeper of the supernatural.
To be of any use to the Kingdom, our minds must be transformed to be like the mind of God. We find a clue to what that word means in the transfiguration of Jesus when He talked with Moses and Elijah. The reality of Heaven radiated through Jesus, and He shone with incredible brilliance. His body revealed the reality of another world. The word transformed in that passage is the same word we find in Romans 12:2. The renewed mind, then, reflects the reality of another world in the same way Jesus shone with Heaven's brilliance. It's not just that our thoughts are different, but that our way of thinking is transformed because we think from a different reality—from Heaven toward Earth!
That is the transformed perspective. The renewed mind enables His co-laborers to prove the will of God. We prove the will of God when put on display the reality of Heaven. The unrenewed mind, on the other hand, brings about a completely different manifestation:
"Hear, O Earth! Behold, I will certainly bring calamity on this people—the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not heeded My words nor My law, but rejected it." (Jeremiah 6:19)
I understand that there is often hesitancy when we talk about the mind as a tool of God. At times in Church history the intellectual aspect of the mind has been so exalted that it has wiped out a real lifestyle of faith. Men of sincere faith have been lured into a mindset of skepticism and doubt. Theology has been exalted at the expense of belief. Academic assessment has replaced firsthand, supernatural experience. There is good reason not to let the mind dictate how we will believe. But Christians often react to error and create another error in the process. Pentecostals have often downplayed the mind's importance, implying that it has no value at all.
Many Christians instinctively distrust the mind, thinking it is irredeemably corrupt and humanistic. They point to Harvard and Yale and other universities that were originally founded on Christian principles, but which today promulgate deceptions and lies. However, the mind is actually a powerful instrument of the Spirit of God. He made it to be the gatekeeper of Kingdom activity on Earth. The great tragedy when a mind goes astray is that God's freedom to establish His will on Earth is limited.
The mind is not to be tossed out; it is to be used for its original purpose. If the mind weren't vitally important to our walk with Christ and our commission, Paul wouldn't have urged us to "be transformed by the renewing of our minds." In fact, only a renewed mind can consistently bring Kingdom reality to Earth. Yet many of us live with unrenewed minds, which are of little use to God.
An unrenewed mind is like a discordant key on a piano. Once you discover that key, you don't use it anymore because it detracts from the music. You skip over it and work around it. In the same way, people who are out of sync with the mind of Christ seldom get used, no matter how available they are, because their thoughts conflict with the mind of Christ. They are self-appointed in their mission and are not in submission to the primary mission. As a result, they are working entirely outside God's intended commission.
However, when we come into agreement with the primary mission, our minds become powerful tools in God's hands. This explains why there is such an intense war being waged for your mind and your mental agreement. Every thought and action in your life speaks of allegiance to God or to satan. Both are empowered by your agreement.
Renewing your mind means learning to recognize what comes from Hell, and what comes from Heaven, and agreeing with Heaven. That is the only way you will complete your divine assignment. God designed your mind to be one of the most supernaturally powerful tools in the universe, but it needs to be sanctified and yielded to the Holy Spirit so you can carry out His designs, creative ideas, and plans in your everyday life.
Repentance Made Practical
Renewing the mind begins with repentance. That is the gateway to return to our original assignment on Earth. Jesus said, "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." To many Christians, repent refers to having an altar call where people come forward and weep at the altar and get right with God. That is a legitimate expression of repentance, but it's not what the word repentance means. "Re" means to go back. "Pent" is like the penthouse, the top floor of a building. Repent, then, means... (continue reading)
