Dear Ones,
This meditation, like the others in the Renewing Our Minds series, is taken from the Biblical Truths learned in Christ Life which have been foundational for the FMM Pilot Group members. We’ll start with a basic timeline:
Past………………………………………………Present………………………………………..Future
Now picture a person in the middle of that timeline with two giant rubber bands anchored in his middle and attached at both ends.
Anchor……………………………………….Person………………………………………Anchor
He’s facing the future. The rubber band behind him is tethered to his past and the one in the front is tethered to his potential future. As long as he remains stationary, he feels no tension and experiences a dull, painless sense of comfort and so, he remains inert and stagnant.
The Path of Least Resistance
But if he should try to move toward his potential future, the rubber band (which represents his past programming and mental conditioning) starts to tighten and begins to try to pull him back and stop his forward progress. After a while, the strain he feels from that backward pull becomes so great that, in order to feel some relief, he gives in to the pull. When he does, the tension eases and that static point in the middle of the timeline becomes his natural ‘path of least resistance.’ Thus inertia becomes this person’s ‘normal’ state. The comfort and ease he feels convince him to stay put, and not ‘make waves.’ And so his entrenched pattern becomes one of protecting and maintaining his ‘comfort zone’ by not allowing himself to stray too far toward either end.
We are all very familiar with what we knew in the past and what is comfortable for us in the present because we know what to expect… even if they were, and still are, difficult. Therefore, since what is known is more comfortable and familiar than the unknown that lies in our potential future, that future that God has waiting for us up ahead continues to remain unknown. We see it as something negative because to our current way of thinking and living, it’s foreign, unfamiliar, unknown, and therefore, uncomfortable. The future is hard for us to grasp or identify with, naturally speaking, because it is always ahead of us. It is never right here with us in the present; it’s not here yet. So our fallen, fearful, comfort-seeking souls tend to ‘park’ on what is known (past and present) and give little attention to the unknown future.
Are You Stuck?
Many of us have experienced things in the past that caused us to form, and adopt as truth, beliefs that demolished our ability to envision a beneficial, constructive and desirable future. It’s as if the part of our soul that was created to dream and envision and hope for what God wants to lead us into has dried up and withered. So we find ourselves mentally and emotionally stuck. We remain convinced that what was and what is…is who and what we really are. And because we identify with what happened to us in the past, there is no room in our heart of hearts for the true identity, purpose and destiny that God has always had in mind to bestow upon us. The way it is for us while in that ‘stuck’ condition kills our ability to launch out into the unknown…and condemns us instead to settle for a perpetually dismal sense of hopelessness, frustration and regret.
Please understand, we are not advocating that people disconnect from reality and begin to dwell in a future-oriented ‘La-La Land’ of fantasy. What we do advocate is that, as disciples of the Living God, whose Word is living and active and sharper than any two edged sword (Hebrews 4:12), we must learn to trust God enough to allow His Word to separate our souls and lives from anything that does not line up with His absolute and perfect Truth. That’s what being crucified with Christ is all about (Galatians 2:20) – what we once were dies so that our God filled, God ordained destiny in Christ can be lived out to the fullest.
Escaping Mediocrity…
We must remember that in our past, we picked up flawed and inaccurate beliefs about Him, and about ourselves, and about the world in which we live. That’s part of the human condition here on earth; it’s what fallen Sin-damaged minds do. But those faulty beliefs act like filters and those filters then become barriers that keep us from becoming the image and likeness of God that He created us to be. Our filters are then allowed to ruin our lives by defining who we are and who we are not, and what we can do, and what is impossible for us to be and do. Those filters and barriers do great damage as they serve the purposes of our demonic enemies by severely limiting our ability to be holy as our Heavenly Father is holy (Leviticus 11:44).
As long as both rubber bands remain in place, we will remain stuck somewhere in the zone of spiritual lethargy and mediocrity because if our minds try to move toward the future, the opposing rubber band that is tethered to our past will stretch and become unbearably taut. And eventually, the tension will be too strong and we’ll be pulled right back to our original starting point. But if we try to return to what was in the past, the rubber band that tethers us to the future (that isn’t here yet), will also become so taut and uncomfortable that it will eventually pull us back toward the center. So our souls will end up continually vacillating back and forth, again and again and again – and mediocrity will be our permanent dwelling place.
The Truth Will Set You Free…
Only the Truth that is in God’s living and written Word can actually set us free (John 8:36). And that freedom will happen only when we embrace the Cross the Lord offers to us and allow it to cut away the life we used to live apart from our Messiah. Then our restrictive ties to the past will be truly and effectively severed. And then we will be free to move into our God-given, God-filled, God-ordained future. That rubber band from the past is what our Lord had in mind when He said: “he who tries to save his life will lose it; and he who loses his life for My sake, will find it!” (Mark 8:35)
The Cross severs the rubber band that keeps us tethered to our past! It sets us free from whatever we were, and enables us to begin to advance, unhindered, to what God intends to make of us in the future! But we must understand what is happening and what is at stake so that we can become wholehearted in our willingness to ‘exchange lives’ with our Master. The exchange must take place in order for us to be free to move into the Blood-purchased future ordained by our Perfect God. This doesn’t mean that we must live in denial. We don’t have to blot the past out of our minds and brains. It simply means that we stop identifying with it! We can now disown and forsake it and stop being a slave to it. It means that it no longer has any legal hold upon us. So we have no more need to allow it to control us in the present. Now we have every right to stop it from holding us back and contaminating and undermining our ability to move ahead! Now we are free to advance and take full possession and ownership of the awesome future destiny that God is holding out to us.
The Gift of Free Will
Remember that one of Father’s greatest gifts to His children is free will. He will not manipulate or coerce us to change or to choose His Perfect Ways. We can, and must… freely choose to obey Him and become one with His Word and Holy Spirit so that He can set us free. Then, because our cross has effectively removed that backward-facing rubber band, the other rubber band that attaches us to the future, can ‘pull’ us closer and closer to whatever God has prepared for us. The past will no longer be able to nullify and cancel out the future God intends for us to have (Jeremiah 29:11).
As long as we allow our past conditioning that was embedded by the massive repetition it took to develop it, to echo and re-echo in our hearts and minds, we will continue to struggle to experience freedom and growth. That’s why we must contradict those old patterns and ‘laws’ that we so faithfully obeyed in the past. We must replace old patterns by creating God-given new patterns and installing them in our minds and souls with massive repetition…repetition that only we can give to and for ourselves. The repetition of the new patterns will then effectively install our new God-given identity and status and purpose.
And so we repeat: this process will require the planting of massive amounts of new seed… God ordained future-oriented seed. It is the seed of a new lifestyle, a lifestyle of continually embracing and identifying with our indwelling Messiah, our risen, glorified Lord. The more we abide in Him and realize that He is living and working within us, the more we will habitually interact with Him. And that process will sow massive amounts of the seed that contains the new thought patterns which will enable and empower us to follow Him as he leads us into a brand new Life. We will grow into our new identity and into the Reality that the Life of Yeshua gives from deep within us. And we will be able to own and take possession of the heritage that is ours in Christ (cf. the Renewing Our Minds introduction and the concept of gardening).
Immerse Yourself in God’s Word
If we understand and operate in the truth that is revealed in the parable of the sower (See Matthew 13), we can then allow the seed of God’s Word to fall into the good, well-tilled, fully prepared soil of our redeemed and liberated souls. Then by the work of the Holy Spirit, that seed will be watered and kept pure and clean by being immersed in God’s Living Word. And the new ‘crop’ this will produce will give an ever increasing depth of the revelation of the awesome Christ who is our New Life and our Hope of Glory (Colossians 1:27).
This journey of growth and maturity will proceed unhindered as long as we keep our eyes fixed on Yeshua and continue to identify with His Eternal Perfection. In this way we will be able to hold onto the inheritance God has given to us…the eternal things of God that are unseen. This requires us to change the way we see things and the way we think and imagine and react to whatever may happen. This is at the heart of true Scriptural ‘repentance’ (in Hebrew the word is “teshuvah”). Repentance is a radical change in the way we see and think of ourselves. It requires us to turn away and disassociate ourselves from what used to be… our former worldly identities, priorities and false gods… in order to finally be free to become one with what God intends to make of us.
It helps if we keep remembering that what we’re turning to isn’t visible to the naked eye – it’s only seen through the eyes of faith. And just like the manna God fed our Israelite forefathers in the wilderness, so does the unfolding of our new, God-given destiny become as daily bread to us. Father will lead us day by day and step by step as long as we choose to listen, obey and receive. But of course, we won’t consistently move into our future as long as the ‘rubber band’ that tethers us to our past remains intact. It must be destroyed by the cross…otherwise, we will remain mentally and emotionally stuck and restricted by the past.
Clay in the Potter’s Hands
Father’s goal is always the same – to mold and shape us into the image of His Beloved Son. And the path He will lead us onto is the same path that Paul and all other true disciples of the past have traveled – Yeshua must increase and we must decrease (John 3:30). The working and doing of this is a work that only God can effect from within us (Philippians 2:13). Our part is to trust Him and yield to His initiatives and allow Him to fulfill His promises to us with no inner resistance from us. As we do that, we become the path of least resistance (and most acceptance) for the Holy Spirit. And He will be able to move in us and through us with total freedom. This will enable God to lead us further and deeper into the realization of the plans He has had in mind for us from the very beginning.
As we choose to walk this way, we will be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2). And the result will be greater glory for God because the world will see His Word’s disciples living in ways that the darkened minds of worldly people could never allow. So when they see the difference Yeshua’s Life makes in us, the Holy Spirit will begin to speak to their hearts and His Truth will resonate within the eternity that God has placed in their hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11). And when that happens, their forward/future rubber band will begin to tighten and draw them forward, into a crisis and tension that will require them to make a decision either to continue to rebel against God’s Word, or to finally surrender to Him and allow themselves to be ‘crucified’ with Him, so that He can lead them into the Glory of His Resurrection.
Their journey, just like ours, will begin with that first seed of “there’s more than you know.” And we disciples know exactly what that’s like, because we’ve ‘been there and have done that.’ So we can be their allies, friends and guides as they begin to learn to allow our Master to draw them into the great unknown…and Eternal Salvation. And so their worldly ‘wiring’ that expects, and even demands, planning and detail and obsesses over personal control, will gradually be disconnected. It will no longer be a factor as they learn to abide in the absolute Perfection of our God. And just like we did, they will learn to be very comfortable following Him into the Unknown…even though it is a lifestyle that at times feels ‘deliciously scary.’
Fixing Our Eyes on Christ
Having yielded to His transforming power for us, in us, and through us, we know we can trust God, even though the future only unfolds for us on a ‘need to know’ basis. Our bread is daily bread. We won’t see tomorrow’s bread until tomorrow comes. But we know that it will always be there, just when we need it. As true disciples, we can rest and trust in our Master without requiring full explanations every step of the way.
So what does this ‘renewal of our minds’ process look like? How is it lived out? Like everything else in disciple life, it is lived out in child-like simplicity…with trust and reliance on the only One who can do that work in us and for us. We fix our eyes on Yeshua, the author and perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2). We allow the Holy Spirit to bring every thought, belief, choice, and bias into His Light so that it can be exposed for what it really is and the cross can correct, refine and bring us further into the territory of spiritual maturity and wisdom.
And when certain things in us are not worthy of our Master’s Perfect Presence, we will gladly agree with Him and choose to forsake and allow the cross to disconnect us from them. We will allow the Holy Spirit to remove them from our mental repertoire and replace them with solid, Biblical, Christ centered Truth. In that way, we will ‘put on the new man’ (Ephesians 4:24 and Colossians 3:10) and build a new spiritual, mental and emotional ‘arsenal’ with which to quench any fiery darts the enemy of our souls may fire at us (Ephesians 6:16).
Some Examples
Here are a few very simplistic examples to get you started. As you reflect on your own beliefs, it helps if you are very specific. Expose every aspect of unbelief when you see it working within you. Yank that ‘weed’ out of your soul and then plant the good seed of God’s Word in its place.
| I believe…. | Keep? | Because God says…. |
| I could never do, or be or achieve_______. | No | I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. (Philippians 4:13) |
| God loves me. | Yes | I have loved you with an everlasting love and with lovingkindness I have drawn you. (Jeremiah 31:3) |
| I’m not lovable or acceptable; so no one loves me or can love me. | No | For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16) |
We’re not promoting an extended period of ‘navel gazing’ or self introspection. We are promoting the disciple lifestyle which includes keeping short accounts with our Master, being totally transparent with our God, and being willing to yield to Him no matter what it costs or what it leads to. Whenever He exposes ‘old filters’ that are getting in the way, if we are ever going to walk in the freedom that’s ours in Christ, we must deal with them…His way.
Abiding with God
Disciple life is all about knowing our God and abiding with Him, day and night. It’s resting in His finished work and accurately reflecting His glory to those whom He puts in our lives. And that cannot be accomplished in the flesh, which operates in and by reliance on our own natural soulish faculties and self-effort.
So we entreat you to allow our blessed Lord to do His work in your life… however, whenever, and wherever He chooses. If you do, then when He returns to the earth, you will be able to answer with a resounding “Yes!” the question He asked in Luke 18:8
I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
In His everlasting love,
Your sister Nancy