802.725.8094
  Furnace Brook Wesleyan Church
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are >
      • What we believe
      • Our Team
      • Our Building
      • Membership
      • Our Story
    • What We Do >
      • Worship
      • Children's Ministry
  • Give
    • Give
    • Volunteer
  • Grow
    • Discipleship and Small Group
    • Prayer Requests
    • We Care
    • Sermons >
      • Archived Sermons
    • Blog
    • Resources >
      • RightNow Media
      • Facility Use
  • Contact Us
    • Contact Us
    • Stay up to date! >
      • Meeting Minutes
    • Need Help?
  • Events
    • Events
    • Calendar
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are >
      • What we believe
      • Our Team
      • Our Building
      • Membership
      • Our Story
    • What We Do >
      • Worship
      • Children's Ministry
  • Give
    • Give
    • Volunteer
  • Grow
    • Discipleship and Small Group
    • Prayer Requests
    • We Care
    • Sermons >
      • Archived Sermons
    • Blog
    • Resources >
      • RightNow Media
      • Facility Use
  • Contact Us
    • Contact Us
    • Stay up to date! >
      • Meeting Minutes
    • Need Help?
  • Events
    • Events
    • Calendar

5 Ways to Change Your Mind

9/24/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
When I see a magician change something like a handkerchief or a rabbit into something else I am entertained. But when I see God change a mind I am moved to worship. Especially if the mind is my own.
Because we can tune in to the 24 hour news channel that confirms all of our biases and surround ourselves on social media with people who already think the things we think, it is historically easy for us to get stuck in our thinking. Our minds have never been that elastic in the first place, but something about the age in which we live makes them even more brittle.
But repentance, a rearrangement of the mind, is an important part of the Christian life and Christians who want to faithfully follow God into the truth He reveals owe him a flexible mind.

1. Develop Challenging Friendships
We all know that friendship likes to follow affinity. Making a friend out of someone who sees the world differently, who has different values and enthusiasms, can feel like telling the water to flow upstream. But it's possible and it's worth it. The biggest obstacle to developing challenging friendships is our own laziness, and this is strange. I am a pastor who will work very hard and move mountains to build a church for the benefit of people I can't be bothered to develop friendships with. This should not be so.

2. Make a Habit of Acting on Repentance
In James 1:23 we are told that it is not enough to be hearers of the truth. If we hear the truth and acknowledge the truth but fail to act on the truth we will survive that encounter with the truth unchanged. If I am persuaded, for instance, that I should be giving a certain percentage of my income to God but drag my feet about acting on that conviction for a week that turns into a month and then into a year can I really say that my mind has been changed?

3. Turn Up Your Mental Thermostat
Our minds, like our bodies, get stiff from spending too much time on the couch. Warming our minds up to make them more receptive to repentance involves considering books or people that make arguments that are difficult to understand, that use unfamiliar vocabulary, and that require sustained attention. 

4. Learn to View Repentance as a Triumph and not a Defeat
Because we don't tend to change our minds until we've lost every argument, the matter of repentance gets strongly associated with defeat. But in the search for truth my greatest adversary is my own mind, and not some debate opponent. My mind is not some pure arbiter of perceived truth. It is polluted with the corruption of my heart and the current of my will. When I can get my mind to align with a truth it resisted this has to be considered a victory, even if it's the sort of victory that gets accomplished by my loss.

5. Submit to the Mind of God, Even when Your Own Mind Won't Submit to You.
In the garden on the cusp of his crucifixion, Jesus poignantly asked that he be spared the suffering that was about to fall on him. "Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will." Don't let success in repentance be the limiting factor in your obedience. Sometimes the mind only catches up with the truth when obedience has created the conditions for repentance.

God bless you as you follow Jesus into all truth.


0 Comments

    Furnace Brook Wesleyan Church Blog 

    Furnace Brook Wesleyan Church, Pittsford VT


    Author

    Pastor Joel Tom Tate 
    ​Leads Furnace Brook Wesleyan Church and thoroughly enjoys life in the most un-churched state in the Union.

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    September 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    February 2021
    December 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    April 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    September 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    September 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2013
    April 2013
    April 2012
    March 2012

    Categories

    All
    Belief
    Chittenden
    Church
    Doubt
    Evangelical
    Family
    Palm
    Pittsford
    Prayer
    Resurrection
    Rutland
    Sermon
    Sunday
    Thomas
    Wesleyan
    Worship

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly