How am I going to do that? I've got to actually begin to discover from the word of God what He says about me, so let's have a look in Ephesians 4:22. This is what He says. Notice it says a very simple thing here. He says put off concerning the way you used to live your life, the old man which is corrupt according to deceitful lusts. Be renewed in the spirit of your mind, put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness. Now notice God requires me to cooperate with Him in making some effort here, so He doesn't - even though you're born again and the Spirit of God's come into you on the inside, you've still got old beliefs, old emotions, old struggles, old ways, old habits, but potentially everything is new. You've got to know I am new and begin to throw off - it says put off, like take the garments off that you used to live like and put on new ones.
The key to doing it is you've got to change how you think, be renovated in your mind. So that raises a good question; how do I renovate my mind? How do you renovate your mind? Put off, put on, renovate the mind, renovate your thinking. So if you just understand how your mind works; your mind or your subconscious mind stores up every experience you've ever had, it stores it up, it's all stored in there; the feelings you've had, the painful things, the difficult things, the memories of things you've [had 00.24.33] all stored in there like in a big super filing system. The beliefs you formed, they're all in there too. The judgements you formed, well they're all in there too. The opinions, yes, they're all in there. They're ALL in there, so you've got this huge box inside your subconscious mind, all the things that you've learned over the years and experienced over the years.
Now what are you going to do? Well the way you live your life is no matter what you say or do, as soon as you have an experience it'll trigger off something inside you and you'll act out of the old - unless you decide to change it. This is why so many Christians live defeated, because they don't understand the cooperation required of us in working with God to renew the inside of our heart and mind. If I don't do the work of renewing I just will live out of the way I used to before, same old reactions, same old anger, same old hurt, same old rejection, same old, same old, same old. And yet now I'm trying hard to be a Christian. What a bore! It's too hard. [Laughter] It's too hard. God wants me to relax; this is who I am, now I begin to work with the Holy Spirit as He shows me to process and deal with issues in my life. That's not so hard, not a hard thing to do.
You don't have to try and rack up all the junk and get it all. As you walk through life if you live a reflective life with the Holy Spirit He will show you stuff, and if He doesn't someone around you will point it out to you. Isn't that nice? [Laughter] You've got a bad attitude! Then you've got a chance; oh, I've got a bad attitude. I wonder what is that attitude and what can I do to shift that attitude? Or you can say who do you think you are anyway!? Oh yes, you really have got a bad attitude. You're just responding out of the old ways you used to respond. You haven't actually understood the new man in Christ operates differently. You've got to learn who I am and how to operate my life see? So how am I going to do it? Let me give you four things which are part of the process. I'll just lay them out for you very simply. Number one - and you sort of work on all of these at one time or you could work on any one bit at one time, but it is a part of the process, okay?
So I'll give it to you in four bites, what kinds of things you can do. Remember, it's our responsibility to shift. In Romans 12:2 it says don't be pressured or conform to the way the world does things, or be pushed into a mould so you're like everyone else. Be transformed or go from a [butterfly to a caterpillar 00.26.59] kind of life by being renewed in your mind. So if I'm going to be transformed or change my lifestyle it starts with renovating the mind. Renovation is like this: you go in and you gut the building and you put in the new stuff, so you've got to see what needs to be ripped out first of all you know. Don't just lose your brain. You've got to actually be quite constructive with your mind, so you notice that the first thing I need to do then is I need to resolve past issues which impact my identity. I need to resolve past issues that impact who I am or who I think I am, so for example if you've got victim issues you've got to process the stuff.