And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. John 8:32


Saturday, March 10, 2012

Gathering Your Tools


The first step in any home improvement project is to make a plan and gather your tools. It’s no different with a mind improvement project.

Here are the tools you’ll need: a Bible and a journal. This is the journal you’ll use to renew your mind in.

We’ll be going over several different ways to renew your mind on this blog, but one of the best ways is to find Scriptures that apply to your project and pray through those Scriptures on a daily basis.

If you want to get started on your project right away, make a commitment to find one new Scripture each day that will help you with your project and write out a Scripture prayer using that Scripture in your journal. Or just meditate on that Scripture once a day and think of how it would apply to your project.

After you’ve chosen your project and purchased your journal, answer the following questions to help you have an idea of what to expect in the months to come (you could put the answers to these questions in your new journal):

Getting Started

1.     What is your project?


2.    What is your goal?


3.    Why do you want to reach your goal?


4.    Do you think God wants you to reach your goal?


5.    If so, what would His reasons be? Are God’s reason’s different than your reasons? If so, why?


6.    Do you think Satan wants you to reach your goal? If not, why?


7.    What should you expect if you decide to take on this project? Read the following verses and list as much as you can from them:
a.     Romans 12:1


b.    Philippians 1:6


c.     Hebrews 12:10-11


d.    Galatians 6:9


e.     1 Peter 5:8-10


9.    Is this a project you’ll be able to accomplish in your own strength? If not, what will you need to do? (Romans 12:2, Ephesians 4:22-24)


10. How will the accomplishment of this goal help you love God and others better?


More to Come

My college kids are on break now so I won't be posting next week, but when their break is over we'll start talking about some other practical tools you can use to renew your mind. If you'd like some ideas before then, you could browse through a short-lived blog I wrote at www.transformedbytrials.com. I may repeat some of those ideas over here as I'm using this blog (and www.beyondthesinnersprayer.wordpress.com) to try to write a curriculum that could be used in a Bible study. (Yes, I know, too many blogs!)












7 comments:

Loren Pinilis said...

I love how your approach is tethered to scripture. I've found it useful to spend a little time in searching for scriptures that apply to what I'm working on, and then to attempt to commit those to memory. Without the attachment to the word, so often we end up just trying to do it out of human willpower.

Unknown said...

And willpower doesn't work in those areas where we don't have it, right? At least not long term. There really is power in the Word - it's what Jesus used to fight temptation. I haven't worked on memorization much, but I need to - thanks for the nudge to do it.

Melanie Wilson said...

I like the question on whether Satan wants us to reach our goals. We don't typically think about that, but it's huge!

Unknown said...

Thanks Melanie. That question often motivates me to do what God wants me to do because it reminds me that what I'm currently doing is playing into Satan's hands.

Anonymous said...

I was thinking of moving over to wordpress with my blog because I'm having issues with the comment section... but it's such a pain - and I don't want to waste more time on something like that when I can work on scripture memorization!! :) Anyway - I narrowed down my project to two issues that relate to eachother. I like the concept of how often we are going to renew our minds and putting a number value to it - or a reminder to it, otherwise, it can get easily lost in the "busy" day... but if I plan on renewing my mind before I eat (and say grace), it'll help me to ask for His guidance.

Unknown said...

Hi CJ - that's a great idea to tie your renewing of the mind to a meal. I've done two things on my list so far and have already had to truth journal two times - and they were only phone calls I had to make (it took longer to renew my mind than make the phone calls!). The funny thing though is that I've been putting off one phone call for a year and the other one for a few days - it was worth the time to renew my mind.

As to Wordpress and Blogger, I like different things about each. I'm thinking of adding my blog into my Truthway Press site, though, so that's why I switched as I guess that's easier to do with Wordpress. I love your blog, though. It's beautiful as is! I just suscribed yesterday.

Unknown said...

Just realized I messed things up when I numbered the questions. Questions 7 and 8 should make more sense now that I combined them. Formatting! :(