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Authors: Casey Treat

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Don’t Be a Knee Jerk
If you are alive, you have physical reflexes, and when you visit the doctor, he takes a little hammer and taps your knee to test them. As soon as that hammer makes contact with your knee, your leg kicks. You don’t have to tell your leg to kick; it moves on its own as a response to the hammer. In fact, even if you try not to kick, your leg will still fly up automatically when the doctor taps you. It’s a reflex action, or an involuntary movement caused by a certain stimulus, and we have many types of these reflexes in our bodies. As you are reading this book right now, your body is digesting food and your heart is beating, even though you haven’t been thinking about these organs or telling them to work. They just work because of reflex actions and not because of any conscious decisions on your part. The same thing happens in our thought life.
We all have reflexive thoughts and reactions; many people call them “knee-jerk” reactions. A situation happens or someone says something, and you get mad. Your face gets flushed, your blood pressure rises, your stomach starts to churn, and you are angry. You didn’t stop and think to yourself, “I’m going to get mad right now. I think I’m about ready to have a fit.” You simply got mad; it was a knee-jerk reaction. You’re not quite sure why you became so angry; you can’t explain it, but the thing just set you off. The person next to you experienced the same circumstance, and they didn’t get mad. In fact, they’re saying, ”Why are you so upset about this? You are overreacting because it’s not that big of a deal.” Now, you’re mad at them for not being mad with you
and
for judging you for your obvious lack of self-control.
The issue isn’t what happened; it’s the spirit of your mind. We have subconscious thoughts that lie underneath the surface of our habits, emotions, and attitudes, and these thoughts trigger responses when they are “tapped” by the hammers of our day-to-day experiences. Whether it’s fear, anger, jealousy, lust, whatever, we all have operated in this type of knee-jerk reaction. Without a thought, we respond to a situation by feeling rejected, feeling judged, or feeling intimidated, and later when we take a moment to figure out why we feel the way we do, we can’t explain it. It’s the spirit of our minds.
I’m convinced most of the conflicts we face with our spouses and friends stem from subconscious thoughts and attitudes we don’t even know we have. During the early years of ministry when I used to counsel married couples, I met a couple on the brink of divorce because they were so upset about which way the toilet paper fed and how the toothpaste tube was squeezed. Another couple, separated over a disagreement over the wife cutting her hair, came in. The husband was furious with her and could not believe she would do such a terrible thing. I remember thinking,
Really? Hair? You’re in a crisis because of hair? You should be happy to have a wife!
He could not explain why he felt so betrayed, but he knew he didn’t like it and was convinced it was wrong. He was ready to throw in the towel of his marriage because of a trip to the salon. Knee-jerk reactions.
Most of the thoughts and beliefs within our subconscious were formed by the modeling of our parents. While culture and environment play an important role, usually these factors are consistent with what decisions our guardians made and how they responded to life events. For some of us this is a great truth, but for others it’s downright scary. Some of us look at our parents and promise ourselves we will never end up like they have, but unless we go to work at renewing the spirit of our minds, our future will not be much different than theirs.
Was That My Dad?
When my first son, Caleb, was born, I was very excited to give him his first bath. Wendy was resting from the labor and delivery, and I got the privilege to wash him and dress him in his first outfit. A few friends were there with a camcorder recording the event as I played and talked to Caleb and scrubbed him clean. Days later, when Wendy and I watched the video, I was shocked to see myself looking and sounding just like my father. I acted toward Caleb like my dad had acted toward me, and I recognized my father’s spirit and his attitude coming out of me as I related to my child. It freaked me out! By now I had spent more than a decade aggressively working to renew the spirit of my mind and to be very
unlike
my father. If this was seeping from me when Caleb was just an hour old, what was going to happen when he was twelve or sixteen? At that moment, I realized I had to get serious about renewing the spirit of my mind because I knew how I ended up under my dad’s training, and I certainly didn’t want my kids to find themselves in the same place.
Most of what has been programmed into our minds came from our parents. As we matured, we just picked up all of their thoughts and attitudes. Of course, most parents do not purposely set out to plant negative habits into the lives of their children, but modeling is the most powerful influence in a person’s life. Good or bad, what our parents did and how they acted was what we saw every day of our lives, and we sucked up like a sponge everything that spilled out of them. Now, unless we stop to analyze ourselves, we will move through our lives responding and acting very similarly to them, unless we engage in God’s process of renewal.
Hebrews 12:14-15 gives us great insight about the dynamics behind renewing the spirit of our minds: “Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord: looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled.” We must pursue peace, holiness, and all the things of God; we must be always looking carefully so that we can maintain a consistent walk with God. Otherwise, it says a root of bitterness could spring up and cause us to stumble. Let’s explore this further.
The commitment to renewing the spirit of our minds must be sincere and it must be persistent. If we want to rise above what was modeled in our lives and get beyond a shallow Christianity, we must have a heartfelt, deep desire to take steps daily to renew the spirit of our minds.
First,
pursue
is a key word here. The commitment to renewing the spirit of our minds must be sincere and it must be persistent. If we want to rise above what was modeled in our lives and get beyond a shallow Christianity, we must have a heartfelt, deep desire to take steps daily to renew the spirit of our minds. It’s one thing to consciously get new information and have a conscious understanding in your mind of what you are trying to accomplish; it’s a whole other thing to try to change the
spirit
of our minds, to change our subconscious thinking, to reprogram our “auto pilot.” We cannot achieve this renewal if we are once-a-month Christians or once-a-week Bible scholars. It’s going to take much more than our weekly church services and our random prayer and study times. We need to decide to be daily Christians. What we do monthly or weekly might bring temporary change to our lives, but what we do daily will bring the change and renewal we truly are longing for. It’s what we choose
daily
that will make an impact on the spirit of our minds.
Second, the writer of Hebrews uses the phrase “root of bitterness.” A root is below the surface, something you cannot see. Have you ever had weeds growing in your yard or garden that you tried over and over to get rid of? It’s not good enough to simply cut the weed down or break it off at its stem. If you don’t pull the weed up from its roots, that thing will grow right back no matter how many times you attempt to kill it. Its root system can run very deep in the soil and sometimes can be much bigger than the actual weed above ground. As long as the root remains, there will always be a weed ready to spring up.
So it goes with our beliefs and our thought life. Our spirit of the mind is below the surface. It’s the root system that feeds our actions and feelings. And if we are not carefully staying alert, just as the passage says, a root can spring up and cause trouble in our lives: roots of bitterness, roots of fear, roots of anger, and roots of depression, anxiety, lust, or any other negative feeling. These roots spring up and cause us to do things we are ashamed of and wish we hadn’t done. They act as anchors in our lives and disable us from breaking free from the food, the sex, the drugs, the low self-esteem, the world. We must make a decision to deal with these roots because otherwise they will control our lives and keep us from the life we really want with God.
But here’s the good news. If you have a negative root system, you can decide to change it and grow a positive root system. If you pursue God’s renewal, you can exchange a negative spirit of the mind for one that is full of faith and confidence! As a Christian, you have the power within you to achieve the amazing destiny God designed for you, but it’s going to take a spirit of the mind that is aligned to God’s ways and God’s Word. You can break that addiction, you can lose that weight, you can overcome that fear and that depression, but you cannot do it with the same spirit of the mind you are working with right now. It’s going to take new habits of thinking, a new revelation of God’s Word, and a renewal of the spirit of your mind.
16
Get the Egypt Out!
I
n my early twenties, after I had gone through Washington Drug Rehabilitation Program, I spent hundreds of hours giving back to the program through counseling. I’ll never forget one guy I was helping—or at least I thought I was helping. This young man was a heroin addict in a major life crisis involving all sorts of drugs and the crimes that went with them. His life was going from hell to hell. As Christians, we are supposed to be living lives going from glory to glory, but for those entangled in the world, their lives just go from hell to hell.
We had spent many hours together, and on this particular day, I believed I was finally getting through to him. I was saying, “Bro, you can whoop this addiction and this behavior. God’s got a plan for your life, and if you would just change who you are, you could have a great life!” At that moment, he suddenly sat up, and I saw the lights had gone on behind his eyes. Taking his alertness as agreement, I went on, “Trust me, I understand it’ll be difficult at first, but we’ll all help you make the changes you need to make. We’ll get you new friends, help you create new habits, and most of all, help you think and act differently.”
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Am I hearing you right? You want
me
to be a different person?”
“Yes! That’s exactly it! If you’ll just change who you are, you will be able to overcome all this junk and get on with a great life.”
He gave me a strange look and said, “Well, I know I need to stop the drugs, and I know I need to stop the crime, but as far as I’m concerned, I’m not that bad of a person. And neither are my friends, for that matter. I don’t need to be a different person. I’m outta here!” And the guy stood up and left. Two months later, he was dead. He wanted to lose the drugs, the crime, and the parole officer, but he didn’t want to renew the spirit of his mind, so instead of opting for the life God had for him, he chose to stay in the world, and he died in his addiction.
This experience impacted me, and I think about that guy every now and then when I hear Christians complaining to God about their negative circumstances. So many Christians want to live at a higher level, but they are waiting on the circumstances to be different before they engage in a deeper pursuit of God. The Bible says you and I need to be transformed by the renewing of our minds and
then
the situations will change. If we wait for the pounds to fall off or the money to roll in, if we wait for the fear to go away before we decide to grab hold of the renewal God has for us, nothing in our lives will ever get better. If we can get past the shallow, conscious level of our lives and make some deep, heartfelt changes that affect the spirit of our minds,
then
the other things will change also.
It may sound simple, but renewing the spirit of our minds is hard to do. It is so much easier to think like the world because everyone around you agrees with you. When you listen to the radio, turn on the television, and read the news, nothing you see and hear will ever confront or challenge you because you all think the same way. To float downstream with secular society takes much less effort than attempting to swim upstream against the current, but we are trying to think differently because we are trying to think biblically. Any ol’ dead fish can float downstream, but it takes faith, fight, purpose, and desire to battle the current and swim upstream. Are you a dead fish or a strong, fast king salmon?
Caleb Had a Different Spirit
In Numbers, we find the children of Israel ready to approach their Promised Land. God had just miraculously delivered them out from under their slavery which had lasted for generations in Egypt. These people had witnessed some of the most incredible signs and wonders recorded in the Old Testament, and now all they needed to do was cross the Jordan River and enter into Canaan, the land of abundance God had promised to them. Chapter 13 records the people picking twelve spies to go and investigate the land so they would know the best way to take over and possess Canaan.
The spies went to survey the land, and when they came back, with the exception of two, Caleb and Joshua, they gave a bad report to the children of Israel. They said the people in that land were too strong to be defeated. The crowds of Jews began to talk all at once, but it says in verse 30, “Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, ‘Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it.’ But the men who had gone up with him said, ‘We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we . . . There we saw the giants; and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”
The account goes on to tell how the entire congregation not only fell to their faces and wept but also began to wish they could go back to the safety of their old lives of slavery in Egypt! How is it possible that these people, who had just defeated the most advanced and powerful army in the world, could be crying like babies over a group of men who were not half as strong as the Egyptian army? They had witnessed incredible manifestations of God’s power and now were doubting He would come through for them. Rather than trust in the promises God gave them, they chose to believe their doubts and wish they were back in slavery!
God had gotten the children of Israel out of Egypt, but He was not able to get Egypt out of them; He had delivered them from slavery, but He could not get the slavery out of them. Even though they were a free people, they still saw themselves as slaves, as weak, and as poor. God Himself could not make them see themselves differently, and their mind-sets of poverty and the negative spirit of their minds kept them from going into their promised land. As a result, God said, “Because all these men who have seen My glory and the signs which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have put Me to the test now these ten times, and have not heeded My voice, they certainly shall not see the land of which I swore to their fathers, nor shall any of those who rejected Me see it” (Numbers 14:22-23).
But Caleb was set apart from these people. In verse 24, God says, “But My servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit in him and has followed Me fully, I will bring into the land where he went, and his descendants shall inherit it.” What did God mean when He said Caleb had a different spirit? None of these people had the Holy Spirit—that wouldn’t be available until Jesus came, died on the cross, and sent His Holy Spirit. Caleb was human and, under the old covenant, just like the others. How could he have a different spirit?
God was referring to Caleb’s spirit of his mind. He didn’t think like the rest of them, and he didn’t allow himself to have that old negative, poverty-stricken slave mentality. While the other spies were yelling, “We be not able!” Caleb was shouting, “Let’s go up
at once
and possess the land!” He believed in the prophet Moses, he trusted in the promises of God, and he thought that if God had gotten them out of Egypt, then He would easily help them defeat these giants. While the other spies were confessing their miseries, Caleb was trying to inspire them, “We’ll have our own farms, and our own cities!” But he was the only one, and his voice was drowned out by the other ones.
So many of us are like the children of Israel. We’ve accomplished the most amazing things, overcome some of the most tragic circumstances, and here we are with nothing but potential and opportunity ahead of us. We’ve gotten ourselves educated, found a wonderful spouse, and are enjoying a good life serving God. We’ve killed some giants in our day! Then, all of a sudden, we hit a point when a challenge seems too big. We get nervous, start doubting ourselves and think,
I can’t do this. It’ll never work. I just can’t go any further.
So we start to back up and we get stuck. The spirit of our minds starts to take over and we become grasshoppers in our own sight. Let’s choose instead to have a Caleb spirit, to renew the spirit of our minds and think,
Good thing those giants are so big—now I’ll never miss them!
Let’s eat giants for breakfast! And the rewards of having a Caleb spirit are so worth it.
While every Jew who had doubted the Word of God was sentenced to a life of wandering through and dying in the desert, never getting to see the Promised Land, Caleb had a much different fate. After forty-five years of waiting, Caleb and Joshua led the children of Israel on to victory into the land of Canaan. When it came time for dividing the inheritance of the land among the people, Caleb said in Joshua 14:7-12:
I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadesh Barnea to spy out the land, and I brought back word to him as it was in my heart. Nevertheless my brethren who went up with me made the heart of the people melt, but I wholly followed the Lord my God. So Moses swore on that day, saying, “Surely the land where your foot has trodden shall be your inheritance and your children’s forever, because you have wholly followed the Lord my God.”
And now, behold, the Lord has kept me alive, as He said, these forty-five years, ever since the Lord spoke this word to Moses while Israel wandered in the wilderness; and now, here I am this day, eighty-five years old. As yet I am as strong this day as on the day that Moses sent me; just as my strength was then, so now is my strength for war, both for going out and for coming in. Now therefore, give me this mountain of which the Lord spoke in that day.
Let’s be like Caleb—ready to stand in faith for as long as it takes and to believe in the promises of God no matter what everyone around us is saying. Let’s have a different spirit of the mind than the world has. When the modern-day prophets of doom speak, let’s be the ones to oppose them and say, “Let’s go up at once and possess it!” When everyone else is cutting back, we know God is going to allow us to prosper anyway because we don’t flow with the world economy; we operate in the economy of Heaven. When the people around us are scared of the wars, the rumors of war, and the uncertainty of the times, we do not waver in fear, but walk by faith in God’s perfect peace. Let’s not allow ourselves to float downstream in the negativity of the world. Let’s follow God, trust in God, obey God, and see what God can do in our lives!

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