How to Overcome Sin Part 2A – Renewing and Controlling The Mind! (Renewing The Mind will be discussed)
I learned to overcome sin it takes different steps a person has to take! Those steps are understanding what is sin and its nature and how its transgression against Elohim! Next we have to renew our mind and control the mind, and renewing will be discussed in article below! In our minds we must rebuke what is not of Him! We have to renew the mind with the word of YAH, after renewing the mind we then have to begin to control the mind with power that was giving to us from above! Then we have to understand what it means to truly trust YAH and Yahushua! Finally after all of that is understood we must resist the devil so He can flee!
1 Chronicles 28:9 “And you my son Solomon know the Elohim of your father and serve Him with a perfect heart and with a WILLING MIND for YAHUAH searches out all hearts and He understands every imagination of thoughts if you shall seek Him, He shall be found by you, But if you forsake Him He will reject you forever”
YAH wants us to get control of our thoughts! The enemy’s tactics are to send impure thoughts to us! YAH gave us the power to have a sound mine if we CHOOSE TO! Yes it’s our choice, though we get thousands of thoughts daily, we get to decide which ones we entertain and which ones we ignore, as the scripture above says “Willing mind for YAHUAH”, meaning a mind willing or choosing to serve Him!
In 2 Timothy 1:7 it says:
“For YAH has not given us a Spirit of fear but of power and of love and of a sound mind”
So we have to control our thoughts. We get thousands of thoughts daily, good and evil. We have to control what we think and rebuke what does not belong there!
How do we know what good thoughts are and what bad thoughts are? The word of Elohim lets us know what’s good and what’s evil. We have to make sure our thoughts align with His word!
In the bible it explains how the enemy tries to attack our minds daily with evil!
It says “In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not” – 2 Corinthians 4:4
So how does the enemy blind our minds? By filling it with evil thoughts, of worry, fear, concerns and things of this world!
We saw this happen to Peter. When Yahushua was talking to the disciples about His death and how it was necessary to fulfill things, Peter tried rebuking Yahushua out of fear and Yahushua told him that what He was thinking of was of Satan!!!
“From that time Onward Yahushua began to show to His disciples that it was necessary for Him to go away to Jerusalem and to suffer many things from the elders and chief priest and scribes and to be killed, and to be raised on the third day and having taken him near Peter began to rebuke Him saying far be it from you my master that this should happen to you but turning He said to Peter, go behind Me satan, You are an offense to Me, for you do not think of the things of YAHUAH but the things of men” – Matthew 16:21-23
Paul also talked about what Yahushua was referring to.
Romans 8:6 – For to be Carnally minded is death but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
So Yahushua exposed with Peter a battle we all go through and his mentality getting attacked. We must make a conscious effort to change the way we think! How do we do this?
As I said before, we must meditate on good things and meditate on the word of Elohim! His word says that we need to renew our mind daily!
Ephesians 4:22-24 “Lay aside all your former practices and put off the old man having been degenerated deceitful lusts and be renewed in the spirit of your mind and to put on the new man who is created by Elohim in righteousness and true holiness”
Renewing the mind comes from DEEP MEDITATION! This is something most believers don’t do enough of or don’t do at all! The Word commands us to meditate day in and day out!
Philippians 4:8 “Finally man brethren whatever is TRUE, Whatever is HONEST, whatever is JUST, Whatever PURE, whatever LOVELY, whatever is at GOOD REPORT, if there is any VIRTUE and if there is any PRAISE think on these things”
If we as believers could focus on this one verse daily, what a difference it would make to the body of the Messiah! I know someone reading this may say that it’s easier said than done, and how can we think of good things if we are in trials or bad things are happening? That is the perfect time to train the mind to think good thoughts!
When we are in trying times YAH wants us to trust Him, this will be talked about in more depth in the blog link below (Overcoming Sin by Trusting YAH).
But in rough situations we should pray to YAH first, and always think of the best happening in that rough situation, even if it does not happen, but we should constantly be thinking about the best possible scenario, showing YAH we trust HIM because He is in control! At the same time, whatever result that does happen, we must think about trusting YAH regardless of anything and know He has our best interest set out, though it may be a difficult situation. Meditate on trusting Him, because whatever the trial or tribulation – it shall pass!
This helps to alleviate what the devil sends at us…
Ephesians 6:16 “Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked”
And it does not give the devil room to enter in and try to blind your mind as mentioned in 2 Corinthians 4:4
Joshua 1:8 “This Book of the Torah shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall MEDITATE on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it, For then you will make prosperous and then you will have good success”
Psalms 119:15 “I will MEDITATE on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways”
Meditating on His word helps our thinking process and helps us to renew our minds. Most don’t realize but it is so important to do this because our thoughts lead to our actions we do daily!
Our thoughts are the mechanism of the events that are processed in our heart!
Our thoughts determine the kind of words we speak and the actions we take.
Our thoughts are very powerful although they are not visible, our thoughts are reflected in our daily living and the choices we make.
If we want to know what kind of thoughts fill a person’s heart, then listen to their words and watch out for their actions because we can’t speak or act differently from our thoughts! Thoughts, if not guarded, can drive a man into error and ruin!
Genesis 6:5 “And YAHUAH saw that the evil of man was great on the earth, and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was evil all the day long!”
YAH destroyed the world with the flood because thoughts of men were evil and because their hearts thought of evil continually, their deeds were also evil as well.
Mans wickedness is an off shoot of the imagination and of the thoughts of His heart! Before man does wicked things or actions he must of had wicked thoughts.
Most of the time judgement of man is based on the act of an offense but that’s not the case with YAH! YAH looks into the heart of men and judges the hidden thoughts that birth their actions! To every action is an underlining thought.
“ I YAHUAH search the heart, test the mind even to give every man according to his ways according to the fruit of his doing” – Jeremiah 17:10
“Hear o earth behold I will bring evil on this people, THE FRUIT OF THEIR THOUGHTS for they have not listened to MY words and My Torah, they also rejected it” – Jeremiah 6:19
This is a scary thing! Imagine all our thoughts being judged from the time we are born, and we get thousands of thoughts daily! We have to control what we let linger in our mind and rebuke what is not of YAH! To every action is an underlining thought. Once a thought of a person is changed positively his actions will follow suit!
Yahushua reiterated this in Matthew 5:27-28
“You have heard that it was said to the ancients “do not commit adultery but I say to you everyone looking at a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her in his heart”
The message that Yahushua communicated in this verse, although a human would judge the “action” of his fellow human, YAH will never justify the thought that leads to it! Before Yahushua repeated the law concerning adultery, only people caught in the act of adultery was guilty of it. But Yahushua spotted the imbalance of that law that a man could nurse the thought of infidelity and never got the opportunity to commit it! For such thing, although he is acquitted and justified by man for not physically committing the act, he will not be charged guiltless by Elohim.
Why should we judge an act that has it’s foundation as a thought and leave the thought leading to the action guiltless?
So according to Yahushua anyone who lust after a women or man in his/her heart is guilty of adultery by this both the thought and the actions are condemned! If our thoughts are right then our actions will be right, if our thoughts are evil our actions will reflect just that.
Almost everything that happens on earth can be traceable to the thoughts of someone!
If satan was to gain mastery over a man, what he does first is corrupt his or her thoughts. After that he can lead that man astray! The battlefield for every single believer is the mind. Many people don’t realize this, as a result they lose the battle of the mind day in and day out. As men and women of YAH we have to get control of our thought life because every single one of our bad decisions stem from a thought!
Imagine that one single thought, isn’t it astonishing one thought has the capability to change the trajectory to change our life completely, and also with one thought the devil can hold us for a lifetime, just one wrong thought!!!
“Wherefore Gird up the loins of your mind” – 1 Peter 1:13
YAH is telling us to control our mind! What thoughts are we allowing to linger in our mind?
If we allow or accept any thoughts from the devil or any thoughts from our flesh to linger in our mind we then give the devil permission to enter the door of our heart! This is what happened to Judas, when he had the thought to betray Yahushua…
Luke 22:3 “And Satan entered into Judas, the one having been called Iscariot, being of the number of the twelve.”
How did Satan enter Judas? It was through the mind! What thoughts of the enemy are you entertaining in your life? How can we tell if a thought is of YAH or Satan? The thoughts of YAH lead to everything holy, and lead us to do His will. ANY thought contrary to that is of the devil!
2 Corinthians 10:5 “casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of Elohim bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Yahushua”
That’s why when Pauls says, “hold each thought captive”, we can think of captive as to capture, so capture all those thoughts and align it with the Word of Elohim, and that which does not align with His word, we should discard!!!
Like David, we need to guard our thoughts by prayer and conscious effort!
Psalms 139:23-24 “Search Me, O El and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts and see if any wicked way is in me and lead me in the way everlasting”
We need to ask YAH to search our hearts and reveal who we really are. If our imaginations are to be revealed to YAH openly, we may be disappointed in ourselves because our thoughts are impure! We must plead that YAH will expose our heart conditions to us, and He should cleanse our hearts from the evil thoughts!
Yes YAH gave us the ability to think but we must guard our thoughts from invaders and impurities!
“Guard your heart with all diligence for out of it spring the issues of life” – Proverbs 4:23
We have to guard our hearts because it is the well spring of life! What are we to guard our hearts against? We must guard our heart from processing evil thoughts into actions. It is our responsibility to guard what we think about. You should weigh every thought to see if it is a thought you should hold onto and to see if it is a thought that aligns with our Heavenly Father’s will!!!
There are some thoughts that are unholy for us to think about. When unholy thoughts try to creep into our heart, turn them off, REBUKE it and confess YAH’s word. Replace those devilish thoughts with YAH’s word.
Rebuke those defeating thoughts and those discouraging thoughts with the powerful word of Elohim. We have the ability to control what thoughts stay in our mind!
The way we think will be visible in our life if we see ourself or think of ourself as a loser, an addict or a person who can’t stop sinning etc. It will show, it will be apparent in your every day life! If we think we are not valuable or worthless, and have no purpose in this life it will show!
This is why we have to fill ourselves with the word of Elohim! If we fill ourself with the word of Elohim we will begin to think YAH’s thoughts, and only entertain thoughts of doing His will! If we fill ourself with the word of Elohim, we will not think less of ourself because we will remember YAH. Yahushua thought we were worth dying for, therefore we have a purpose while we are still breathing here on earth!
When we fill ourself with the Word of YAH we will not have a defeated mentality because His word says I am able to do all things through Yahushua who strengthens me (Philippians 4:13)! So through Him we will have the strength to overcome this world and the sin in it!
This is Part 2A in “Overcoming Sin Series”. There are other steps one must also do to really overcome sin which is a plague to the human heart! To overcome, it takes understanding about what sin is, resistance against sin, renewing and controlling the mind with the word of YAH (in which this was discussed in this blog) and truly trusting YAH! The link for the other blogs will be below!
But taking heed to all of this will help to create a clean heart in which David was talking about in Psalms 51!
How to overcome Sin: Part 1 – Understanding what Sin is and History of it…
Good read! Good word! So detailed and informative! All glory to YAH for the gift He’s given you to be able to write these blogs! 🙏🙏🙏
All Praises to the Most High!!! thanks for writing sister Tasha!