Change Your Mind

Have you ever done something and then asked yourself, “Why did I do that?” It felt out of character, and it left you genuinely puzzled at your own behavior.

Here is the answer that unlocks a great deal. You did it because, in that moment, you believed it was the best or most beneficial thing for you. We always act on what we believe. This is one of those places where Scripture and plain observation agree — a framework Rick Warren has taught for years — and it is worth walking through slowly, because it changes how you go about changing.

Behind every behavior is a belief

For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.

Proverbs 23:7 (NKJV)

Everything you do is downstream of something you are believing. If you don’t apply for the job, don’t start the business, don’t try the thing you have never done — it is because in that moment you believe, “That’s not possible for me,” even though God has said that with Him all things are possible. It’s a lie. But because you believe it, you hold back. The belief came first; the behavior only obeyed it.

It works everywhere, in every direction. When someone says, “I’m leaving my husband to marry another man because I believe God wants me to be happy,” they have just told you the belief underneath the behavior. It may be dead wrong, but they arrived at the decision through something they believed. And the same is true of the good things. The person who abstains from sex outside of marriage is acting on a belief. The person who refuses to cheat in business, who works to keep a hard promise — they are acting on a belief too. Behind every behavior, good or bad, there is a belief. Who a man or woman is comes from what they are believing in their thoughts.

Behind every wrong behavior is a lie

Now take it one step further. If behind every behavior is a belief, then behind every wrong or harmful behavior is a wrong belief — a lie, maybe two. When you sin, in that moment you have been convinced that this is the best thing to do. You say, “I know God says do this, but I’m going to do that.” What is happening? You are believing a lie. You have been deceived into thinking the wrong thing is, right now, the better thing.

At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures.

Titus 3:3a (NIV)

Notice the order in that verse — deceived, and then enslaved. The deception comes before the bondage. If you get nothing else, get this: behind my flaws, my mistakes, and my wrong decisions are lies that I am believing. Think of the prodigal son. What lie did he swallow that made walking away from his father, cashing in his inheritance early, and heading to a far country look like the smart move, the path to a fuller life? Some lie about where happiness was kept. So the way out begins the same for all of us: stop attacking only the behavior and start hunting for the lies in your own head.

Think, feel, act

Which is exactly why real change never holds when we start where we usually start. We attack the action — stop doing this, stop doing that — and wonder why nothing lasts. Paul points us somewhere else entirely.

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Romans 12:2 (NIV)

The way you think determines the way you feel, and the way you feel determines the way you act. So if you want to change what you do, you have to change what you think. You cannot begin with the behavior; you have to begin with the thought. Think, then feel, then act — the simple chain Rick Warren describes, and Scripture bears it out exactly. Try to skip the thinking and reach straight for the acting, and you will white-knuckle it for a while and then slide back, because the belief driving the behavior was never touched.

You can watch the whole chain play out with the twelve spies. All of them came back from the same land, saw the same fruit, and stood before the same giants. Ten of them drew one conclusion:

There we saw the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.

Numbers 13:33 (NKJV)

Follow it step by step. They believed they were grasshoppers. That belief shaped how they felt about themselves — small, doomed, overmatched. And that feeling decided what they did — they refused to go up, and talked a whole nation out of its inheritance. But two men in the very same crowd, Joshua and Caleb, looked at the identical giants and believed something completely different.

Only do not rebel against the LORD, nor fear the people of the land, for they are our bread; their protection has departed from them, and the LORD is with us.

Numbers 14:9 (NKJV)

Same giants, opposite belief. Where ten men saw themselves as insects to be stepped on, two men looked at the enemy and saw bread — dinner, something they could take and be nourished by. The facts on the ground were identical. The thought was not. And in both cases the thought determined the feeling, and the feeling determined the action, and the action determined the future of a whole generation.

What repentance really means

This is the moment to rescue a word we have nearly ruined. When most people hear “repent,” they picture a preacher on a corner screaming, “Turn or burn — you’re going to die and fry while we go to the sky.” But the New Testament word is a warm, hopeful, positive one. It is the Greek word metanoia, and it simply means to change your mind.

So to repent is to discover the lie you have been believing that keeps making you act wrongly — and to replace that lie with the truth that will make you live rightly. That is it. It is not mainly about volume or shame or dread. It is about a mind that turns from a lie to the truth, and a life that turns with it.

Will you change your mind?

So here is the invitation. Will you let God use the most powerful gift He has given you — your mind — to set your life on a brand-new trajectory? Take one area you know needs to change. It could be a relationship, an addiction, a behavior, a sin. Then get brutally honest, because honesty is the only road forward, and ask yourself:

What lie am I believing that is making this happen? Sit with it until you can name it. Then turn to God and ask: Father, what is the truth I need to know and believe to counteract this lie?

And then actually do the exchange. Say it out loud: “I reject the lie that ___, and I accept the truth that ___.” That single move — trading a lie for the truth — is very nearly the only battle you have to fight for your life to change. The Bible even has a name for it: the good fight of faith.

If you want somewhere to start, put the question to your most stubborn places, one at a time:

• What is one lie behind my gossip, my tale-bearing, my talkativeness?
• What is one lie behind my procrastination?
• What is one lie behind my lust, or my out-of-control desires?
• What is one lie behind my unforgiveness?
• What is one lie behind my unwillingness to take a risk or try something I have never done?

Name the lie. Ask God for the truth. Trade one for the other, out loud and on purpose. That is repentance — a changed mind — and it is where a changed life actually starts.