WHAT IS MASTERY OF THE MIND?

Do your thoughts sometimes upset you? Do you have trouble concentrating even when you pray? Do you sometimes feel oppressed, sensing a deep need for true peace? These conditions are symptomatic of the need to develop mastery.

There is a decision to be made that could well change the course of your life. The Bible tells us in Proverbs 23:7 that as a man thinks, he is! Thus we must decide what thoughts we will choose to dwell upon. These thoughts will determine our actions, and ultimately our personality and character. We were given One in the book of all books, the Bible, to pattern our lives after, One to "take to heart", One to renew our mind. This One was the greatest man to ever walk the earth. As a matter of a fact, the Bible tells us in John 1:1:

Then in John 1:14 we see:

Yes, this One was God Himself, retaining His deity at ALL times, yet coming to us as a man, Yeshua walked with us in flesh and blood, feeling what we feel; being tired, hungry and tempted as we are, but never sinning. He told us how to live; He showed us how to live; yet we have such reluctance to accept His principles for our lives. What an example He was! Why do we resist Him?

On page 1 of his book, Mastery, E. Stanley Jones phrases the majesty of this "One" in such a beautiful way that it bears repeating: "Jesus Christ ... walked into time and quietly divided it into before and after B.C. and A.D. He walked into the realm of thought and altered all our conceptions about God and life and destiny. He walked into our moral conceptions, and codes, and now we are good or bad according to whether we embody His spirit or not. He walked into our sundered relations with God and healed them by His cross. He walked into the chaos of human relationships and projected a Kingdom which is destined to gather all our chaos into cosmos, to be the goal and end of human history. He walked into our moral weakness and sin and imparted to the defeated and collapsed a moral and spiritual mastery which made them go out and impart to humanity such a stimulus that a movement was begun which is destined to change the world."

If ever a man knew about mastery, it was Yeshua! He knew it, and He has given it to us for the taking. Everything we need to know to have mastery in our life is found in the book He left for us, the Bible. By seeking the help available to us in the form of the Holy Spirit, this book CAN be read and understood! E. Stanley Jones continues on the same page of text by saying: "Men quietly got in touch with Him, imbibed His secret, and found themselves doing things they couldn't do, thinking thoughts they couldn't think, and loving people they couldn't love. They were a surprise to themselves and others."

Yes, we can know mastery, and it all centers on yielding our will, which must be done through the renewing of our mind. Renewal of the mind is a process by which we take control over our thought process, and bring it into subjection to the Word of God. Temptation begins in the form of a thought. There may be other stimuli involved, but none the less, there is a thought present: (i.e. "Wouldn't it be nice to ...", etc.). Again, we have a choice whether or not to entertain these thoughts. As humans, we are all subject to temptation, but take heart! The Bible assures us in I Corinthians 10:13 that you will not be tempted more than you are able to bear, and with all temptation comes a route of escape. We have a built in path of escape at such times, as Philippians 4:8 advises us to reverse our thought pattern, saying, "... whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." When we confront temptation, bringing these thoughts into captivity to the obedience of Yeshua (II Corinthians 10:36), refusing to dwell upon them, and choosing to exchange them with thoughts of Godly things, sin cannot take root and destroy.

Another thought (or mental) process which must be brought into obedience to God's Word is prayer. This is the process by which we are to recall our needs and desires and bring them before the Throne of Grace. It is NOT a means by which we are to visualize our needs and desires with such fervency that we determine to make them reality, in the name of "faith". To do so is to place our "faith" on the power of our minds to bring about the reality we desire, rather than to place our "faith" in God to do so. It is also to try to strip God of His will for our lives, and substitute our own. Our God is an awesome God, and does not even need us to visualize what we want in order to help HIM bring it about. He is perfectly capable of bringing it about entirely on His own. To try to help God out in this manner diminishes our faith in God, rather than strengthens it, for He has told us He knows our needs, even before we express them (Matthew 6:8). We are simply asked to bring them before Him as an act of obedience, then to have faith in HIM to respond. Faith of this nature is one of trust and yielding, that is trust, in HIS power, trust in HIS discernment, and yielding to HIS sovereign will for our lives. It is trusting HIM to provide for our needs and requests in HIS way, and by HIS timetable. We are told to ask first for forgiveness of any unconfessed sin that might stand between us and the Throne of Grace and hinder our prayer, (Psalm 66:18), to seek first the Kingdom of God, (that is, to put the Kingdom of God first above our will), (Matthew 6:33), then to pray, expressing our needs and desires, but always within the context of God's will to be done, (Matthew 6:10 and Matthew 26:39). Praying for God's will to be done, rather than our own is our example, set before us by Yeshua, Himself. Who would dare say that the example given to us by Yeshua, Himself was wrong? (One should shudder to think how He must feel about the "Name it and Claim it" philosophy now prevalent.) James 4:3 further explains to us that we often do not have that for which we have asked because we have asked amiss. He may not answer as quickly as we think He should, or in quite the way we expect Him to, but He has promised to meet our needs, and He is faithful; worthy of our faith in Him. Yes, we are to take our needs and desires to God, and leave them there, having faith in HIS ability and HIS judgment to respond correctly each and every time! Because prayer is to be a thought process, it must be brought into obedience to Yeshua, in accordance to His Word and His example. By Bringing our needs before God's throne as indicated above, putting His will first, and "trusting Him to answer in His own way, we are applying Biblical obedience to our prayers, the most important of all of our thought processes!

Bringing every thought into obedience to Yeshua allows the One who has mastered all to become the master of our mind, and ultimately our life. In order to be successful with this renewing of the mind however, there is one ingredient that must be present. Man is not capable of this kind of regeneration on his own. The Holy Spirit is the key ingredient that provides the power for this transformation. We receive the Holy Spirit to live within us and give us His strength and guidance when we SINCERELY CHOOSE TO RECEIVE Yeshua as our Savior, and Lord of our life (Romans 10:9, and Matthew 7:21). The result of this active choice is a peace that must be experienced in order to be believed. Peace is among the most blessed of gifts given to us by God. Yeshua wants us to have this peace, (John 14:27).

You may acknowledge the above theology, but question how you can know for sure that you have truly committed your life to Yeshua, giving Him control and Lordship. You can find the answer to that question simply by asking another. Who or what is the master of my mind? Think about it. If our actions are the results of our thoughts, then it is impossible for Yeshua to have control of our life, when we refuse to allow Him mastery over our mind. Only total submission/surrender to the authority of the one and only true MASTER will allow us the inner peace we seek each moment of our lives. Everyone needs peace, and there is just one source for the kind of peace we were all meant to have. Without it we can never really be happy, for what we think is happiness is simply superficial, and there is a deep void within. How about you? Do you have God's deep and perfect peace, or are you still seeking it? If you are still seeking, take a minute to evaluate? Who or what is the master of YOUR mind?

Is it beginning to make sense how much the yielding to the mastery of Yeshua Christ can do for us? Some other verses which stress the importance shown in the very Word of God for submission of our mind to Yeshua, allowing Him to renew and conform it to His ways are: Romans 8:7, Romans 12:2, Ephesians 4:22-24, Romans 12:16, Philippians 2:3, and Matthew 22:37. We should always bear in mind that God didn't leave us His Word to set on the coffee table and gather dust! Get into this book of all books, and research for yourself the thoughts I have shared. God bless you as you contemplate these thoughts, endeavoring to seek the truth about the mastery of YOUR mind!