New Life Coaching-2 “Renewing Our Minds”

Starting churches involves

starting people in a new life direction with Jesus.

Staying with it takes some big choices: based on what we think matters, based on how we think.

Among the first Bible passages I ever memorized, Romans 12:1-2 still speaks to my outlook, life aims, and my personal spiritual formation. Yours too!! Thinking in depth and planning is every church planter’s job. If you cast vision, you help others see whatever you have seen of what church is meant to be and become. This too is renewing of the mind.

Examine the Bible verses below. “New life coaching” asks how we think and how we perceive reality.

Romans 12:1-2

Isaiah 55:6-11

Mark 7:1-5 & 14-20

Romans 6:1-3, 8-11

Philippians 4:8

Colossians 3:1-2

Most important of all is how we think about God.  The revelation of God relates to our thought-life, and results in deep respect and responsiveness to Who He is: God is holy and God is here! All things are wide open to Him. Everything about God is right. Evil is repulsive to Him. Higher than we can know, yet meeting us where we are to make Himself known. God so loved the world that He gave His only Son…

We are to think differently about ourselves. There are life-lines in God’s Word  that help us to see who we are in Christ, free from the “lower life-form” we once had! (1 Corinthians 6:9-11 & Ephesians 4:17-24). Rather than letting our past boss us around, the Spirit of God, the free acceptance we now possess only because of God’s willingness to extend His grace… this now infuses our spirits and wills to live as God calls us to live. We have a new solidarity with one another and our Savior. We view our past and our future differently. We view all our relationships differently. Whoever we relate to: we do it not on our terms or theirs, but rather on His. The Law of Love, that is.

Disciple-making will “butt into”  our innermost feelings and thoughts, until we believe that this rightfully belongs to God too. How Christ thinks begins to regulate our thoughts.
For a long time, disciple-makers have turned to Matthew 5-7 as core discipleship curriculum. It is a Kingdom Manifesto, so followers of Jesus let God run life as it ought to be–even ways we think.