Transform my Mind!
by Lindsey Hanekom
My son and I love to listen to music together and he’s getting very good at identifying who we’re listening to. One day I put on a CD I hadn’t listened to for a long time. Kyle, having never heard this CD, asked who it was and I replied, “Jars of Clay.” Now, ‘clay’ is not a word that has come up in Kyle’s life yet so he repeated back to me, “Jars of Play”; naturally resorting to the nearest word that he knows. This conversation repeated itself several times with increasing emphasis. “Clay, Kyle, Clay, C...lay!” Eventually, we got there and now we can actually spend time enjoying the music rather than debating band names!
It occurred to me that we behave in similar ways as adults. If someone’s trying to teach or show us something, which is unknown or foreign to us, we can automatically resort to perceiving it as another thing, which we’re already familiar with and know about. We can totally miss the reality of what it is by sticking to what we think to be truth, believing that’s all there is to know on a subject. In effect we can become un-teachable, preferring to hold fast to what we think to be solid and totally true, and not being willing to admit we’re mistaken, or to believe there’s more for us to learn.
It’s as though we reach a plateau of learning. Maybe stagnation comes as we’re not finding deeper teaching. Or we could feel that we’ve worked hard to reach a certain status, and now we’re no longer in the place of being disciples, because we’re disciplers. It could be that the world teaches one thing to be true, but the reality is different, and we choose to stick with what’s generally accepted in the world’s view.
It may be that the real truth is completely foreign and unheard of, and therefore we feel that it can’t be truth, because we’ve never experienced it in that form. For example, it’s possible that many of us have a distorted view of love, and therefore a distorted view of God. Yet, when true love is exhibited to us, let’s say in the form of godly discipline, we resort to what we’re more familiar with and know about... and we call it rejection.
Yet, truth remains to be true. God, in His love and in His faithfulness to us, wants to transform us, by changing our thinking patterns, patiently and persistently. It’s only then that we can know His perfect will and start to enjoy living in it, rather than debating the terms with Him!
Prayer: Transform my mind, Lord. I want to know Your perfect will for me and my life. Yet I know I may have become un-teachable in certain areas of my life. Help me see where I’m wrong, or where I have more to learn, as I humble myself and open my ears to hear Your truth being spoken in my life. Amen.
Lindsey Hanekom Lindsey has worked at all of our UK centres over the years and has settled at Ellel Scotland with her husband, Johann and their two young children, Kyle and Zoe. As part of the Leadership Team at Ellel Scotland, Lindsey has a heart for the deeply broken as she oversees the prayer ministry and is an established and passionate teacher with Ellel. In her spare time, Lindsey enjoys the natural world, particularly the ocean, and is trained as a specialist medic to assist stranded and injured marine mammals.
Please feel free to use this devotional to send on to your friends or share with your church fellowship. Provided full acknowledgement is made to Seeds of the Kingdom as the source, you are also welcome to use it in a non-commercial way and reproduce it in magazines or other Christian websites. The copyright for any commercial use of the material remains with Ellel Ministries International.
