The presence of God in our lives will affect even our physical being. According to the words of Paul, “He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you” (Romans 8:11)? This is evident when we walk by the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is love (the character of God), joy (the antithesis of depression), peace (the antithesis of anxiety), and patience (the antithesis of anger), kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law” (Galatians 5:22,23). The connection between the initiating cause, who is the Spirit of truth working in our lives, and the end result (self-control) is the mind which directs the brain and that in turn regulates all our glands and muscular movements.
Jesus asked the blind men, “‘Do you believe that I am able to do this? They said to Him, ‘Yes Lord.’ Then He touched their eyes, saying, ‘It shall be done to you according to your faith’” (Matthew. 9:28,29). The external power of Jesus was made effective by their choice to believe. In other words, the Lord chose to bring about a physical healing through their conscious choice to believe. Is this not true in every other aspect of life? We are saved by faith (Ephesians 2:8), sanctified by faith (Galatians 3:3-5), and we walk or live by faith (2 Corinthians 5:7). God never bypasses our mind. He works through our minds, and we are transformed by the renewing of our minds. The Lord makes possible the renewing of our minds by His very presence in our lives. We respond in faith by choosing to believe the truth and live by the power of the Holy Spirit and then we will not carry out the desires of the flesh (Galatians 5:16). Jesus is “the way (how we ought to live), and the truth (what we ought to believe), and the life (our spiritual union with God where the power to live comes from)” (John 14:6). The proper operation of spiritual gifts also incorporates the use of our minds. Paul wrote, “I will pray with the Spirit and I will pray with the mind also; I will sing with the Spirit and I will sing with the mind also” (1 Corinthians 14:15). See Praying By The Power of the Spirit (Harvest House, 2003), and Finding God’s Will In Spiritually Deceptive Times (Harvest House, 2003) for further help.
