Can both of the following be true?

- We are breathing, walking, functioning recreated spirits AND…

- We are living and moving with stale, impotent thinking patterns

Could it be that we can be new creations spiritually, but suffocating that new spirit with an un-renovated mind?

Scripture says that anyone in Christ is a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). The old is gone. It’s instant. It is complete. Nothing to earn, nothing to add.

But notice who Paul is writing to in Romans 12.

He is writing to believers. And he still tells them to be transformed by the renewing of their minds.

The spirit is recreated in a moment. It’s just the beginning. But our minds are renewed over a lifetime.

One is an immediate gift. The other is a sustained discipline.

It’s the daily, deliberate work of embedding God’s Word so deeply into our thought life that, little by little, it begins to outweigh our circumstances and our feelings.

We read Scripture. This gives us the information.

We meditate on it. This gives us the transformation.

We memorize it. We personalize it. We share it. We return to it in spare moments. We pray with it and through it. We deliberately do this, not only when stress and adversity demand it, but all the time and permanently.

Over time, we begin filtering what we see around us and what we feel inside us through what God says about us.

Routine, daily interactions take on a new color. We start to live and relate to our circumstances and to others by faith and not by sight. We stop fitting into the patterns of this world. We avoid being devoured by the mass hypnotism of groupthink, pity parties, and the other limitations of the common culture.

What if God’s plans for us have always been 10X more loving, interesting, impactful, fun, satisfying, abundant, and joy-filled than we could ever ask, think, imagine, or author for ourselves… but we just haven’t seen it?

What if we have stopped short of the all-in renewal of our own minds?

Remember, conforming takes no effort at all. It is the default pattern of DRIFT.

Transforming requires a renewed mindset.

A renewed mindset demands that we habitually ingest His truth, not “my truth.”

God owns the house now, and He has provided everything we need to complete the renovation.

Do you see it?

“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

Romans 12:2 (NKJV)

My son and I can experience the same hike and describe it from completely different vantage points, almost as though we were on two separate trails. Same path. Same mountain. Two very different stories about what just happened.

Haven’t you experienced this from time to time?

One of the greatest gifts instilled in us by our Creator is the ability we have to select and edit the meaning we give to our life experiences. We all possess this ability. Very few of us deliberately train it. That leaves an enormous opportunity for personal growth almost completely untapped.

The potential for transforming your life is in those moments where you render judgment about what’s going on in your world. All sorts of things “happen to us” as we go through life, but we are often in no position to know whether what just happened was ultimately “good” or “bad.”

I have certainly rendered plenty of verdicts long before I had enough evidence to do so. We tend to think our judgments simply happen to us. In reality, we participate in forming them.

We can get dumped, fired, delayed or sick and assume it’s a bad break. We can even play the victim for a while if we are so inclined. With a little bit of time or distance, and surprisingly often, we realize the setback was “the best thing that ever happened.”

We’ve all had moments that felt awesome, at least for a little while, only to come back and betray us a little later. Life can feel really bad and turn out really good. Life can feel really good and turn out really bad.

The contrast can grow even stronger when a few years pass, and we look back and shake our heads, not at others, but at ourselves. Time has a way of changing the filter. Another twenty years of living can make the same event look completely different.
Learning how to train your perspective gives you an enduring advantage in how you think, feel, and respond. As an aspect of your mindset, your perspective refers to your personal interpretation of the conditions of your life.

In other words, your perception of what is happening, at any given moment, is flexible and subjective, not absolute or fixed. Your perspective depends predominantly on how you choose to explain things to yourself.

With a functional perspective, you choose to thoughtfully, and even creatively, explain circumstances so that you stay inspired to act deliberately and sensibly even in the midst of turbulent times.

A functional perspective doesn’t demand denial of difficulties. But it does refuse to let the difficulty dictate the response. Perspective does not change the facts. It changes the position from which you respond to the facts. For years, I’ve encouraged clients to train their perspective to serve them now without sabotaging the future they desire.

We recommend having only two possible buckets when it comes to perspective. Immediate blessing or deferred blessing. Those are the only two categories.

Now you know why I call this a functional perspective. It keeps us in a resourceful, creative state where we have meaningful agency to fix what can be fixed, adapt to what cannot, or otherwise bounce back and keep moving forward. The common tendency, however, is to be shortsighted, reactive and impulsive - and this, predictably, makes things worse, not better.

In 35 years of coaching high performing entrepreneurs and their families, it has become clear that so-called, “negative events” are only part of the problem. I have witnessed clients dealing with horrendous ordeals respond with a functional perspective and experience the peace of God. I’ve also seen many more individuals face relatively minor hardships and essentially self-destruct due to a fearful perspective. One leads to peace and the other to chronic agony.

The story you tell yourself about the event often does far greater damage to your energy, your relationships and your capacity to be resilient than the original issue. The circumstances we experience in our own life are like the raw footage captured at an important public event. But the narrative that develops is almost always created from the edited snippets and corresponding commentary that get played over and over again on our screens.

Likewise, we experience personal events, develop our own story about them and then replay that narrative over and over again in our minds through our inner conversations. It is the narrative from this self-authored story that drives conclusions and the emotional aftereffects. The story you tell yourself shapes what you feel. What you feel drives what you do. And what you do either improves or worsens the situation. When you alter your interpretation or change your internal story, you feel and behave differently.

The key, then, is to take responsibility for the story you keep telling yourself. In fact, God loved us so much that He gave us the freedom to process and explain circumstances from a faithful point of view or a fearful and dysfunctional point of view.

While we may not control the first fearful thought that enters the mind, we can take responsibility for the added color commentary we rehearse, reinforce, and act upon. With this opportunity in mind, our goal becomes to interpret our difficulties in such a way that we stay resourceful enough to learn from them, grow through them and very likely even triumph over them.

In a crisis, a fearful perspective announces and affirms, “This is terrible - I’m devastated - My life is ruined - How will I ever overcome this?”

But, “The Blessing-Or-Blessing-In-Disguise” perspective forces you to widen the frame and lengthen the timeline.

In the same crisis, a functional perspective proclaims, “This is painful, but temporary. God is with me. This isn’t the end of the world. I wonder what blessing will emerge from this? It’s going to be difficult but I will come out stronger. I may not understand this yet. This will only make me better in some way.”

Sometimes elevation changes what we see and perceive. What looked insurmountable at the trailhead can look very different after the first 2000 feet of hiking. And, time changes our perspective as well. For example, that crisis will look much different after fifteen days, and especially fifteen months later, than it does right now. Sometimes the blessing is obvious. And, sometimes faith has to carry us for a while until it becomes visible.

Consider making use of these questions we frequently use with our clients:

1. What’s still within my control?

2. What’s the wisest next move?

3. Where might the blessing be hiding?

4. What could God be developing in me through this?

5. How might I see this differently a year from now?

A functional, well-trained perspective doesn’t merely make us feel better; it helps us behave better.

Fortunately, I have found that perspective is a skill, like hitting a golf ball, negotiating, or using a new app. Perspective can be trained. And what can be trained can be improved. While a fearful perspective narrows the frame, a functional perspective widens it.

The ultimate perspective is believing that God is still at work, even when the good is not yet visible.

What about you?

1. What situation have you already rendered a negative verdict on?

2. What changes if you move it into the “blessing in disguise” bucket?

3. What would faithfulness require from you today?

The event may already be written.

Your response is not.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

"Be joyful most of the time. Pray when it's convenient. Give thanks if you're not too busy. For this is God's will for you."

Recognize that verse?

I hope not.

Because I made it up. That's the Fake News version, the one that is dangerously easy to DRIFT into. Express joy when things are going well. Pray when it doesn't interfere with the schedule. Be grateful when the quarter closes strong, the marriage is satisfying, and the market is up.

Here's the real deal:

Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."

Three short commands that contain an entire sermon, 80/20 style!

Look at how it's built.

First, the goal: Be joyful. Always. Not most of the time. Not when the deal comes through. Always. That's a tall order when business isn't where you want it to be, or when the home front isn't quite as fun as it once was.

God knows it's a big ask.

So He doesn't leave us with the directive and no game plan.

Now, the how. And this is a two-part masterpiece at the intersection of simplicity and effectiveness.

Pray continually, and give thanks in all circumstances.

Prayer keeps you connected to the vine. Gratitude keeps your eyes on what's excellent, beautiful, and worthy of praise. In combination, they provide the spiritual fuel that makes joy possible regardless of what's going on around you.

And notice one small word that changes everything.

Give thanks IN all circumstances. Not FOR all circumstances. You don't have to thank God for the lawsuit, the diagnosis, or the deal that collapsed. That's not the command.

Instead, even in the middle of the hard thing, you can still give thanks for the vast majority of your life that is working, and for a God who is present, walking and working in the mess with you. You can also, in advance, thank God for the comeback, the healing, the turnaround, or just the peace of mind and strength to wait it out.

And to wrap up this power sermon, Paul gives us "the why."

"For this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."

So this week, when the pressure hits and joy might seem like a stretch, now you know the optimal response. Pray. Give thanks for what's still standing. Thank Him in advance for the turnaround. And watch the joy follow.