Learning to be Renewed in the Spirit of the Mind for Christ to Increase in Us

The practical way for us to experience Christ increasing in us and we decreasing is by having a renewed mind and a submissive will; the more we’re renewed in the spirit of the mind and subdued in our will, the more Christ will grow in us and we will decrease. This is our need today.

No matter how advanced we may be in our spiritual progress, we constantly need to be in the process of having our mind renewed and our will subdued so that Christ may continue to grow in us.

Christ desires to work Himself into our being by saturating and permeating us with Himself, and the way He does this is by spreading from our spirit into our mind, emotion, and will.

Many believers think that God wants them to do great works for Him, and their desire is to “serve God” by doing great works of power in His name; however, one of the greatest works that God can do in man and with man is for Christ to grow and spread from man’s spirit into his mind, emotion, and will.

When we talk about Christ growing in us we actually mean the degree to which our mind has been renewed and our will has been subdued by Christ. How much was our mind renewed, and how much was our will subdued to be in one accord with God’s will?

Our mind is the leading part of our soul, and all the problems of mankind originate from the mind, the vanity of the mind. The mind with its thoughts, opinions, and concepts has caused many men to be in darkness and be full of all kinds of imaginations.

The fallen mind causes man to be alienated from the life of God and makes men cast out any feeling in the conscience according to God’s law in man. In today’s society, we can clearly see the many problems that are caused and originated by the mind.

Satan knows how important is the mind, so he wants to take over our mind, constantly bombarding us and infusing us (mainly without our explicit permission) so that he may take over our mind and cause us to think and act his way.

Our mind is the battleground, and God wants to invade our mind to subdue it, dominate it, and take it over; for this, we need to learn to give the Lord our permission to spread into our mind to saturate and renew it.

Learning to be Renewed in the Spirit of the Mind for Christ to Increase in Us

The renewing of the mind is not something minor or optional; if we see things according to the way God sees them, we will realize that the renewing of the mind is strategic for the increase of Christ and the growth of Christ within us.

Our mind is the first line of defense for Satan, and Christ targets our mind – He wants to spread, occupy, invade, and saturate our mind. We need to cooperate with the Lord by giving Him ground in our mind so that He may renew our mind.

How can we be renewed in our mind? Paul encourages us in Eph. 4:23 to be renewed in the spirit of the mind; we put off the old man, are renewed in the spirit of the mind, and put on the new man for God to have the one new man.

Our old man has been crucified with Christ on the cross: this is a fact, and now in our experience we need to live a life of putting off the old man and putting on the new man by being renewed in the spirit of our mind.

At the time of our regeneration God in Christ as the Spirit came into our spirit and mingled Himself with our spirit; now every genuine believer in Christ has a “mingled spirit”, a spirit mingled with the divine Spirit.

A regenerated spirit is a renewed spirit, and this renewed spirit must be strengthened by the Father through His Spirit to invade, subdue, and occupy every part of our soul.

There is a warfare going on in our mind today: Satan wants to remain in our mind and occupy it, and Christ wants to gain and renew our mind, so that He may saturate our thoughts, imaginations, thinking, evaluation, consideration, analysis of things, and everything we use our mind for.

Christ as the life-giving Spirit is now in our spirit, and these two spirits mingle together to form the spirit of the mind (2 Tim. 4:22; 1 Cor. 6:17); in our spirit we are one with the Lord, but how much has Christ spread into our mind to saturate and invade our mind?

The Spirit is with our spirit (Rom. 8:16), and our mind is the main part of our soul; our mingled spirit needs to invade our soul and take over the main part of our soul, our mind. We need to be transformed by the renewing of the mind (Rom. 12:2) so that we may know what the will of God is, that which is good and well-pleasing and perfect.

How much is Christ involved in our consideration of things and analysis of the situation? Do we still think by ourselves, our own things, in our own way, or do we allow the Lord to spread from our spirit into our mind to saturate our mind with Himself?

We need to spend much time with the Lord in His word, pray-reading His word and allowing Him to saturate our mind so that the mingled spirit would spread and seep into our mind and become the spirit of our mind into which we are renewed to become and live as the new man.

Lord Jesus, strengthen us into our inner man so that our mingled spirit would spread into our mind and we would be renewed in the spirit of the mind. Lord, we open to You concerning our mind: come in, saturate us, permeate us, and fill our mind with Your element. We no longer want to imprison or limit You in our spirit: we welcome You in our soul, come into our mind, invade, subdue, and occupy our mind to renew it and thus make us the increase of Christ, the one new man! Lord Jesus, we want to be renewed in the spirit of the mind more today!

Having our Mind Renewed Revolutionizes our Logic, Concept, Perception, and Philosophy

What rules us and causes us to act in a certain way, speak the way we speak, and do the things we do is our mind; our mind is the main factor that rules us in our daily living. However, when Christ as the Spirit mingled with our spirit spreads into our mind, the spirit of the mind is being renewed and we have Christ living in us and governing over everything.

As believers in Christ, we need to no longer walk in the vanity of our mind as the Gentiles do but be renewed in the spirit of the mind sot hat we may have Christ living in us and being expressed through us.

The more we are renewed in our mind, the more Christ rules and dominates in us, and the mingled spirit is preeminent in our being; the result is that we live Christ by being one spirit with Him.

To be renewed in the spirit of our mind is inward and intrinsic. If we learn to be renewed in this way, we will have a deeper perception with which to understand persons and matters. To understand a person requires that we have a deeper sight, a perception that goes farther and deeper. Often our knowing of people is shallow. We lack the perception that penetrates the barriers and coverings because we do not practice being daily renewed in the spirit of our mind. The renewing in the spirit of our mind always revolutionizes our logic, philosophy, thought, concept, and psychology. As a result, our perception in all things is different. (Witness Lee, Messages to the Trainees in Fall 1990, pp. 17-18)

Many times we meet and talk to believers and we realize that they live and think the same way the people in the world do; they live in the vanity of their mind. Many times we do the same things and think the same way as the worldly people do, and we thus take decisions that are according to the worldly way and not according to Christ.

When we are renewed in the spirit of the mind we are revolutionised in our logic, philosophy, thought, concept, and psychology. We accumulate a lot of things, concepts, principles, and ways of thinking throughout our life; we need to be renewed in the spirit of the mind so that we may have an upside-down change, an inside-out transformation in our being.

Our thinking and concepts are different when Christ comes in and takes over, saturates, and permeates our mind. The activities of our intelligence in all the things that we do, great or small, need to be saturated with Christ.

Our understanding of things, our perception of situations and events, our understanding of people and their situation, all need to be saturated and permeated with Christ.

We need to spend time again and again with the Lord in His word and in prayer, opening to Him the doors to our mind and letting Him invade our concepts, thinking, mentality, thoughts, psychology, and logic, so that He may renew us by saturating us with His element.

This is the way for us to grow in life and have the increase of Christ. The increase of Christ doesn’t happen “in the air” or merely in our apprehension of what it means; we need to daily cooperate with the Lord by being in His word in a prayerful way so that He may expand and enlarge Himself into our inner being to take over, occupy, and invade our mind, the leading part of our soul.

As we are renewed in the spirit of the mind, we are revolutionised in our concepts, thinking, philosophy, and thoughts, and we are thus transformed into the same image as Christ to be part of the new man where Christ is all and in all.

Lord Jesus, we want to learn to be renewed in the spirit of the mind so that we may have a deeper perception with which to understand persons and matters. We no longer want to walk in the vanity of the mind as the others do; we open to You, Lord, and we give You the ground in our mind to come in, occupy, invade, and saturate us with Yourself. Strengthen us into our inner man so that we may spend adequate time with You in Your word and have our mind renewed. Lord, may there be a revolutionizing of all our logic, philosophy, thinking, concepts, and psychology as we have our mind renewed!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by brother Minoru C. for this week, and portions from The One New Man, ch. 6 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Increase of Christ for the Building up of the Church (2016 Memorial day Weekend Conference), week 5 / msg. 5, The Increase of Christ in the Believers Being Their Spiritual Progress and Growth in Life.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # Regenerated by the Lord, / Renewed in mind and heart, / He dwells within us as our life / True worship to impart. (Hymns #865)
  # Christ as my Person must possess my heart / And be preeminent in every part. / The former owner died but haunts it still. / O Lord, move in; my mind, emotion, will / Now welcome Thee. (Hymns #1179)
  # In dealings with the Lord as life / We need a proper heart, / That of His riches, in His grace, / We fully may take part. / We need a heart in all things pure, / With mind both sound and clear, / To understand His mind and heart / In trembling and in fear. (Hymns #744)