A Sermon Delivered on Wednesday Evening, January 1st 2025 by – Evangelist Paul Acquah, Live on MZ Radio London, London UK.
Our thoughts hold incredible power. They shape our perceptions, guide our actions, and ultimately determine the direction of our lives. The Bible tells us in Proverbs twenty-three seven, ‘As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.’ Our inner thoughts define who we are and the life we experience. In Romans twelve two, we’re reminded to ‘be transformed by the renewing of our mind.’ It’s through this renewal that we align with God’s perfect will for our lives and step into the fullness of His promises.
In this new year, through the power of God’s Word and the renewal of your mind, you can uproot the weeds of negative thinking and plant seeds of truth that will bear fruit in every area of your life. Join us as we discover how this transformation is possible in today’s message by Evangelist Paul Acquah titled “New Thoughts, New Life”.
If you renew your mind, you will renew your life. I want to encourage you to spend more time in the word of God as we see what we’re seeing in our lives right now, in our generation, in this culture with everything that’s happening economically and just all of the stuff happening in the world. It’s really good to get more time in the word of God as opposed to less time. Proverbs 23:7 is such an important scripture, “As [a man] thinks in his heart, so is he. Your way of thinking determines your way of life. Where your mind goes, that’s where you go.And like the writer of proverbs says, the way we think determines how we live and who we are. That’s why we need to “think about what we’re thinking about.”
Romans 12 1-2 is a very familiar scripture for most of us, but let’s take a look at it again today. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed”. How? “By the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God”.
From this text of scripture, we discover that God does not want us to be conformed to the ways of the world or in other words, how the world thinks. He says if we will renew our minds with the word of God, we’re going to be able to actually live differently from the way the world lives. We’re going to be able to live transformed lives instead of conformed to the world’s way of thinking.
“And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, 2 in which you once walked according to the [a]course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, 3 among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. 4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)” (Ephesians 2:1-5).
Before we believe in Jesus, we are dead in our spirit to God, blind to His ways, unable to communicate with Him, and eternally separated from Him because of our sinful nature.
When we are not born again, we are used to being directed by our soul because our spirit is dead, we don’t have a spirit that’s alive unto God when we are not born again. The soul is used to being in control and what happens for many in the world is they go by the popular notion. They hear things like, whatever feels good, do it. Whatever you think is good, do it. And that’s the problem, we’re so used to those patterns in our lives that they become familiar to us to where it feels normal. We cannot change any of this by our own works. “And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins”. Dead people can’t help themselves. They can’t move, talk, or respond in any way, because they have no life. The only thing that can change our condition is a new spirit and a new life—which is Christ’s gift to us when we believe in Him as our Saviour. We were given life through Christ when we were dead in our sins. When you get born again, God takes that dead, corrupt spirit out of you and you don’t have that demonic sin nature on the inside of you anymore. You’ve got a brand-new nature.
This was an act of grace independent of our efforts and works (Romans 3:27 and 11:6). God gave Christ’s life to us who were dead in sin. Truly, salvation rests in the work of God through Christ alone. 17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new “(2 Corinthians 5:17). I know sometimes you’re thinking well, wait a minute I still got a lust for some things. It’s not because your nature is that way anymore, it’s because you haven’t renewed your mind. Your mind is very similar to a computer and it was programmed to be selfish, it was programmed to think only about yourself, it was programmed to only look at things from your own selfish perspective, it was programmed to just do things on your own and only turn to God when you’re in absolute dire situation.
Your mind was programmed raw and you’re going to continue to have some of the same lust and desires and things that you had before you got born again until you renew your mind through the word of God. God says to us there’s a process that needs to happen once we have been called out of darkness into his marvellous light to where we actually experience our thought lives being transformed. It causes us to not be conformed to those old patterns anymore, where the soul is used to being in control but we begin to establish a new way of thinking and as a result a new way of living. Thoughts are powerful, and according to proverbs 23 and verse 7, they have creative ability. “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he”. Your life is going to go the way of your dominant thought—which is why you must renew your thoughts with the Word of God! You will never experience God beyond what you think. So, if you want to experience Him properly, you need what the Word says.
As a man thinks in his heart so is he and if you don’t renew your thoughts and if you don’t get your thoughts lined up with the word of God, and if you’re thinking wrong about things, then you will eventually experience the results of that wrong thinking. For example, God is who he is regardless of what you think. But as far as your experience goes, you will never experience God beyond what you think. If your doctrine is wrong your experience is going to be wrong. In fact, you cannot have a positive, exciting life and a negative mind.Many are unhappy with their lives because the minute they wake up in the morning, they start thinking negative, sad, depressing things. We need to renew our minds with the word of God. Maybe you’ve spent years thinking wrong thoughts based on a depraved, dysfunctional past, but that can change today.
If you struggle with negative thinking, it’s important for you to come to grips with the fact that your life won’t change until your thinking does. Thinking God’s thoughts is vital for change. “11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. 12 Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. 13 And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart”(Jeremiah 29:11-13)
You see, God has a wonderful life planned for every single one of us. Change your thinking and go for what God has planned for you. The Bible says that God loves us, but have you ever struggled to believe this? I have learned that if we never meditate on God’s Word, we will never experience the depth of His love for us. The love of God is meant to be a powerful force in our lives, one that will take us through even the most difficult trials into victory.
Paul Acquah is the founder of Christ Is All Ministries (CIAM), an evangelical ministry meeting the spiritual, emotional, and physical needs of people. He is passionate about seeing people transformed by the Word of God and making heaven more crowded! Read More