Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Romans 12:1-2

It’s about a year and half since I was first diagnosed with Cancer.  I’m about to embark on the latest treatment having had 2 relapses.  Aside from the physical effects of going through this, the toll on our mental health is starting to show.  It’s not always as tangible as the physical effects, but it’s no less real and it obviously doesn’t just affect me, those closest to me feel it most profoundly. 

As the weather was a little better, I was recently able to go for a walk with friends I haven’t been able to see for ages.  They won’t have known it, but that did wonders for my headspace.  These are the kind of things you take for granted and only realise how important they are when you can’t do them.

Our brains are both incredibly powerful and incredibly fragile things.  They need care and attention as much as our physical bodies.  The verses above talk of the renewing of our minds.  It’s an invitation for us to submit to God and allow us to be influenced by His word, His Spirit and His example. 

The world will tell me how bad things are for me, how hopeless the situation is, how helpless I am, how badly I’m handling it all, how difficult the next few weeks will be, etc, etc. In fact, half the time I don’t need the world to tell me, I’m just naturally pre-disposed to think like this anyway.  In short, I need my mind to be transformed, I need to think differently, I need God to influence my thinking!

All the things both good and bad that have happened to us in our lives influence our thoughts and pre-dispose us to think in a certain way.  Add to this the influence of things like social media and the world view of how you should look, behave and the views you should hold, it seems that the battle for our minds has never been so acute. 

It can feel like those who shout the loudest have the greatest influence on us and feed into our own insecurities and our negative views of ourselves.  However, we do have a choice here. By submitting to God, we choose His influence over our lives.  This often doesn’t feel like the easy choice, the easy choice is to think as we always have done, even though this damages us, we can take some comfort from this.  

But God has given us a way to change this. By giving ourselves to him we get to see what he thinks of us; the love, mercy and compassion he has for us, the value and high esteem he holds us in.  We get to see what his will is for us; the plans he has for our future and the hope he has given us through Jesus.

So, let God shout the loudest in your lives, let him influence your thinking and let him show you what he really thinks of you!