Thinking like people of faith

Change our way of thinking, of seeing things: That is one of the most important elements about the concept of faith. Do you know where faith begins? Faith begins in the mind, in the way of thinking. The person of faith is a person who thinks and sees life and conceives the events and affairs of life in a way very different from as does the person who is not of faith, the person who thinks only in rational, human, material terms. It takes a change of mind to be able to think in terms of faith.

That is why the Apostle Paul, in Romans 12: 2, speaks of "not being conformed to this age." With that, he is telling us: "Do not get used to thinking as the world thinks, but transform yourselves through the renewal of your mind, your way of thinking, your understanding."

When one enters the ways of God, he has to discard much of what he has learned in the world, and replace it with the concepts of the Kingdom of God. Because in the world of faith things work very differently from how they work in the material world.

In the world of faith, more is less, and less is sometimes more. In the world of faith, children are the ones who enter the kingdom of heaven, and adults and the very mature and sophisticated are left outside. In the world of faith the weak is the strong. In the world of faith you have to die to live. In the world of faith you have to serve to receive and to be served. In the world of faith, you have to give to have. In the world of faith you have to make yourself small so that God can raise you up.

It's a weird thing. The vision of faith is very different from the human vision. And unfortunately many people in the world, or rather in the church, when they come from the world, and enter the economy of the gospel, do not operate that change in their mind. They are still thinking how the world thinks, and God wants that when we enter the gospel, our mind to be transformed, to be changed. And that is the process of a lifetime.

But many of us don't even start it. We stay as we were in the world. We are neither one thing nor the other. And so, we are like part carnal, and part spiritual and it is a terrible confusion. We receive nothing because as the apostle James declares, "the double-minded man does not expect that he will receive anything from the Lord." The person who is indecisive, insecure, indefinite, does not achieve much in the Kingdom of God.

We have to define ourselves as men and women of faith. People who compute the things of the world according to the laws of the spirit and not the laws of reason.