The mathematics of faith

The man, the woman of God, does not live life and does not process the events and circumstances of life as does the person who does not know God. The man, the woman of God, the son of God, has to make a change in his mind throughout his spiritual career. When you enter the divine economy, you have to change your mind , and begin to live life in light of principles very different from the principles used in the world. And that is why what the Bible calls a renewal of the mind, a transformation, a change of mind is required.

In the Bible they speak of metanoia, in the original Greek. Meta in Greek means "change", and noia is "mind". It is the word that in Spanish is translated "repentance." One of the essential things we must learn is that when we enter the ways of God we have to change our minds. We could almost say that when we enter the ways of the Lord we have to "repent" of the old way of thinking, and begin to compute life in a different way. It is as if they removed the old hard drive from a computer and put a different one on it.

People who use PCs (personal computers), and people who use Apple branded computers, constitute something like two different cyber nations. People who use Apple computers swear they are the best, and it is as if they belong to a very specific culture. In the same way, those who use Dell, Toshiba or IBM brand PC computers, for example, use other programs, and seem to navigate the cyber world in a different way.

These two technological "nations" execute similar operations, but it is as if they represent two separate and distant cultures. And so it is with the people of God. The children of God have a different spiritual computer than the world. They belong to a separate culture, and differ greatly in the way they process the affairs of life. They operate on a different program. That program is called faith.

Now, we know that faith is a very complex and multifaceted thing. It has many layers and many elements within it. Like any computer program, it requires a lot of instruction and a lot of practice to be used effectively.

But the main thing is that: To function effectively in the world of the Spirit, we have to change our minds, and adjust our mental processes to the laws of the universe of faith.

How many people enter the ways of God and do not change their minds! They stay exactly as they were before they met the Lord. They process life's challenges and decisions according to the same mental patterns that they used when they were in the world. God wants that when we enter his ways we learn to function and think in a different way.

One of the most powerful texts in this sense is Romans Chapter 12, verse 2. It says there, paraphrasing: “Do not conform, do not let yourself be molded, for this time in which you live”, but, it says, “transform yourselves by means of the renewal of his mind ”. In other words, many Christians never change their mind and mind despite being in the gospel. They are in the church but the church is not in them. When the problem comes in life, when the job offer comes, or the opportunity to choose a marriage partner; When the opportunity comes to define their way of doing business or managing their finances, they operate according to what the culture tells them to do, and they conjugate life according to the secular and rational patterns of humanity that does not know God.

They do not employ divine logic, and therefore they miss the opportunity to see the glory of God manifest in their lives. That is why the apostle Paul adds that it is only through the use of that new Kingdom mentality, the faith mentality, that we can “prove God's good will, pleasing and perfect” (Rom 12: 2).

When the son of God, the daughter of God, enters the ways of the Lord, he must understand that he is entering another dimension where different laws operate, where something seems to be an animal but in reality it is a bird, where the world is greater than the sum of its parts. In that strange world of faith, two plus two is not necessarily four, but maybe ten.

In the counterintuitive world of faith you have to learn a different logic, a different vocabulary, a different science. Many people refuse to make that transition, and for that reason they spend their entire Christian life wandering around like the Israelites in the desert, never succeeding in entering the promised land of spiritual power and effectiveness.

It is important that we understand that when entering the ways of God we have to experience a metamorphosis in our inner being. We are supposed to start thinking radically different from how ordinary people think.

We children of God compute with a different math, and that math is based on the principle of faith. This is also the case in the spiritual world. There are potentially many ways to operate in the spirit world. But there is only one biblical model, the spiritual model approved by the divine mind; And it is that model — the model of faith — that God wants you to learn.