What are you sowing in the field of your mind? There is a spiritual principle that says we reap what we sow. Galatians 6:7-8 says it this way in The Passion Translation;
God will never be mocked! For what you plant will always be the very thing you harvest. The harvest you reap reveals the seed that you planted…
What kind of seeds are you planting through your rehearsed thoughts into the field of your mind?
There has been a debate in science over the impact of the relationship of our mind, which is a part of our soul and the brain in our physical body. There are those who believe that thoughts come from our brain. This view holds that chemicals and neurons in the brain create what you do and think. In the treatment of depression, from this viewpoint, the problem is addressed as a chemical imbalance and the solution is adding the missing chemicals. If, on the other hand, the mind produces what the brain does then the approach to treatment may look different. Dr. Caroline Leaf, in her book How to Switch On Your Brain, shares, “You are a thinking being. You think all day long, and at night as you sleep, you sort out your thinking. As you think, you choose, and as you choose, you cause genetic expression to happen in your brain. This means you make proteins, and these proteins form your thoughts. Thoughts are real, physical things that occupy mental real estate.” (p.32) Eric R. Kandel, a Nobel-Prize winning neuropsychiatrist for his work on memory, shows how our thoughts, even our imaginations, get “under the skin” of our DNA and can turn certain genes on and certain genes off, changing the structure of the neurons in the brain. So as we think and imagine, we change the structure and function of our brains.
What an amazing gift we have been given by God in our free will to make choices. As we focus our thoughts and attention, we affect how chemicals, proteins and the very wiring of our brain change and function. “Research shows that 75-98 percent of mental, physical and behavioral illness comes from a person’s thought life. Another way of looking at this statistic is that only 2 to 25 percent of mental and physical illnesses come from the environment and genes” (Leaf, p.34). We are beginning to realize that the brain functioning that we once felt powerless to change, can now be shaped by the quality of thoughts that we rehearse daily. Science is supporting what the Bible has been speaking for generations that we can be transformed by the renewing of our minds. (Romans 12:2)
Steps in Pursuit
- Take a week to really monitor your thought life and evaluate what type of “seeds” are being planted in your mind field.
- The Bible talks about the importance of meditating on the word of God. Find 2 verses that are encouraging life-giving thoughts and rehearse or meditate on these verses.
- The Institute of HeartMath is an internationally recognized nonprofit research organization that helps people reduce stress. An experiment titled “Local and Nonlocal Effects of Coherent Heart Frequencies on Conformational Changes of DNA” shows how thinking and feeling positive or negative thoughts caused DNA to change shape. I encourage you to check out the amazing results!
As we begin to put into practice “taking every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ” as 2 Corinthians 10:5 instructs us, then we can begin to see transformation take place in our mind and changes occur that promote health in every part of our being.
Continue the Pursuit,
Denise
