Be Transformed Be Renewed Be Well

This e-book is a wellness allegory I wrote to share with one of my business organization teams as encouragement and support. I wanted to show them how to share in a way that focuses on health and wellness over disease and illness. I wanted to show them how God created us in His image as a beautiful symphony that when in harmony with Him and His word, we can be well. My own story became an allegory told in third person so as to take the focus off of me and put it on the message instead – that was my creative side taking over as well. I use this e-book to show how God teaches us with the entire focus on being well – spirit, mind, and body.

Renewal of the mind is the Great Physician's prescription for the troubled soul. The Bible, in Romans 12:1-2, teaches the need to become a transformed person through the renewal of the mind. Transformation is the metamorphoses (a change in form) of our minds, changing the expressions of the old life and nature for the new nature each believer has. Indeed, it is a whole new manner of life. This book is a study guide, designed to help each person learn how to properly participate in the transformation process to make it most effective. This book is for people who feel stuck in life, as though they were going through the motions, spinning their wheels, but accomplishing nothing. Many feel controlled by their pasts or in bondage to their own emotional baggage. The Lord wants to deliver us from our own dysfunctional and misguided minds by renewing them, and in the process our lives will be transformed. Then we will be able to think and act as the new person we are in Jesus Christ; life will have purpose and control will flow from within us. Who we really are deep inside, is defined by entities such as character, attitude, conscience, values, etc. These reside in the deeper recesses of the soul, in the central core of our being. They can be deeply scarred by the events of life, sin, self, false concepts..., and these scars are often created early in life. Thus, our scarred souls (minds) carry the baggage of our pasts, the emotional pain of our lives, and the thinking characteristic of the non-regenerated mind. Our dilemma is: we are powerless to do anything about these scars (which are like scratches on DVD) and we can't function correctly with them. Resolving this dilemma is the Lord's work, and that is what mind renewal accomplishes. This is why the Holy Spirit works in the deepest parts of our minds, to reach the inner, core issues of life. This is where miracles are performed in our lives. Upon faith in Christ, the Holy Spirit enters our lives, and searches out the deepest recesses of our minds. As the Spirit works, He changes us, starting from those deepest recesses and working outward. The gunk of our past, the emotional baggage, the pride and self righteousness, the toxic memories, the negative thoughts that control our lives..., are all transformed through His power. In their place the Spirit produces His fruit, which is exactly what we need (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control...). Some topics discussed: depression, mental baggage, toxic thoughts, harmful emotions, negativity, fear and anxiety, being overweight, deadly memories, and the stress-health connection. Specific plans are developed to show how to address any matter in life in a godly manner, with the goal of achieving a renewed mind.

Success will flow effortlessly into your life once you follow the systematic mind renewal system presented in this book.

The NIV is the world's best-selling modern translation, with over 150 million copies in print since its first full publication in 1978. This highly accurate and smooth-reading version of the Bible in modern English has the largest library of printed and electronic support material of any modern translation.

This study illustrates how Paul reworks Old Testament citations in Romans to incorporate the Gentiles into Israel's covenant-renewal texts.

Everyone is being discipled. The question is: what is discipling us? The majority of Christians today are being discipled by popular media, flashy events, and folk theology because churches have neglected their responsibility to make disciples. But the church is not a secondary platform in the mission of God; it is the primary platform God uses to grow people into the image of Jesus. Therefore, as church leaders, it is our primary responsibility to establish environments and relationships where people can be trained, grow, and be sent as disciples. There are three indispensable elements of discipleship: Learning to participate in the biblical story (the Bible) Growing in our confession of who God is and who we are (theology) Regularly participating in private and corporate intentional action (spiritual disciplines) Deep Discipleship equips churches to reclaim the responsibility of discipling people at any point on their journey.

Leading Scholar Explores Paul's Teaching on the Mind This major work by a leading New Testament scholar explores an important but neglected area of Pauline theology, Paul's teaching about the mind. In discussing matters such as the corrupted mind, the mind of Christ, and the renewal of the mind, Paul adapts language from popular intellectual thought in his day, but he does so in a way distinctively focused on Christ and Christ's role in the believer's transformation. Keener enables readers to understand this thought world so they can interpret Paul's language for contemporary Christian life. The book helps overcome a false separation between following the Spirit and using human judgment and provides a new foundation for relating biblical studies and Christian counseling.