Help myself? I don’t think so . . .

Psycho-Cybernetics is a self-help book written by Maxwell Maltz in 1960. Many motivational and self-help experts in personal development base their techniques on this book as do many athletic trainers. When I met him, my hubby also believed these ideas. He told me that if he regulated his self-concept, he could become whatever he thought himself to be.

He was trying to convince the wrong person. To me, these ideas were nonsense. Years before I heard of psycho-cybernetics, my dad was reading a similar idea in another well-known book, “The Power of Positive Thinking.” I told him that no matter how positive my thinking, I would never become an opera singer. He’d heard me sing. He tossed the book.

Yet there is a connection between how I think about myself and my behavior. For years, I felt like a rejected person, unable to make/keep friends and unable to do very much of anything. My attitudes showed in my actions. Then the Lord got hold of my life and His Word said that I was now a new person and I was to put away the attitudes and actions of my old life. Some of the following didn’t fit me, but the general idea was this: I am a new person because of Jesus Christ and can now live like it.

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. (Colossians 3:5–10)

“Put on the new self” is not an idea that comes from me, an imaginary hope that I can be or do anything I aspire to. It is God’s reality. He caused me to be ‘born again’ or made new by the power of His Holy Spirit and the reality of His Son who now lives in me.

The challenge for me was a faith issue; did I believe God? As He began to change me from the inside I also began to change on the outside. My desires changed. My behavior changed, not because I worked at it, but because God worked at it! I began to be convinced.

The Lord told me not to be like those who have no faith in Jesus. He says:

They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. (Ephesians 4:19–24)

This is a great description of how it works, like psycho-cybernetics but with a different source of power and a reality rather than a personal ambition. If it was about opera singing, I would be doing it because God changed my voice — yet it is far greater than that. He changed my heart. He put Jesus in there and because of that, I am different, genuinely different.

The verses in Ephesians talk about mind renewal. I don’t have to make up a new reality — God changed my reality and tells me to understand myself in that new way. Drop the old. It is no longer valid. Put on the new and start thinking and acting accordingly. I am created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness!

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Lord Jesus, this is powerful stuff. When I’m thinking as You tell me to think, there is a balance of sinner/saint that fills me with both humility and great confidence. As Your Word says, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13), but it is not in my own ability or the power of my mind. It is because of You!

Today’s thankful list . . .

Being a new creation in Christ Jesus.

The desire and power to recognize and ditch old ways.

An incredible day, sunshine, no wind, cloudless sky.

Seven hours in the beautiful Butchart Gardens — no weeds, no trash, natural perfume, and gorgeous everything.

Mexican food.

My smart phone that takes exceptional photos.