Mind Renewal

I have had to learn some things the hard way about healing that I would like to share with you, but this teaching is really not so much about healing as it is about mind renewal. It turns out, they go very much together and mind renewal is the foundation for healing.

I’ll use a story of how God healed me to illustrate the importance of mind renewal. What is mind renewal? In essence, it is changing the lies we believe through finding and believing the truth -- GOD's TRUTH. I believe you will find this information helpful and insightful.

About a year and a half ago I started really digging in to find out what God's word said about healing, because it was one of the things that I didn't know very much about, and I wanted to see God heal me and others, so I really sought to figure it out to the best of my ability. I spent countless hours reading books, watching videos, etc, researching what other well-known healing ministers said about divine healing and listening to what people who had been healed said about it.

I had already read the Old testament a few times and the New testament many times, so I was pretty familiar with what the Bible said about healing, I just had not had a lot of revelation about all that and so I was not able to piece it all together very well. But thank God, it is true in His word when He says, “Ask and keep on asking, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7). So I did like I have done before with other topics, and I sought with all my heart to figure out what is going on with divine healing and figure out how I could see it happen in my life and in the lives of others.

In a nutshell, this is what most of those big name healing ministers that I researched said:

“It is without a doubt God's will for you to be healed. It is plain as day throughout all of scripture that it is His will for you and Jesus paid for you to have it. So you can confidently pray in faith for God's healing because He has paid for you to have it and He always wants to give it to you.”

They all started out saying that in their books and teachings, and that is very inspiring indeed! The problem was, after that they started listing various reasons why you might not be healed, for example, there might be 8-20 reasons at the end of the book why you might not be healed! Various reasons such as: you might be living in sin, you might have unforgiveness, you might have a generational curse blocking the healing...etc. Not many, but some people even said that in some rare circumstances it might not be God's will for you to be healed and He might instead want you to learn something from the sickness.

Then I came across John G Lake Ministries’ Divine Healing Technician Training and it blew me away right from the start! If you ever have time to research John G. Lake, he was an incredible modern-day apostle. God worked large scale miracles through him on a regular basis that VERY few have ever even seen. God worked miracles through him very similar in magnitude to the Apostle Paul himself. And best of all, Lake taught others to get very similar results. When I learned that, I was very excited, because throughout all of my education, I have had many crappy teachers that maybe could do a good job of the job skills that they were teaching me to do, but most of them could not teach it well at all, and sometimes the ones best at doing their real life jobs were the worst teachers.

So I realized that unfortunately this saying is often true: those can, do; those who can't, teach. I've always enjoyed teaching what I know how to do well, but I don't enjoy teaching what I do not know very well. Some people can "wing it" when it comes to teaching unfamiliar material, but that has never been me. But what I do know well from experience, I love to teach so that people can avoid the same mistakes that I have made. I also learn well by breaking down large concepts into smaller ones. I’ll never forget one of my favorite quotes by Albert Einstein: “If you cannot explain it to a six year old, you do not understand it yourself.” I often try to keep that in mind when explaining things because it is such good advice.

When I started going through John G Lake Ministries’ Divine Healing Technician Training, I was immediately astounded at how they used both scripture and personal testimonies that totally destroyed all the excuses for lack of success in ministering healing. These excuses for why you might not see healing happen are what people create to try to figure out why they didn't see healing happen when they believed with all their heart (or so they thought) for the healing to take place. Further down, I will show you how you can think you believe God with all your heart for one of His promises but that might not actually be the case...

Going back to healing — John G Lake Ministries’ Divine Healing Technician Training claims in their teaching that “The only hindrance to healing is the belief that there are hindrances to healing.” And looking at the life of Jesus, who is our model for how to walk in faith, Jesus said things just like that!

***They do however admit that mind renewal (and a dedicated walk with the Lord) is essential to see healing take place. So mind renewal will be our main focus now.***

Jesus said, I tell you the solemn truth, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive it, so that your joy may be complete. (John 16:23-24 NET)

He also said, "I tell you, whatever you pray and ask for, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours" (Mark 11:24).

He said many other similar things like, "So be it unto you, according to your faith."

Jesus got everyone healed and so did even the disciples at one point in time (see Acts 5:16).

I could go on and on listing faith-building scriptures but I’ll just add one more:

The angel Gabriel said to Mary, “For the word of God will never fail.” (Luke 1:37)

Going back to John G Lake Ministries, they teach a very Bible-based approach to healing and again, they say “The only hindrance to healing is the belief that there are hindrances to healing.”

They do however admit that mind renewal is essential to see healing take place, and I have personally found that to be very true. So mind renewal will be our main focus now because that covers everything we need as Christians.

THERE ARE 3 COMMON PITFALLS I HAVE RUN INTO THAT HAVE HINDERED MY RESULTS FOR HEALING.

They won’t hinder God’s power to heal or His desire to heal, they will simply hinder me from getting good results because the problem is on my end, NOT HIS.

1) The first pitfall was after completing and reviewing several times the John G Lake Ministries’ Divine Healing Technician Training I believed I knew all I needed to know about healing, but I still was believing some lies deep down inside without realizing it. Those lies kept God's healing truth from working in me. The other 2 pitfalls are:

2) LACK OF PATIENCE

3)UNRENEWED MIND towards God, ourselves, others, and His amazing promises.

Really, an unrenewed mind covers all 3 of those things… that’s why it is the focus of this talk. Before we get to that, I'll need to tell you 2 stories to tie this all together.

Story #1)

Highlights: patience and a renewed mind

After I had gone through the Divine Healing Training I was gung-ho for healing. I began praying for it more for anything that came up for myself and for others, even simple aches and pains, coughs and colds, and even headaches. Rachel and I had seen some great healings take place in praying for ourselves and other people, far too many to even mention – we had also seen some lack of results which was baffling but we did not give up too much hope because of the successes we had seen. Overall our faith was growing and it was exciting.

But then - the elbow pain came. I was working out and I developed this daily nagging off and on pain to the inner elbows. It's called golfer's elbow and it's very common especially in men that use their arms to lift heavy things. I see it all the time at the clinic. But I did not want to go the medical route for this because I believed God would heal me. Yes I still took some over the counter pain medicine (naproxen) off and on, because as several people have said, we should not lose our common sense when it comes to pursuing healing. We should still use the things that we can to help, and it helps to remember that this process of mind renewal can take a while. It can take a while for our faith in God to increase as we see Him working more and more in our lives and in others through our prayers.

So, I kept doing what the Bible and what John G Lake Ministries’ Divine Healing Technician Training (JGLM DHT) told me to do and I kept telling my body to be healed in Jesus’ name and quoting scripture over myself, and I did see some partial improvement in the elbow pain without a doubt by doing that. I did not stop working out. I was dead set that I could continue doing what I was doing and trust that God would heal me. And it is very Biblical to tell your body to be healed. In fact, if you look at how Jesus and the disciples got people healed, they commanded people to be healed. Not once, not even one time, did they ever pray to Father God for healing to occur!

But months went by and I was still not fully healed. Then I started getting impatient. I started getting frustrated. I started questioning God, “Why are You not doing what You said You're going to do? I'm doing my part, why are You not doing Yours?” One night I got so frustrated with the pain that I went on a walk and I yelled at God. I think that was maybe only the second time that I've ever yelled at God in frustration. I sincerely hope that I will never do that again, but fortunately He is a big God and He has big shoulders and He does not take offense. You know how I know he does not take offense? He keeps no record of being wronged (1 Corinthians 13). God keeps no record of us wronging Him! That’s a whole other talk in itself…

Anyway, I yelled at God that night and shortly after it, I was on the peloton bike working out. God speaks to me very clearly when I am physically active, He always has, for some reason that's when I hear very well from Him, I think it's because I'm not distracted by anything else and I am in the moment. I also think it's because I tend to learn better when I'm physically active, so combining those two things together, I often get great revelations when I'm physically active, thank you God!!

As I was biking, the Lord just downloaded right into my heart what was going on. He didn't even have to say anything directly, He just downloaded it into me and I instantly knew what was going wrong. The problem was that I had not been eating perfectly. I tell people at my job all the time how to eat well to have better health. But I have more grace for them than I do for myself because I tell them that if they don't eat 100% perfectly, it's okay, don’t beat themselves up, because the goal should be to eat about 90% well and then you can splurge here and there a little bit and not feel guilty. I believe that advice to be reasonable and true, but I was being overly hard on myself. As you've heard before no doubt — we are our own worst enemies. So I realized that I was holding on to unforgiveness for myself for not eating perfectly. I was being a reverse hypocrite! (if such a thing exists – but you get the point). Not only that, but I had believed a lie (probably several lies) based on having an unrenewed mind. One lie I believed was that if I just ate cleaner maybe this problem with my elbows would go away. But if I was eating say 90% clean then that’s not really reasonable is it? Another possible lie is that I was not doing good enough to be healed.

The minute I realized I had unforgiveness for myself based on believing lies, I wasn't even thinking about healing at the time, but I immediately repented to God because I realized that I don't want to be overly hard on myself. I don't want anyone to be overly hard on themselves, so why would I want to be overly hard on myself? I repented and immediately like the snap of a finger, the pain that was in my elbows at that very moment completely vanished, like dust in the wind. It was one of the most incredible moments I've ever had. I'm so thankful that God revealed to me what my problem was, despite the fact that I had just yelled at Him a few nights before that. He is such a merciful and loving God!

So looking back, I don't think it was necessarily the unforgiveness that was the main problem, I think it was really 3 main things:

1) I was frustrated with my lack of results and I did not have enough patience to keep trusting in God to heal me.

2) I did not spend much time seeking the Lord for revelation for anything that maybe I needed to change because I thought I was following the rules for healing that I had been taught and having scriptural faith.

3) I really believe the main problem was that I had an unrenewed mind.

An unrenewed mind is what led to the perfectionism and unforgiveness for myself, and BELIEVING THE LIE that my pain could be fixed just by eating better. Don’t get me wrong, eating better definitely can fix pain, I’ve seen it happen far too many times to count in the clinic, but it was not the source of my pain, therefore for me it was a lie. BUT even if eating junk was the cause, God can still heal me, right?!

I'm going to share with you now 1 more brief story about the importance of mind renewal.

Story #2)

Highlight: mind renewal

My wife Rachel and I were at a conference in April 2024 in Ishpeming, MI. There was a lady that came to speak at that conference for a whole week whose name is Isabel Skulason. She travels all over the world teaching and giving prophecies to people. She is so in tune with the Lord that she can give up to 20 minute prophecies that are dead on accurate.

At that conference, Isabel prophesied to someone and said:

“You are pure of heart and will bring healing to many”

Ok that is not something I had ever been taught about healing, so I began asking the question, what does it mean to have a pure heart?

How can I have a pure heart?? It turns out, the answer was given to us at a different time at that conference and it is based on mind renewal.

How does mind renewal relate to having a pure heart?

First let’s look at 2 scriptures talking about doubt:

James 1:5-8 LSB

5 But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. 6 But he must ask in faith, doubting nothing, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, 8 being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

Mark 11:23 LSB

The promises of God do not determine the course of your life -- your heart does

• This is very important and it changes everything!

• This one thing brings restoration and causes the kingdom to move

The heart is the center of everything

• Proverbs 23:7a --- For as he thinks in his heart, so is he. (NKJV)

What you know in your head is not necessarily what you think in your heart

• We think on both levels, head and heart

• You might say, “I know better, why do I keep doing this?”

  • It is because your head knows better but your heart is off track

    • You keep doing it because it is in your heart

    • Matthew 15:18-20a says, “But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and those things defile the person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, acts of adultery, other immoral sexual acts, thefts, false testimonies, and slanderous statements. These are the things that defile the person

The heart thinks and feels, everything flows from the heart including emotions

• Proverbs 17:22 --- A joyful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones. (NASB)

• Proverbs 3:5 --- “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.” (NASB)

The heart can be wise or foolish

• You can be the smartest person on earth with the highest IQ possible, but if you have a foolish unwise heart you will make terrible decisions and destroy your life and the lives of others.

• A foolish heart trumps IQ levels

• Proverbs 10:8 --- “The wise of heart will receive commands, but a babbling fool will come to ruin.” (NASB)

• Psalm 90:12 --- “So teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom.” (NASB)

The heart makes decisions

• Have you ever wavered on making a decision?

  • Often that is the heart battling the head

The heart thinks and meditates

• Psalm 19:14 --- “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, Lord, my rock and my Redeemer.” (NASB)

The heart can be pure or it can be corrupted

• Matthew 5:8 --- “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” (NASB)

• Do you want encounters with God, to know Him and see Him?

  • You need a pure heart

Your tongue is connected to your heart, not your head

• James 3:2,8 --- 2 For we all stumble in many ways. If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to rein in the whole body as well. 8 But no one among mankind can tame the tongue; it is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. (NASB)

  • No human can tame the tongue, but the Holy Spirit can.

• Matthew 12:33-35 --- Words Reveal Character — “for the tree (person) is known by its fruit (what comes from them)”

• You may know better, but most of your decisions will be made from your heart

• Living a Christian life is only a heavy burden if you are like the Pharisees -- living only by rules and not by God’s laws which are simple and rooted in love

Most people have not learned and do not know what it means to guard their hearts

• How can you guard your heart?

• The ONLY way is by guarding your thoughts

  • Everything you entertain in your head fills your heart

  • There is a direct connection from your head to your heart

    • The heart thinks everything that drops into it 🡪 emotions → words/actions

      • Emotions need released and they can control us

      • There is nothing wrong with this, the problem is what we are putting into our heart determines how we speak and how we act

• All the devil had to do was put that thought into Eve’s head and she entertained it

  • She knew better, God had told her

  • But we should not judge her because we do the same thing all the time

    • No one can make you think about anything --- that is your choice 100%

      • EVERYTHING starts with thoughts!!!

      • People leave church and God, families split, children go the wrong way, drugs/alcohol/addiction --- THOUGHTS

        • Unguarded minds and unguarded hearts

We need to have a GATE in our minds to keep out harmful thoughts

• Philippians 4:8 LSB

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is dignified, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, consider these things.

• Another Gate is taking everything captive to Chist (WWJD) and Scripture

  • Jesus fought off the devil in the wilderness when He was being tempted by saying, “It is written”

    • You can fight the devil off quickly with that method

• A third gate when the going gets tough is to praise God for all the great things He has done for you and promises to do for you

• You can have the most amazing prophecies but they will not happen without a gate to guard your heart because you will be making foolish decisions

• How do we guard our thoughts?

  • The only way to do this is to RENEW OUR MINDS DAILY and keep working towards what it says in Ephesians 4:22-24

"throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy" (NLT)"

• This is a process that takes time and effort but Holy Spirit will be happy to help us through it

• When resentment and grudges do not tempt you anymore, then the devil doesn’t want you anymore because you are useless to him

Now that we have thoroughly covered mind renewal...

Let’s look back at my elbows needing healed. Why didn’t I see healing in my elbows? And why did I get healed the second I repented and changed my heart and mind about my eating habits and had forgiveness for myself? Once my mind and heart were renewed then all those prayers and decrees I had been saying for months about healing stopped being blocked by my doubtful thoughts and the power of God came flowing in through all of those prayers and decrees that I had already said.

At least that’s my interpretation of those events. I’m really not sure if unforgiveness for myself had a blocking effect for my healing; it may be possible, because healing and forgiveness always go together. But Jesus paid for our forgiveness of sin and paid for our healing to take place — and “By His stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). Bottom line is that having unforgiveness is NEVER good and is a major hindrance for God to work in our lives.

The problem with unforgiveness is that many people have it but don’t realize it and don’t think they have it at all! I had it for years for many things and did not realize it until recently. I think this is because most of us don’t have a great definition for it. Here’s the best definition for unforgiveness I have ever seen: anytime I say or think: I should not have done that or you should not have done that (aka JUDGEMENT) without any intention of trying to make the situation better (including saying a simple prayer for myself or the other person). If I have no intention of improving the situation and I am just negatively judging, and especially if there is ANY negative emotion attached to that judging, I guarantee that I have unforgiveness (aka resentment). Keep that in mind, it will serve you well and keep your heart, thoughts, words, and actions pure.

Rachel and I have also recently found a shortcut to renew our minds: speak faith filled decrees or listen to or read God’s word every night for at least 15 minutes before bed. Another strategy is to do that and also spend some time visualizing what you would like to see God do in your life and in others. That will really cement those thoughts into your mind and heart right before bed. Remember that what the mind thinks drops automatically into the heart. The last thing we want to think about before bed is reprogramming our minds to think supernaturally, so that while we sleep our hearts are stewing all night in faith-filled and healing/renewing thoughts.

Inner healing (another topic for another time perhaps) aims to heal the brokenness of our heart, which is super helpful because it neutralizes those traumas we've had through life and sets our hearts (and minds) free! Inner healing is another tool that can be used in the mind renewal process!

We can also reprogram our mind and heart, and we should always, “Take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). In other words, always ask, “WWJD?” That way we are also renewing our minds throughout each day.

Mind renewal is also why in the past you have not seen a lot of miracle healings in churches, despite people praying for them. Sometimes healings take time, and that is why patience is essential so that you don’t get frustrated and lose your faith. But the other thing is in the past big name healing ministries got much of the attention for great healings taking place and I think that is simply because those healing ministers are very devoted to the Lord in their thoughts and actions, and they have their minds renewed very well to what God says about healing! They think about it and meditate on God’s healing scriptures a lot. So they have an above-average mind renewal in that subject, which leads to greater results due to more faith and less doubt rolling around the heart. I don’t know about you, but I want to be at the forefront of seeing His healing in my family and in others and in bringing people into His kingdom!!

Teaching on Healing and Mind Renewal