“Be transformed by the renewing of your mind” says the apostle Paul. Notice, not by the renewing of your lifestyle but your mind. Transformation is rooted in where we direct our thoughts, and the options are one of two: the desires of our selfish self, called “the flesh” or the desires of the Holy Spirit.
Here’s what I think the sequence looks like in either case:
- a desire that we think about about feeds the desire and strengths it
- a desire that’s getting “stronger” means it is generating more thoughts, more frequently about what is desired
- a desire that’s gaining strength prompts increasingly impulsive choices to think, speak, and act on it
- those repeated choices in turn generate habits
- and those habits are what shape our character
