Once, during an appointment with my counselor, she made the point that I could repeat a text from the Bible from memory but had no real understanding of what it meant or how to live by it. As we explored this further in future counseling sessions, I came to realize that I had a lot of biblical information in my head, but that wasn’t really doing me much good because they were just words in my mind and not principles I lived by. Truly, I didn’t understand what it meant, why it was relevant to me, nor how to apply it to my life.
Yes, as I was seeking to break free from my sex addiction, I sought help from a professional counselor. And I was blessed that while she most definitely brought all the skills of a licensed mental health professional to her work with me, she was also a Christian who brought God into her counseling. It was as if she and God were working together as partners to help me—literally, not figuratively. And it was in counseling with her that I was awakened to the transforming power of the “Word of God.”
The mind/spirit, sometimes referred to as the heart, is the part of a person that thinks, reasons, feels, desires, and wills (to choose or make decisions). It is the “immaterial” part of a person which is the actuating cause of an individual life—reason a person acts in a certain way; a fundamental activating principle determining one’s character. Consider this:
What’s in my mind/spirit/heart is key to what I think, how I reason, how I feel, what I desire, as well as what decisions I make and what actions I take—it’s fundamental to who I am and how live.
Am I suggesting that other factors, such as my anatomy/physiology, have no influence on my life? No, not at all. But what I am saying is that the mind/spirit/heart is key to determining the me who shows up and lives from day-to-day.
My counselor told me that if I wanted to gain victory over my sexual addiction, I had to do more that focus on my sex organ. I had to win the battle in my mind/spirit/heart.
An important part of winning the battle in my mind/spirit/heart is to search diligently for the truth and then live by it. When I find the truth, then I adopt a principle for living based upon that truth and commit it to my mind/spirit/heart to live by.
When principles for living, rooted and grounded in the truth of God, become part of my mind/spirit/heart, it helps me in this way.
In my next two blogs, The Renewing of My Mind—Part 2 and The Renewing of My Mind—Part 3, I will share with you ten principles for living that helped free me from my sexual addiction and are key to my sexual recovery.
Copyright © 2022 Training for Transformation, Inc. All rights reserved.
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