If you have spent any time in the Bible you know that we are taught to meditate on the words and thoughts of God contained in scripture. We are also instructed to speak out or confess what we believe in our heart.
What Does the Word Say?
Joshua 1:8 says, “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.”
We are again encouraged by the Psalmist that the blessed man’s “delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night.” (NKJV, Psalm 1:2) Paul tells us, “since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, ‘I believed and therefore I spoke,’ we also believe and therefore speak,” (NKJV, 2 Corinthians 4:13) Again, in Hebrews, we are told that Jesus is the Apostle and High Priest of our confession.
How are we born again and translated out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of God’s dear Son? According to Romans 10:9-10 we believe in our heart and confess with our mouth.
Finally, Romans 12:1-2 plainly lays out that we are not to be conformed to this world, but we are to be transformed by the renewing of our mind.
The Mind-Body Connection
Meditation, confession and mind renewal are straight out of the Bible, but did you know that science bears witness to the power of meditation and confession in the renewing of the mind? There is a mind-body connection! What we think about matters! In fact, the thoughts in our mind (which is the non-physical part of our being that functions and operates through our physical brain) have substance. Thoughts produce proteins which form real, physical structures that change the landscape of our brain.
The thoughts we think grow branches on nerve cells in the brain, so our thoughts are quite literally shaping the physical structure of our brain and, in turn, shaping what our life becomes.
When we meditate on the words and thoughts of God, speaking them out of our mouth, we are building a healthy, flourishing landscape in our brain. We are hard wired to feed on the Word, to grow on the Word, and to flourish in life as a result of thinking and living God’s way. In contrast, the thoughts of the world – thoughts that are anxious, worried, stressful, selfish, angry, depressing, etc. – actually damage the brain and create a harmful, toxic landscape from which to live.
Changing the Way We Think
When we renew the mind, what we are actually doing is renovation in the brain. Think of Fixer Upper or any other renovation type of show. They tear down the old and bring in the new. Mind renewal is the same. We tear down the old patterns of toxic thinking and replace them with new patterns of life-giving thought. How does that happen? We don’t go in with a jack hammer on demo day and start tearing walls down. If we want to change the brain we use consistent meditation and confession of God’s Word to tear down walls and then rebuild our gorgeous new living space!
Science backs up Romans 12:1-2. We are indeed transformed by the renewing of the mind. Science backs up Joshua 1:8. We do make our way prosperous and have good success when we meditate in the Word and live from a mind that thinks, feels and chooses God’s way. So if you weren’t convinced before, be convinced now that meditating in and confessing the Word is valuable, life-changing, and even brain-changing!
For a more in-depth study of the mind-body connection, neuroplasticity, and the thought life visit www.drleaf.com
For our free resources that will help you meditate in the Word go to our RESOURCES page.
