If you are born again, you may have noticed you still have bad thoughts and attitudes from time to time. Even though your parents are bringing you up to serve God, and you live in a protected environment, you still hear things and see things little kids shouldn't see and hear.

They can't protect you from everything every minute of the day. Once you see and hear things that are against God, without realizing it, those things begin to lodge in your minds.

For instance, let's say you're at school on the playground, and a kid in your class gets mad at another boy, and let's out a string of swear words. You didn't choose to hear those words. Your parents weren't there to cover your ears, but there you were and you heard them.

Your brain records those words, and the next time you get mad, out of nowhere, those words come to your mind. If you're not careful, they'll come right out your mouth! You wonder, "Why did those nasty words come out my mouth? I'm supposed to be a Christian!"

Let's say you boys go the gas station with your fathers. While you're standing at the counter as your dad is paying the bill, your eyes happen to catch a glimpse of some dirty magazines behind the counter.

You didn't look at them on purpose, and if your dad had known, he would probably tried to protect you against it. But you saw them, and those images are locked in your brain, especially you older boys.

Completely against your will your brain will bring those images back to you over and over again. If you don't know what to do, you'll give in, and think about what you saw. And you're a Christian.

Your unsaved friends play music which have bad words to them, and sometimes you hear them. You are constantly attacked with ungodly thoughts, sounds, and pictures. It's a battle in your mind.

Be Not Conformed To This World
The Bible tells us, "Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds," (Romans 12:2).

The world is constantly trying to make us conform to their values, ideals, and their way of doing things. It's called sin. God is saying, don't conform to their way of doing things. Conform to Me, instead.

What does it mean to conform? When I take a cookie cutter and press is down on this clay, what happens?

As I remove the surrounding clay, then remove the clay from the cookie cutter itself, my clay has taken on the shape of the cookie cutter. I can say the clay has conformed to the cookie cutter.

The world wants to make us to conform to the way they think, behave, do business, treat others, believe about God and religion, the way we talk, the clothes we wear, and so on.

This is done by forcing their ideas on us through education, TV, books, advertising, music, news, and much more. We don't even realize it's going on.

It's not that everything they do, think, and believe is wrong, but a lot of it is very much against our Christian faith and beliefs.

The only way we can keep from being swallowed up by their system is to stay focused on the things of God. We do this by "renewing our minds" to the Word of God.

As we spend time in the Word allowing it to shape our thoughts, all the crud from the world begins to get washed away. We may have to spend time in God's Word everyday to continually rid ourselves of all those things, but in doing so we renew our minds.

Being Transformed
As we are faithful to spend time in the Word, and spend time with Jesus in prayer and fellowship, we begin to take on the image of Christ. We become what the Bible calls "transformed."

We are made into something new! It's the same type of transformation as when a flower bud blooms into a beautiful rose, or a child grows into adulthood. It's a miraculous transformation!

Let's look at our example of a human being again by using these children as the spirit, soul, and body of our sample human being.

Remember, only our spirits are born again at the time of salvation.
But as a person faithfully renews his mind, or his soul, to the Word of God, he begins to change.

The spirit which always wants to serve God now has a partner. The soul has changed. It has been transformed—renewed. Now it also wants to serve God—mind, will, and emotions.

Not only have her thoughts been shaped and molded by the truth of God's word, but she now makes right choices because of what she sees in the Word. She is now choosing to serve God because she wants to.

Not only is her thought life lining up to truth, and not only is she choosing to do what's right, but her emotions have changed as well.

She doesn't struggle with bad attitudes any more. She doesn't struggle with anger, and depression, and the fears she used to have. Now she's happy, and joyful, full of love. There's peace, gentleness and kindness ruling her life.

Her mind, her will, and her emotions have conformed to the life and power of God. Now when there's a choice to be made in this person's life, it's a different story.

It's still two against one, but this time things are going God's way. The body may still kick and scream because it has a "mind of it's own." It's also been in charge of this person a long time, and doesn't give up easily.

But because the spirit and the soul are so strong, it has to do what is right.

Boys and girls, this is our ultimate goal. We want to have strong spirits, and souls which are transformed into what God wants us to be because we have renewed our minds on Him.

Source: School Of The Bible, Most High God p. 199-201 by Becky Fischer
Excerpt permission granted by Kids In Ministry International