three
Change the Way You Think
Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.
—Romans 12:2
I can say, “I need to love my kids more,” but that isn’t going to work. You can’t fight your way into a feeling. You must change the way you think about your kids, about your husband, about your wife, and that will change the way you feel, which will then change the way you act.1
—Pastor Rick Warren
I’ve never been good at small talk, which is one of the reasons I don’t like parties. At parties you’re expected to mingle. Mingling is a terrifying concept to a Scottish person. We tend to be a little reserved, so making polite conversation with a stranger, while you’re stuck in a corner with chicken-on-a-stick, is enough to make us break out in hives. For some time though, there was more going on for me than simple cultural reticence. I lacked confidence in who I was in a crowd of new people. That might sound strange if you consider that I spend a lot of time on stage or on television, but those are roles I’m comfortable in. I know what’s expected of me. When I’m on the platform I know I’m doing what God designed me to do. When I’m on television I love the intimacy of looking right into the camera, reminding the one who is watching that just as they are, they are loved by God. (It might sound strange to call a medium like television intimate, but that’s how it feels to me.) But on occasions when I found myself in a group of strangers or those I didn’t know very well, I felt at a bit of a loss. I would have these ridiculously inappropriate thoughts going through my mind.
Should I stand on the dining table and sing, “The hills are alive with the sound of music?”
Should I pretend I’m praying?
If I walk out backward will they think I’m coming in?
It’s probably why I’ve always been comfortable around dogs. You can get down on the floor with them, scratch their ears, and they’re happy. It’s all they expect, and they’ll wag their tail to prove it. Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t a recluse. I was comfortable around close friends, but in certain circumstances, I struggled. I struggled because of how I saw myself, how I thought about myself. My self-image and negative thoughts impacted how I lived for years. It affected the places I went and the places I avoided.
In 2012 I was invited to speak at a conference in Wembly Arena in London. The conference was being presented by Hillsong Church, a large worldwide church whose main campus is in Sydney, Australia. I was familiar with the amazing worship music they have produced over the years, but I’d never met their senior pastors, Brian and Bobbie Houston. My only connection to Hillsong was through my friend Christine Caine.
The speakers with me that year at “Colour” (the name of Hillsong’s conference for women) were Christine, Priscilla Shirer, and Bobbie Houston. I had traveled from Dallas to London by myself, but once I arrived Bobbie and her team made me feel very welcome and loved. Wembly seats over 12,000 people, which can be a pretty intimidating sight from the stage, but it brought me to tears. I never imagined seeing crowds like that in England. Before I came to America I worked with British Youth for Christ as an evangelist. In those days we struggled to get more than a couple of hundred people to any event, so to see thousands of women worshiping God together was beautiful.
I loved every minute of the conference, but on the last night my insecurities surfaced. We were invited for an after-conference party at the home of an English couple. It wasn’t just the speakers who were invited that night but the worship team and several of Bobbie’s friends and leaders who had flown in from Hillsong churches around Europe. As everyone gathered backstage and began to pile into cars, chatting excitedly in their cute party clothes, I excused myself—muttering something about a headache—and went back to my hotel. I remember sitting on the bed feeling lonely and a bit lost, but the thought of being thrust into a gathering of people who all looked to be about 5 feet 10 and size 2 was too much for me. I didn’t feel trendy enough or witty enough. I’d already worn everything I brought and didn’t have pretty party clothes, so I voted myself “off the island.”
Even as I think about this now, I know that no one at the party would have cared what I was wearing or whether I was too tired to talk and rolled around on the floor with the dog, the cat, or the hamster. It wasn’t about them—it was about me. It was about how I saw myself. It was about the way I thought about myself. Ironically, I had shared messages that weekend about being loved just as you are. I even began my first message with a Scripture I had recently discovered. It’s perfect for those days when your hair won’t behave:
Your eyes are doves
behind your veil.
Your hair is like a flock of goats. (Song of Sol. 4:1 ESV)
I could talk to others about being loved just as they are and encourage them to show up even if their hair looked like stuffing come out of a mattress, but I couldn’t seem to grab hold of that message for myself.
Old thought patterns are hard to change. Even though by then I lived in a nice house and had a loving husband and son, the imprint of being the poor kid with hand-me-down clothes, living in government housing, was an identity that was hard to shake. The circumstances of my childhood created a thought process that told me certain things about myself. My father committed suicide when I was five years old, and although I don’t believe I ever consciously thought this, I lived believing that I wasn’t worth sticking around for. He’d suffered a brain injury before his death, and the last time he ever looked at me it was with anger and what I read as hate. So, I lived a careful life. I was careful not to get too close to anyone so that if they walked away it wouldn’t hurt so much. When I went into high school I never tried to be friends with the popular girls because I knew they wouldn’t accept me. Instead I volunteered for projects or auditioned for a part in the school musical. I was always much more comfortable with something to do because I had little confidence in who I was.
You would think when I became a Christian all of that would have changed, but it didn’t. I believed God loved me because He’s God. This may sound a little disrespectful, but I thought, Well, that’s His job. It’s not personal. He loves everyone. It didn’t change how I saw myself or how I believed others saw me. As a young girl I found my value in what I did for God. I volunteered for everything at church and stayed late to clear things up after youth group. Once I became a singer (my first ten years in ministry I was a contemporary Christian artist . . . ask your mother!) and then a television host and Bible teacher, I believed I had value because God was using me, so therefore He must be pleased with me. I didn’t understand that God wanted to totally transform the way I thought and therefore how I lived. Not only that, I didn’t understand that the greatest, most profoundly personal love story ever is the one between God, in Christ, and any man or woman who will come with nothing and accept His everything. That would take me many years along a broken road to begin to understand.
The way I thought about my worth spilled over into my relationships with other women. I felt they accepted me for what I did and who they perceived me to be. By the time my son, Christian, was in school I had already written several books and been on television, so the other mothers knew who I was. I just didn’t let them get to know who I really was.
I hadn’t allowed the love of God to bathe my eyes a second time. Do you remember that story from Mark’s Gospel?
When they arrived at Bethsaida, some people brought a blind man to Jesus, and they begged him to touch the man and heal him. Jesus took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village. Then, spitting on the man’s eyes, he laid his hands on him and asked, “Can you see anything now?”
The man looked around. “Yes,” he said, “I see people, but I can’t see them very clearly. They look like trees walking around.”
Then Jesus placed his hands on the man’s eyes again, and his eyes were opened. His sight was completely restored, and he could see everything clearly. (8:22–25)
While he was healed of physical blindness, at times we need to be healed of spiritual blindness. We’re invited to come back to Christ over and over again to be renewed. Having our vision clarified is a powerful gift, an ability to see ourselves as Christ does, not by the labels we wear or the way we think about ourselves. It’s not that He’s unaware of everything that makes you you and me me. He knows all our little quirks and personality traits, but the glorious truth of the gospel is that Jesus is in love with us right now, even though we are a crazy, mixed-up bunch. He sees us as beautiful.
I don’t know if or where you struggle most in your mind. It may not be with how you see yourself. It may be how you see yourself in other ways, like a parent. You look at all the other parents and how well their children behave in church and you see them roll their eyes when yours raise their voices but not in worship. You question yourself mercilessly.
What am I doing wrong?
Why won’t they listen to me?
Why are my sister’s children doing well in school and mine are failing miserably?
We judge ourselves so harshly as parents and at times read that judgment into the eyes of others even when it’s not there.
One of the most difficult things to bear is when one of your children turns away from faith. That is heartbreaking, and the thoughts that circulate inside are torturing. You wonder what went wrong. Your son went to the same church, the same Sunday school as your friends’ son who’s grown into such a godly young man, and your boy wants nothing to do with Jesus. What happened? What did you miss?
One of my dearest friends is there right now. We have wept together over the phone as she’s shared what’s going on in her child’s life. She is a great mom. She is loving and fair, strong and tender but at the moment she can’t see herself that way. Her grief has blurred her vision. She looks at the situation that is not okay and in her mind that translates as she’s not okay. That’s a huge, important distinction.
One of my main passions as a mom from the moment my son was born was to help him distinguish between doing a bad thing and being a bad person. He was an easy child to raise, but when he was sixteen he did something foolish and fortunately got caught. It wasn’t a huge deal, but it was out of character for him. He’s such a perfectionist and mentally beats himself up if he falls short of his tough internal standard. Later that night he saw me praying for him and crying in my bedroom. He came rushing in with tears running down his face, saying that he’d never do anything bad again. I gathered him in my arms and assured him that I was quite sure he would! I told him that night what I wish I’d understood at sixteen or even at thirty-six: what he did wasn’t a good thing, but that didn’t make him a bad person. It made him human. I told him that God loves him as much on the days he feels he’s done everything wrong as He does on the days he feels he’s done everything right. I told him that life will take some unexpected turns, and at times he’ll be devastated, but never to doubt for a moment that God is in control. I told him to stop trying so hard to be perfect and just live, loved.
He looked at me and said, “May I ask you a question?” I said, “Of course,” wondering what profound question my little speech had stirred. He said, “If you’re okay now, can I go back to watching television?” Yes . . . profound!
Perhaps you don’t question yourself as a mom; that might be the one thing you know God gifted you to be. You may wrestle with how you see yourself as a wife. You look at how affectionate your friend’s husband is with her and how distracted or uninterested your husband is and wonder what you’re doing wrong. You look back to the days when you first fell in love, when he loved everything you did and laughed at every funny thing you said. How could things have changed so much? You look in the mirror, and with blurred vision you think the problem is you. You’ve tried to talk to him, even suggested counseling, but he’s not interested. In your mind, there’s something wrong with you.
Or, perhaps you are the one who has lost interest. You wonder how you’ll ever find your way back to the way you felt on your wedding day. You can’t imagine that you used to think it was cute when he dropped his socks right beside the laundry basket instead of in it or left his plates in the sink when it’s only two more steps to the dishwasher. Now everything he does annoys you. Not only that, the passion is gone. When you think about your marriage you feel angry and sad. You believe you’ll never be happy again unless you can get out.
I’m a huge fan of the Hallmark Channel at Christmas. I love every snowy movie and every love story even though I know exactly how each one is going to end. I wonder, however, how those romantic tales impact our lives. A steady diet of happy endings, though fictional, can blur our vision. It’s not only darkness that changes what we see. Rose-colored glasses can too. Those kinds of movies don’t show the hard work that goes into a marriage when it would be much easier to throw in the towel. They don’t depict the seasons when the only thing that holds you together is the commitment you made to God and to each other, not how you feel when you look across the dinner table. Changing the way you think can impact the most important relationships in life.
I went through two years when I struggled in my marriage. I was disappointed and hurt and angry. I allowed myself to move into a way of thinking where everything he did was wrong. I discovered too in that season that it was easy to find women who encouraged me to walk away. I had to choose carefully who I listened to. It was my commitment to God and to our son that held my feet to the fire. Today, I look at Barry as he tells me to stay inside because it’s cold and he’ll take the dogs for a walk, or listen to him talking to our son on the phone, and I love him more now than I did on our wedding day. I did not believe that was possible, but it is.
Even as I write that, I think of those of you whose marriages didn’t survive, and I pray that my words don’t condemn you, because that’s not my heart at all. You may have fought for your marriage and it failed anyway. You may have had an affair and your husband wouldn’t forgive you, or you may simply have wanted out and got out. The breathtaking truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that we are not judged on our failures but on the finished work of Christ. Clearly that doesn’t mean we get to live any way we like, it simply means that there is always an open door back to the Father when we fall down. That is the heart and passion of this book. It’s okay not to be okay, because Jesus has made us right with God. If we could begin to grasp that, it would radically revolutionize our lives. God looks down on this crazy, mixed-up bunch of beautiful that is the body of Christ and He loves us. He doesn’t love the one who fought for her marriage one bit more than the one who gave up. You’re not an outsider, not second best. If you have placed your trust in Christ, you are a child of God.
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. (1 John 3:1 ESV)
As I’ve reflected on some ways we need to transform our thinking, it’s clear that we live in a culture that places value on things that are external—looks, wealth, position, and success. You may not be married or have children, but do you wrestle with your basic value as a person? If you didn’t get the promotion you expected or if you weren’t invited to join a certain group heading out for lunch, it’s very easy to feel undervalued or insignificant, and that can begin to change how you think about your life. I received an anonymous letter a few weeks ago from a woman who told me she struggles to connect with anyone. She goes to church but sits at the back and slips out during the final piece of music. She didn’t tell me why she feels so unlovable, but the last sentence of her letter was this: “I think if I disappeared tonight no one would notice that I’d gone.” That is a wretched place to be. We were made for connection and long to know that we matter.
I’ve talked to many women whose greatest mental struggle is that they don’t believe they measure up as a Christian. A young girl told me she’s sure God must be disappointed in her because she doesn’t pray enough or have enough faith. Another woman told me she believed God isn’t answering her prayers because He doesn’t love her as much as He loves some of the other women in her church. Instead of feeling deeply loved, many feel overwhelmingly condemned. I don’t believe this is how God wants us to live. There has to be a transformation in our thinking.
In the first two chapters we looked at having a gut-level honest conversation with ourselves and with God, facing the disappointment when doors have been slammed in our face. But none of that will move us forward unless we change how we think. How do we change what we think when it’s so deeply entrenched?
Let’s take another look at the beginning of Romans 12. The English Standard Version translates verse 2 this way:
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Paul makes it clear that the only way to be transformed is to have our minds renewed. As I’ve meditated on this verse for some time, I wonder if in contemporary Christianity we place more emphasis on behavior than on right thinking, on what we do rather than understanding why we do it and committing wholeheartedly to the process.
Let me explain what I mean. One of the things that our son noticed in his first year of college was that some of the other students he’d known at high school or church changed the way they behaved when they were away from home. Now, I know a certain amount of that is to be expected when our children are first away from home. This, however, was more than a simple spreading of wings. They lived like completely different people. Once they were away from parents watching their behavior, they behaved however they wanted. If there’s not a transformation internally, then when external forces are removed, we do whatever pleases us. I’ve prayed with so many Christian parents who are devastated by the way their college-age kids have changed.
“They never behaved like that before they left home!”
The hard question remains: Why did they live differently at home? Did they make good choices previously to fit in, to avoid discipline, or because there was a heart and mind change? You can do all the right things, but if you don’t know why you’re doing them you’ll abandon them when they’re no longer expected. It’s not just our children. It’s very easy for us to fall into the same trap. In our culture we are increasingly bombarded with messages about what to wear, what to think, who to believe, what the latest trend is. Paul’s words to the church in Rome speak clearly to us today: Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world.
It’s the most natural thing in the world to copy behavior and customs or Paul wouldn’t have begun that way. We all want to belong, to fit in. When we give our lives to Christ, it becomes clear that some behaviors and customs are no longer in line with the Word of God. So, we may stop doing certain things, but unless we are transformed, unless our minds are renewed, not much has really changed internally. Some of us simply replace the world’s list with a more acceptable one. We swap drunkenness for gluttony or cursing for gossip. Until we understand that we may live on this earth but we belong to another kingdom, we’ll tidy ourselves up a bit and wonder why we still feel so defeated. Giving our lives to Christ is not like joining a club. It’s a call to a radical new way of thinking and living 24/7—not just on Sunday mornings and when we’re at church.
The word transformed only occurs one time in all four Gospels, and it was a dramatic transformation:
Six days later Jesus took Peter and the two brothers, James and John, and led them up a high mountain to be alone. As the men watched, Jesus’ appearance was transformed so that his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as light. (Matt. 17:1–2)
The word for transformed here is the Greek word metamorphoo. From that root we get our word metamorphosis. When a beautiful butterfly emerges from a cocoon, the change is total. As the disciples watched that day, Christ’s face shone like the sun, His clothes white as light. I can’t imagine what that must have been like to see, but do you know that one day you and I will look like that? Christ told His disciples that when He has finally defeated Satan and established a new kingdom and a new earth, “then the righteous will shine like the sun in their Father’s Kingdom” (Matt. 13:43).
A day is coming when our transformation will be complete. We will be changed externally and internally. But now, as followers of Christ on this earth, we are called to be transformed internally, which will impact our external behavior. Only an internal transformation will truly change external behavior. Every battle begins in our minds, not with our behavior. We can behave a certain way and remain unchanged. If we want to change how we act, we have to change how we think.
You may be tempted to ask, “Why did you call this book It’s Okay Not to Be Okay if now you’re telling me I have to change?” Good question! The answer is simple. It’s not an issue of judgment, it’s a matter of freedom. Christ wants you to be free. Free from condemning thoughts, free from compulsive behaviors, free to be who you really are, free to live your crazy, beautiful life.
When Paul wrote to the church in Galatia he said,
So Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law. (Gal. 5:1)
Paul wanted to make sure the believers in Galatia didn’t fall back into condemnation under the law. They were being told by someone they had to be circumcised to be right with God. Paul reminded them there is only one way to be right with God and that is through faith in Christ and His sacrifice on the cross, once and for all, for those who trust in Him.
You may have been touched by that kind of message in more contemporary ways. Some churches place great emphasis on a particular style of dress or music. Some believers drink wine and some don’t. Some churches invite women into the pulpit and others don’t. Some of it is custom and some a particular understanding of a certain passage of Scripture. That’s fine. But if anyone ever tells you that you’re not saved unless you follow their rules, run as fast as you can, because that is not the gospel of Jesus Christ.
So, how do we live in the freedom that Christ paid for? We lean into that wisdom from Romans 12—we pursue renewal through the transforming of our minds.
You might be tempted to ask, “What’s wrong with my mind?” You’re smart, well educated, and computer savvy, with endless information at your fingertips—quite different than the audience Paul wrote to. The problem is not a lack of information; it’s a lack of renewal. We live in a fallen world, which means our minds are fallen too. We were made to worship, but unless our minds have been renewed, we don’t worship God, we worship what we want. The question remains, How do you renew your mind? The word renewal found in Romans 12:2 occurs only one other place in the Greek New Testament, and it gives me great hope that this process is not something you and I can do by ourselves. We can’t. We need the Holy Spirit.
But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. (Titus 3:4–5 NIV)
Renewing our minds is a beautiful joint work between our commitment to become more like Christ and the transforming power of the Holy Spirit working in us. What do I mean by that? What’s our part? Someone asked me one day what I’m most committed to. I had a few answers: Christ, my family, helping other women find freedom, working to help victims of sex trafficking, . . . my dogs. He then said, “Look at where you spend most of your time and that will tell you what matters to you.” I thought about that for a while. Some seasons of life are more demanding than others. If you have young children, not much of your time is your own. But if you’re like me, we find time for what we think we need to relax. You might love to bury your face in a good book with the bathroom door closed! Or if you have an allegiance to a particular television show, you’ll make time for it. I’ve had to ask myself, Does what I’m doing with my spare time refresh me or am I simply zoning out? Now, don’t get me wrong: I think at times zoning out is just what we need, but it doesn’t work toward the renewing of our mind. That’s where the choices we make determine whether we’re working with the Holy Spirit or not. Just as we have a Savior who loves us, we have an enemy who hates us. He will do all he can to distract and condemn.
When I began to realize how much of my life was still being influenced by destructive thought patterns, I made some changes. They were not monumental leaps, they were simple steps, one day at a time. I saw that I had an internal problem (my thoughts) and an external problem (the things I allow to impact me). I made my internal and external problems a matter of intentional prayer. Let’s face it: no matter how hard we try to change, it’s hard. So,
- I began, daily, to ask the Holy Spirit to change my heart. I asked Him to soften my heart and teach me true humility.
- Then I began to work with Him. I eliminated programs I watched or magazines I read that fed into a wrong way of thinking. I spent time with friends who brought me closer to Christ. I prayed, prayed, prayed. I talked to God about everything. I read good books by godly men and women, but more than that, I made the Bible my best friend. I discovered that when I began to work with the Holy Spirit, rather than thinking, I have to do this if I want to be more like Jesus, I found myself wanting to do the things that brought me closer to Him and brought glory to the Father. That’s when you begin to see that your mind is being renewed: when the things you think you should do become the things you simply love to do.
So, where do you begin to take the next step?
Start where you are. Don’t think, I have to read the whole Bible in the next six months. Begin with prayer. Ask the Holy Spirit to soften your heart and to open your eyes. Find a translation of the Bible that you can understand. I read the New Living Translation for devotional reading, but if I’m studying a passage I love the English Standard Version and the New International Version.
Talk to God. He loves you so much. Don’t think you have to use fancy words. He’s your papa, just talk.
Then give yourself a big hug. We’re not perfect but we are redeemed, so give yourself a break. The truth is, I’m a bit weird and a little eccentric, and it’s taken me quite some time to see that (a) Yes, I am . . . and (b) that’s okay!