One day Satan came to Jesus with a direct face-to-face attack. Jesus had been fasting in the wilderness for 40 days, no small feat of endurance even for the man of God. Satan showed Jesus “all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.” “All these things I will give You, if You fall down and worship me.” (Matthew 4:8,9) In other words, “You can have all the money, power and sex that there is.” Jesus refused to focus on what Satan brought to His attention. Instead, Jesus focused on the Word of God. Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 10:20, “You shall worship Jehovah your God and serve Him alone.” Rejecting those false gods of money, power and sex is a good start, but more is required for success with God. You must actually replace the gods that have reigned supreme in your life with the worship of the Only True God of Heaven.

When you remove false gods from your life as the Bible says, you leave a vacuum in your life that must be filled with something. Satan and the world will try to help you fill that vacuum with anything possible: something new, scintillating and different. In order to keep the influence of Satan and the corruption of the world out of your life, you must replace the corrupt influence with God by the continual renewing of your mind and heart, your personality.

Back in the 1960’s, the flower power generation changed the country in America for a time. Whether you agree with the flower children or not, many of them rejected the notion that materialism was god. Why did these folks fail to make permanent change in the world? They forgot one simple thing. When they removed the god they had, they failed to replace that god of materialism with something of greater value or they replaced the god of materialism with the god of sexual addiction or something else again. In the end, one way or the other, the flower power generation exchanged one form of selfishness for another form of selfishness. This is the essence of what most of mankind does. You simply exchange one form of your own personal god for another.

The apostle Paul said “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may prove what the Will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:2) The Greek word that Paul uses is 'teleios', which does not mean what Western thinking considers as perfect or refined through the cruel ravages of perfectionism. Perfectionism that is commonly understood in Western culture is simply driven human behaviors that emanate from the fallout of the imperfect human condition known as the broken heart. Driven human effort will not garner the kind of mind renewal that Scripture discusses. The willingness to submit to an accurate understanding of the Word combined with submission to the Holy Spirit must be the Christian heart motivation. 'Teleious' means to be complete or mature. The Bible makes the point that the continual renewal of the mind with Bible principles will result in spiritual maturity or a measure of completeness and maturity of the new man in Christ. This is not the attempt to be perfect through behaviors and motivations of the flesh. This renewal of the mind, the washing of the water through the Word, is not an event, but instead a process of life.

In line with Paul's statement in Romans, proving the Will of God means something. To prove the Will of God, you cannot be indifferent or uncaring about His Will. Instead, you must make it a part of your life. This is possible only when you are transformed by the renewing of your mind. The very first step to the renewal of your mind and heart is putting away false gods in your life and keeping them out of your mind and heart.