Empowering Mind Renewal When You Struggle to “Feel It”

When you want to practice renewing your mind but your emotions are pitching a fit, it can feel confusing and defeating. In this episode I want to address some important insights when it comes to mind renewal that we often forget or were never taught. I will expose the emotional resistance that comes up, why we struggle with it and how we can developed a more empowered journey with renewed thinking. If you are wanting to learn more about how to establish new thinking when your feelings and emotions create resist and push back, then this episode is for you!

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When we talk about establishing new thoughts, we’re talking about the renewing of the mind. But it’s important to know that renewing the mind is not just something you force, like positive thoughts or positive feelings. It’s about learning to renew our thought patterns when our emotions are pushing back. That’s really where the growth happens.

The battle isn’t you against your emotions, even though it can feel that way. It’s learning to mature how you relate to your emotions. Many of us feel like we’re in a war against our emotions, like we’re in a war against ourselves. That’s a deeper issue that makes this whole thing so problematic. You’re not necessarily fighting your emotions — you’re learning how to relate to them. That’s really what the journey of emotional maturity is about.

What Emotional Maturity Actually Looks Like

When I talk about emotional maturity, there are a lot of areas I could get into, but for what we’re talking about here, let me highlight three things.

1. Ability to apply compassionate grace to your emotional world.

Being able to give and receive love without avoiding it or deflecting it. Having a healthy sense of empathy and being able to look at your own inner world with compassion. Without that, we’re going to be lost in how we respond to our emotions, or we’re going to put a lot of force and performance pressure on ourselves. There’s going to be a “just right, never enough” kind of fury that comes upon us.

2. Knowing what you’re actually feeling.

Many people, when you ask them what they’re feeling, might give you a couple of words but feel pretty lost. They don’t really know how to name what they’re feeling, and if they do, they don’t know how to interpret it. Interpretation is the key. It’s the meaning we give to our thoughts, and we often give them too much meaning. We catastrophize. We hyper-analyze. For many who struggle with intrusive thoughts and OCD, they go right to the worst interpretation available. But within compassionate grace, we learn to name an emotion — “this is what I’m feeling” — and we learn to see it in a way that actually helps us work through it and gain some strength.

3. The ability to feel your feelings without being ruled by them.

This is something I want to encourage us all to grow in, because emotionally maturing believers stop swinging between emotional numbness and emotional flooding. Where do you find yourself? Numbing, checking out, suppressing, pushing away? Or flooding — getting into absolute tornadoes and spirals, feeling like you’re drowning?

Emotionally mature people learn to notice what’s happening on the inside. They’re not staring at themselves; they notice their emotional world. They may notice grief, fear, anxiousness, worry, anger, discouragement — or contentment, joy, gratitude. And they know how to bring those things before God, to interact with God and others. That’s what gives life its special spice, because as humans we are emotional beings, and God expressed a full spectrum of emotions throughout Scripture as He related to us.

Where do you find yourself? Do you drown in your emotions? Do you numb out? Do you bounce back and forth between the two? Most people who are honest with themselves find that they bounce back and forth, and it creates an exhausting cycle.

Many believers who engage a mental health healing journey often realize — and this is not in shame, it’s just an honest realization — that their emotional world is underdeveloped.

I know this was true for me. I had OCD, anxiety, I was prone to depression, I was an overthinker, hypersensitive. All of those things are real struggles. But the overarching theme I had to honestly face for my growth was realizing I was emotionally immature in a number of areas. There were emotional muscles that were left undeveloped. If you’re a performance-driven person, if you’re prone to perfectionistic “just right, never enough” thinking, there are going to be a lot of emotions that were left undeveloped. The muscle is there, but it hasn’t been strengthened. It hasn’t been put into the gym of life.

Many of us are realizing we need some catching up — not ketchup and mustard, but some catching up — when it comes to our emotional world.

So the call for us is:

Developing a compassionate and gracious posture with our emotions — kindness, patience, loving embrace. That’s the first line of a renewed reaction.
Learning to acknowledge emotions in a healthy way — naming them, learning how to interpret them well, not getting stuck in our old toxic interpreter.
Learning not to let emotions have the final vote. My emotions are not lining up — I see it, I recognize it. But you’re not the boss of my journey.

What Romans 12 Is Really Saying

With that in mind, let’s go to a biblical exhortation Paul gave us in Romans 12. Most of you have heard this passage, but I believe many have not fully taken in the beauty woven within it.

Paul says, “I beseech you therefore, brethren…” He’s talking to brothers and sisters here — there’s a family relationship established.

Then he says, “by the mercies of God.” We have to stop right there, because most people skip right over that and jump straight to “living sacrifice” and then into verse two. Right there is the compassion of God. Mercy. God’s compassion toward you in all areas of your life — in your weakness, in your sin, in your struggle and your battle.

We’re going to make mind renewal very exhausting if we don’t pause here and recognize that all mind renewal is done in response to God’s love for you. When you receive it that way, mind renewal becomes exciting. It becomes a journey of discovery. It becomes: I get to discover the goodness of God more and more. How great God is, how merciful and gracious He is, how much He loves me, who I am in that love, the grace of Jesus Christ, the righteousness He paid for that I have access to — all of it because of God’s mercy.

Then Paul says, “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God.” What Paul is saying here is that we’re embodying this renewal. It needs to be experienced, practiced, and applied, otherwise we’re just going to get lost in our heads. We elevate mental ascent and accumulating knowledge, but true life change and mind renewal is actually learning to practice it out.

When people see “living sacrifice,” they think: I’ve got to come up with a list of things to give up. I’ve got to earn something. But that’s performance. Paul is saying: no — in response to mercy, you’re going, God, I am here. I’m embodying your way of thinking. And he says “holy, acceptable unto God” — we’re not made holy and acceptable by doing a bunch of stuff. You’ve already been made that in Christ. So in response to that beautiful mercy, you’re embodying it. Your life is living this out. Which is, as he says, your reasonable service. It makes sense. You’re living out of response to the mercy of God.

Then he says, “Do not be conformed to this world.” There is a resistance working against what you’re walking in, and what you’re pursuing is contrary to the thinking patterns of this world. But be transformed by the renewing of your mind. We’re embodying this, practicing it, living it out.

He goes on: “that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” Many people go right into performance mode here — oh, if I renew my mind, I’ll figure out God’s will. Where should I go, what should I do, what should I buy? We’re very directional. We see God’s will as “tell me where I’m going.” But that’s not what Paul is getting at. We’re letting our minds and bodies come under the influence of God’s way of thinking to become who we are in our character and life. The biblical principles in the word of God form our being, and our character begins to change. Mind renewal isn’t just behavior modification — it’s about who you are changing over time as you practice.

A couple of key insights from this passage: renewing the mind is a response to God’s loving mercy. It’s based on His love for you. That’s why getting believers rooted in the compassion and grace of God is so important. And transformation occurs with the renewing of the mind — as our thinking patterns change, they’re going to produce different actions. That is the transformative work.

Mind Renewal Is a Practice, Not a Performance

Let me make this as practical as I can. When we talk about mind renewal, we’re talking about how I relate to my inner thinking patterns, my beliefs, my emotions. As renewal happens, it changes how I relate to God, how I relate to myself, and how I relate to others.

But this takes practice.

You’re welcoming new thought patterns, acting on them, practicing them. It’s not just about exterminating old thoughts. We can spend a lot of time doing that — thoughts, go away, go away, go away. It’s more about inviting the ways of God’s thinking from the word of God to become part of our thinking through practice.

Old thoughts don’t really dissolve until new ones begin replacing them. Many of you spend a lot of time chasing away the bad thoughts — suppressing them, running from them, hiding from them. But the focus needs to be on welcoming what is good, which floods the old out. As a practical example: you can focus on “anxiety, go away, anxiety, go away” all day long. But my encouragement is to welcome love into your life. Welcome renewed hope. Welcome steps of faith. Act in the realm of love. Act toward the realm of hope. Act toward the realm of faith. The renewal happens through the practicing.

This is not only something the Bible encourages — it’s also scientifically proven that an old thought needs to be replaced with something new. And that exchange takes practice, practice, practice.

That’s why a journey mindset is so important. If you have an arrival mindset, a quick-fix mindset, you’re going to be discouraged all the time. But if you have a journey mindset, you realize: I’ve got to practice this. It’s going to take time.

Think about it — if you want to be proficient at a sport or skilled in any area, everyone knows it takes practice. But we don’t apply that same understanding to our emotional world. If someone practices piano for a month and says, “I’m still not good at it,” everyone would say: keep practicing. But we don’t give ourselves that same grace with our inner world when it comes to mind renewal.

Part of the reason is that most of us grew up without emotional equipping. It was meant to happen in our upbringing — practiced, cultivated, developed. But for many of us, it didn’t. So now we’re in our adult years going, “I feel like I’m against the wall. I have resistance all day long. I feel disconnected from God’s love. I feel hopeless. Fear is running the day, depression is running the day, intrusive thoughts are spinning things out.” What we need is to lovingly move one step at a time toward the thought patterns we want to develop.

For example, love needs practice. When somebody does something loving to you, practice going: “I appreciate this. Thank you.” Even if you don’t feel it. Practice getting up out of your head — eyes up, head up — and going, “I need to love on somebody today.” On a bad day, practice responding with love instead of shame. Practice grace — learning how to be a recipient of this free gift and living out the confidence that you are righteous in Christ Jesus because of what He did.

Hope needs practice — encouraging yourself and gently redirecting: “I’m down today, but it’s all right. What’s a renewed step I can take?” Kindness needs to be lived out. There’s a difference between saying “I want to be kind” and actually experiencing someone being genuinely kind to you, especially if you’ve experienced a lot of unkindness in your life. When that happens, it’s refreshing — it impacts you, it brings renewal. And when you keep practicing kindness even when others are acting a bit goofy or off, even when you could snap at them but you don’t — you’re practicing.

Forgiveness needs practice. When you experience forgiveness, it’s beautiful and amazing. When you give it, it’s healing. Gratitude needs practice — it doesn’t just automatically happen, and a lot of times when you need it most, you feel the absolute opposite. Faith needs practice, because the very essence of faith is stepping into that which is of God. Encouragement takes practice. Self-control takes practice, and there are days when it doesn’t happen, when your urges or compulsions take over and you fall down the slip-and-slide of them. But you catch yourself graciously and go: practicing starving my compulsive behavior, practicing not going down those ruminating paths, renewing my focus on what is good — “I am loved, God is with me.” The word of God becomes more empowering as you’re seeing His love, grace, and mercy.

Perseverance takes practice. Why? Because the very nature of perseverance is dealing with resistance. I keep showing up to practice the journey of transformation, and God, thank you that you’re patient with me.

Renewing the Mind Is Best Experienced in Resistance

Here’s an important principle: renewing the mind is best experienced in the world of resistance.

I’d love to say our great changes happen when it flows easily, when we just enter in and it’s all amazing. A lot of Christians talk as though their life is just easy and glorious. I don’t always know if that’s fully true, but if it is — I can’t relate to that. I’ve had a lot of resistance. And everything powerful that I’ve learned in my life has been in the trenches of resistance, mainly where my emotions didn’t line up, didn’t agree, in fact were pitching a fit.

Mental health resilience and discipleship growth happen in the trenches of resistance. Name your greatest area of resistance — the place where you’re trying to develop a renewed thinking pattern and you get slammed with pushback. That’s probably going to be the greatest place where you develop the greatest strength, because you’ve gone through the trenches of being challenged over and over and over again.

So why does this emotional resistance keep showing up? I want to give you some insights.

We seek comfort on a regular basis. It’s understandable, but it works against us. We hate discomfort, and the more we run from it, the more uncomfortable discomfort becomes. A statement I made to myself decades ago was: I want to be more comfortable with the uncomfortable, so I’m not always drawing back and missing the opportunity for renewal.

We’re easily conditioned into patterns. Most of your thought patterns — good and bad — are conditioned, ingrained habits. Much of our emotional world runs on autopilot: A plus B plus C — boom, boom, boom, like clockwork. All of it can be changed and renewed — God designed you for renewal — but it takes time and practice. Many of you are automatic emotional suppressors or go into shutdown. Someone mentions a certain topic and you hit a wall. A “don’t go there” sign goes up. Or maybe you go into self-pity: “Forget it, it’s never going to work.” Or a series of doubts flood in, you feel them, and you’re conditioned to believe them and befriend them rather than recognizing: I need some renewal here.

We feel comfortable in our familiarity. There are patterns we may hate, but we’re used to them. We get used to the smog, used to polluted air. Take somebody who’s lived in polluted air for so long and bring them up into the mountains for fresh air — it’s going to feel strange and unfamiliar. A new thought can feel the same way. We can develop a fear of the unknown. It’s uncertain, unfamiliar territory — and many people feel afraid of even doing something new.

We equate feelings with truth. We believe thoughts are true simply because we feel them strongly. A lot of my work is helping people navigate this. People don’t struggle with intrusive thoughts because what the thought says is true — it’s that it feels true because of how strong it comes across and how much it barks at them. Emotions are powerful messengers, but they are not powerful truth-tellers. The key is learning to reinterpret your emotional world and not treat a feeling as a verdict.

We have little equipping on how to work through resistance. Everyone encounters resistance — you may think you’re the only one, but everyone has it in their journey. One of my biggest concerns for equipping today’s generation — and I mean everyone, old and young — is teaching people how to deal with resistance. We need to teach our children how to face resistance and live as overcomers. It’s a key to keep showing up to the growth journey.

We’re conditioned to believe we need to feel something before taking action. This creates a world of procrastination, avoiding, delaying. We search for that feeling and say: when I get it, then I can take the step. I’ll practice gratitude when I feel it. I’ll embrace truth when it feels right. Many Christians live that way. I get what they’re saying, but that’s not a reliable compass, because if you’re waiting to feel ready, you may be waiting your whole life.

The truth is it takes time for our emotions to catch up with where we’re going. We decide, take a step, focus on it, develop it, practice it. Our emotions are not just going to jump along with us. If they do, fantastic — but most of the time they don’t. It takes time for your emotions to catch up to where you’re moving.

Many people think they can only believe something if they really feel it. Many with OCD or scrupulosity think this way — if they don’t feel it perfectly, it means they don’t believe it. But belief is really formed in taking steps and taking action. It’s not about mental ascent or checking all your emotions off the box. It’s more about where you’re stepping and where you’re going.

Don’t treat the gap between what you know and what you feel as spiritual failure. No — that’s the terrain of growth. Keep taking steps forward. A ship’s rudder doesn’t wait for the waters to calm. It starts moving and steering through the waves.

Another thing to keep in mind: we feel condemned if we take action but don’t feel it the way we want to. How many of you have thought: “I want to be more loving, but I don’t really feel it” — and then you disqualify yourself. “It’s in my head but not in my heart.” Condemnation, accusation, and shame are never tools to help you along your renewal journey. They never will be.

Another common ditch is trying to apply thoughts with intense force — becoming a militant drill sergeant. “Think this way, think this way!” What that does is inflame intensity, inflame the stress response, inflame perfectionism and hostility. You end up angry at yourself all the time. It’s like trying to teach someone to swim while they’re drowning by yelling at them: “What’s the matter with you?!” There has to be calm, firm, helpful instruction. The militant-by-force approach will make us more compulsive, feed fear, grow intrusive thoughts stronger, and exhaust us. What we need is gentle, compassionate, nurturing responses within ourselves.

How to Engage New Thoughts When You Don’t Feel Them

First and foremost, within the realm of compassion, acknowledge the resistance. You can acknowledge: I’ve got some resistance going on. But do it compassionately. We do not experience mind renewal under performance pressure, under perfectionistic pressure, under duress, under animosity, under “just right, never enough.” It’s okay that I’m not okay. It’s okay that I’m feeling this way. But you’re not the boss, emotion.

Don’t bypass the feeling — you can name it and call out what it’s saying. “I feel discouraged and hopeless, as though I’ll never get through this.” Okay. I see what you’re saying, but you’re not the boss today. Emotional honesty works well within the context of compassion. If you’re shaming yourself, emotional honesty becomes cutting and demeaning. Become a kind and patient witness to yourself, as God is kind and patient with you.

Separate the feeling from taking action. I may feel this way, but I can still take a step. Many of you need to learn to step forward even when you’re afraid, even when you don’t feel it all the way. Maybe you’re learning to love your spouse more but you’re not feeling it — but you do it anyway. You’re not faking it, you’re practicing. We have to learn to do powerful things that we don’t feel emotionally connected to in the moment. That is a major step in discipleship and maturity.

Redirect your focus to the practice. When you’ve got resistance, redirect to what is true. I learned this big time, and I wrote about it in my book God Loves Me and I Love Myself — I talked about the realm of self-hatred, self-rejection, self-condemnation, self-loathing I found myself living in. I was focused on getting rid of all those thoughts.

Then something monumental happened. When I’d notice the resistance — when I was trying to be more loving toward myself and a self-hating, troll-kind-of-thought showed up — I learned to go: “Okay, I see you there. I’m just going to gently redirect myself back to affirming God’s love for me. Thank you, God, for your love for me. I say yes to it, even though I’m struggling to connect to it.” And then I acted on it — loving my neighbor, loving those around me, even though I felt like a mess inside. That gentle redirect became a game-changing understanding for my journey, and it will be for many of you as well.

I’m not focusing on thinking, thinking, thinking — I think I can, I think I can — not on ruminating or reassurance-seeking. It’s practicing. Keep focusing your attention on that which is good. When you catch yourself in the ditches, in the trenches — bring it back. And now you’re becoming someone who knows how to edify themselves.

Many of us don’t know how to build ourselves up. We cry out: “God, help me! Somebody, call Mark, help me right now!” We need to learn to become compassionate witnesses to ourselves.

Repeat without demanding immediate results. I found it very helpful to commit: “I’m not going to assess whether this is working for 30 days. I’m going to give it a month. I may be tempted to assess — but I’m just going to keep showing up.” And in 30 days, I’d find some fruit in it, maybe just a little bit.

Our pathways form through practice and repetition, not by dramatic moments. The key is to keep showing up, not showing amazing results. We have to give time for new thought patterns to build as we practice them. As the saying goes: it will take as long as it takes. That patience is going to be a very powerful asset.

Embody it physically. Emotions live within your body, so you need to utilize physical movement. I talked about this a lot when I was pastoring — raising your hands to say “I praise you, God,” giving thanks with your mouth — you’ll notice it affects your physiology, and it has more meaning to it. These aren’t just magical things we’re doing; they’re practices, because we were meant to embody the ways of God with our words, our actions, our posture. Sometimes even just putting my head up and shoulders back instead of being slumped over and embodying depression — I may feel depressed, and that’s okay. I can still stand tall. I’m embodying what I know to be true.

If it’s peace, embody it. Take a deep breath. Practice being still. If it’s hope, start being an encourager to yourself. You want to build hope? You have to become your biggest encourager instead of your biggest critic. If it’s breaking out of a low mood, take a walk, do some slow movement. If it’s self-compassion, you may need to do what I call mirror talk — look at yourself in the mirror and have an encouraging conversation with yourself. It’s going to feel so weird. The resistance is going to rise up. It’s going to point out all your flaws. Your voice is going to sound strange to you. “This is stupid, why are you even doing this?” — yep, all of that is going to show up. But you’re practicing a renewed way of relating to yourself. When you take action and practice it, it becomes real.

Signs of Progress That Won’t Always Feel Like Progress

I want to reframe what growth looks like, because some of these won’t feel like progress in the moment.

You keep practicing — that’s progress.
The resistance does not own your actions — that’s progress. It’s still a grind, yeah — but that’s progress.
The resistance gets a little quieter slowly over time — that’s progress.
You catch the old thought before it fully forms in your realm of focus — you catch yourself going into a pity party and go, “Oh, there I go.” You catch yourself ruminating and go, “Okay, there I went. Bring it back.” That’s progress.
New thoughts start to feel slightly less foreign. Love doesn’t feel as weird as it did at the beginning. Grace doesn’t feel as “too good to be true” as it once did — even if it still doesn’t feel fully real.
You no longer need the emotion to align in order to keep going. You’ve developed a built-in practice. This has been a major asset in my journey — to just keep showing up, no matter what’s happening in the morning, no matter what’s happening in life.
The gap between what you know and what you feel begins to narrow. There’s an emerging where you begin to sense and connect more to the new thought patterns.

The key is time to practice patiently, and I don’t think believers give themselves nearly enough patience to practice.

Keep Practicing

Renewing the mind isn’t just a thing you do like a robot. This is discipleship. It’s a lifestyle. It’s not just a mental health technique. It’s something we’re learning to embody and walk and live out. You’re aligning your inner world with what God has already said to be true, and your emotions take time to catch up. Many times there’s a lot of resistance. But you don’t have to wait for the feeling to take a step.

Keep practicing, even when the feelings lag behind. And encourage others to keep practicing, because we need a lot of encouragement today.

Empowering You to Live Healed and Free