The Process That Saved Me From Blowing Up My Life

In this Valiant Monday episode, Mark breaks down what Paul actually meant when he wrote “renew your mind” in Romans 12:2 — and why most men misunderstand it. Renewal isn’t a quick refresh. It’s a renovation. A tearing down of old identities, old patterns, old environments, and old neurological wiring.
Mark shares the process that saved him from blowing up his life — and how God rebuilt him from the inside out. You’ll learn:
• What “renewing your mind” means in Greek (anakainōsis = renovation)
• Why your CNS and environment shape your temptations
• How identity is rebuilt through Scripture and the Holy Spirit
• Why Gideon’s story mirrors your own
• Practical steps to start your own renewal today
If you’re exhausted from trying to change yourself — or scared of what happens if you don’t — this episode is for you.
Stay strong. Stay valiant. Keep forging your path.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Last week I started talking about how Romans 12, 2 is the foundational verse for becoming the man that God has called you to be. And before we go any further, this is for the man who's exhausted from trying to change himself and is scared of what happens if he doesn't change himself. Each week and for the next few weeks, I'm going to start breaking that verse down. Today I'm going to be talking about renewing your mind, what that actually means and how to start that process. This is the Valiant Forge, and this is a Valiant Monday episode. I will see you in 30 seconds.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Welcome to the Valiant Forge Podcast, where we help men overcome life, do what better in the world and become a valiant warrior for God. This is the place to leave your practical direct. Are you ready to overcome your doubt and fulfill your purpose just by giving? If so, let's go.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Romans 12, 2, be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that by testing you may discern the will of God. What is good, acceptable, and perfect. That is the verse that I was talking about earlier, that is the foundation of becoming the man that God has designed you to be. And we're going to get into that today. Today we're just going to be talking about the renewing of your mind part. Seems like I'm skipping the transforming part, but we need to get to the renewal before we get to the transformation. And I think once we understand what Paul actually means and how to apply that practically, it will make the transformation process that much easier. Especially if you're trying to do this with the hope of the Holy Spirit instead of trying to transform on your own. I've been through a few transformations of my in my life, and I can tell you in any form, they're not easy. So we're going to start with the Greek meaning of the word renewal. Now I do have some notes in front of me. I I told you last week that I'm going to try to stop using AI so much to write my scripts for me and blah blah blah. I never really let it write my scripts for me. I would prompt it and kind of help me, but I'm trying to just kind of talk off the cup that if you haven't noticed. So again, as I said last week, be patient with me. So let's break down the Greek meaning of the word renewal. What it actually the word is, and I'm probably going to butcher this anakinosis. I'm reading it like Anakin, like Anakin Skywalker, but obviously that's not it. Anakinosis, but what it literally again, I'm probably not saying it correctly, but what it means is renovation, which kind of changed the whole thought process of renewal for me because I was gonna go with trying to renew your driver's license or renew, you know, there's many things in life that we have to renew, but renovation is a whole different process than renewal. When you think about renovating, if you're renovating a building, you have to tear it all, tear out all the old furniture and everything out of it, and then replace it with something new. That is key. We're also talking about the renewal of the mind. The Greek word for the mind is nas. It doesn't mean your it doesn't mean your intellect or how you're thinking. It means the control center, the control center of your brain, scientifically, and what we call it the CNS, the central nervous system. The central nervous system controls your perceptions, your perspectives, how you respond to things that are going on around you. Renewal is returning to your true nature. And in the biblical context, that's the Adam before the sin. And I say this often, that's the man that God designed you to be. When God created Adam, he designed him to be a true man of God, and then Adam fell into sin, and now we all have that sinful nature, but it can be renewed thanks to Yeshua, who sacrificed himself and resurrected and left with us his Holy Spirit. His Holy Spirit is the beginning process of that renewal of our minds, that renovation. So what really needs to be renovated? What needs to be renovated is your identity, how you see yourself, as opposed to how God sees you. And as I mentioned earlier, thanks to Yeshua and him coming down on this earth to sacrifice himself and be resurrected so he that he can leave his Holy Spirit with us, we can become the man that God sees. The one that came to Gideon while he was hiding in a wine press and said, Hail, O mighty man of Alor, and Gideon's response was, I'm a loser, I'm not a mighty man of Alor. How many times have you read in the Bible that you are an overcomer, you're an overcomer, you're more than a conqueror, you're a royal priesthood, all these things in the Bible, and you look at it and you're like, I'm not that. I'm just a failure. That's how you see yourself. Renovation is changing from how you see yourself to how God sees you. How did God start changing Gideon's identity? He had them start by tearing down idols. So let's just start there. What are the idols in your life? What is the thing you're spending the most time doing? Is it tomb scrolling? Is it video games? That may be an idol. If you're not spending time with God, if you're not spending time reading the word, trying to get to know him better, having a relationship with God, you're spending more time doing those things, those might be your idols. It might be time to go down to the backyard, tear down those idols, just like Gideon had to do to do to start rebuilding Hyis to start rebuilding his identity. Before you renovate, you have to you have to rebuild. So removing the idols. It's not just idols, it's false ideologies. Things that you've been told about yourself or that you've believed about yourself that are lies. And you start replacing them because you remove something and then you replace something. What do you replace the lies with? You replace the lies with the biblical truths. I mentioned some of those biblical truths earlier. You are more than a conqueror. You are a mighty man of valor. This is called the Valiant Forge, because I was that guy, and I'm still in that process right now. And I I started this out, you know, that the man who is trying to change himself and is worried about what happens if he doesn't change himself. That's the man I was for the longest time. When I started this podcast, it's to reach the man, the man that I was when I started this whole thing. Well, a couple years before I started it, the man that I was, I almost blew up my life. I if you go on my YouTube channel, I did a live video this past Friday on the Joe Rue show, and you'll hear my story. If you don't know my story, it's there. You'll see where I was on the brink of disaster, and the Lord saved me out of it. But that that was a process to get to the point where I'm at now, and I'm still still in the middle of this process. I don't come on here acting like I got it all figured out because I don't. I'm working through it myself. Me even being on a microphone, on a camera talking to you. This is me renovating, renewing myself by the transforming through Jesus Christ, because I can't do it on my own. I have the Holy Spirit leading me and guiding me. When I say you are a mighty man of valor, believe that because the Bible tells you that. Now, how do we start this renovation process practically? If you go back to the central nervous system, you have to do some reprogramming, some rearranging. Your brain is designed to respond a certain way based on your surroundings. Have you ever noticed when you get the and I'll just use this as an example because it's easy, but have you ever noticed and you get the temptation to lust or to look at something you shouldn't? It's always kind of in the same environment. Maybe you're home alone, you got your phone in your hand, it's a certain time of day, that's when the temptation is the strongest. That is programming. Your body, your mind has been programmed. Maybe you saw something you shouldn't when you were young, and it created this little dopamine rush that the central nervous is like, oh, that's cool. That made you feel good. Let's just put a GPS pin in there, and the next time you're feeling low about yourself and you need to feel good, let's just bring up that memory and it cause you to do that again. That needs to be reprogrammed, it needs to be redone. So the next time you're in that situation, you're sitting there on the couch, and you get that temptation to look at something that you shouldn't. Go on Instagram and look at I don't go on Instagram anymore. I do, but it's for my church account and there's so many Christian things on there, I don't have to worry about anything. But even even back when I was on Instagram, it'd be so easy for something to grab my attention that shouldn't. You get in that moment, you have to be intentional. Remove it. If you're sitting down on the couch, get up. Get up and walk around, go for a walk. And here's a really thing that's that's hard to do. It's well, it's not difficult. It's just that little GPS pin, that dopamine rush, is gonna pull on you harder than this is until you actually intentionally do it. Just start praying. Start with God, thank you for this house that I'm living in. Thank you that I can get up off the couch and walk around right now. Pray for a few minutes and then see if you still have that little inkling to look at that thing you shouldn't. I guarantee you, you're probably not gonna want to. And then continue walking around. Don't go right back to that place. That's how you change these things. That's how you renovate, that's how you renew. If you think about the places that you shouldn't be in, you think about Adam and Eve. They were walking in the garden. And if you read the story, Adam was right next to Eve. Adam wasn't off doing something else while the serpent was talking to Eve. He was right there. They were in the garden by that tree. Stay away from that tree. Don't go back to that tree. That's where you need to change, and that's how you renovate. When Adam and Eve were in that garden by that tree, it gave the serpent the opportunity to deceive them, and look where we are now thanks to that. So change your surroundings. Change your environment, change your timing, change everything around. Renovation is pulling everything out and starting fresh. Now I'm trying to keep these fairly quick, so I'm gonna leave you with that. I'm gonna give you a few challenges to take with you throughout the rest of the week, and let me know in the comments below or on an email, you can send a text on the podcast platforms. I'm gonna try not to continue saying this because it's it gets some point it gets to be babbling. But here are some practical tips you can try this week and let me know if you tried them and if they helped you or not. First, remove something from your life. Remove the one thing that keeps dragging you back to the man that you used to be. Remove the one thing that keeps telling you you are nothing, you are not a man of God, you are not a man of valor, you are this person that keeps falling down, that keeps falling into this sin, that keeps falling into this temptation. Remove something. Change your surroundings. Add something. Add something that feeds the new you. Prayer, reading, thanking God, having gratitude for your surroundings, getting up early, going for a walk. That is changing something, changing habits. That is renovation. You're changing. Name one lie you've believed about yourself and replace it with one truth from Scripture. What that could look like? No one likes you. Well, if you read the Psalms, you will find out how much God loves you. One of the Psalms says that God loves you so much that He knows the numbers of the hairs on your head. And if I go back to science, I don't remember, I think I heard this on a John Bevere book about the awe of God. Your hair falls out every day, and you get new numbers. And God has to recount every day. He loves you that much. So you think no one likes you? Maybe. Maybe no one in this earth likes you. I highly doubt that. I used to think that a lot about myself, but I know I have people that like me. But really, it doesn't matter because God loves you. And if you don't believe that, read the Psalms. Just read all of the Psalms. Here's a quick practical tip. Read five Psalms a day. If you read five Psalms a day, every day, every month you'll go through the book of Psalms. Same thing with Proverbs. We read one chapter of Proverbs a day. On the months that there's thirty days, you have to read two chapters to get through the whole book. But if you read five Psalms a day, five chapters of Psalms a day, that's going to be a little bit harder when you get to Psalms 119, but regardless, you read five chapters of Psalms a day, and then one chapter of Proverbs a day, you'll be reading through Proverbs and Psalms every week, every month. So try that, especially if you're feeling unloved. I'm a failure. I'm never going to amount to anything. Philippians 14, I four thirteen. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I guarantee you, for every one of the lies that you've believed about yourself, the scriptures have a truth that contradicts that false identity, that false lie. And I I'm challenging you. Test me. Test the don't test me. Test the Bible on this. Name one lie you believed about yourself. Tell me you can't find a scripture that backs it up. You can use Google, you can use Chat GBT or whatever AI bot you use. Say this is a lie I believed about myself. Does the Bible contradict this? And it will give you the right scripture that that shows that it does contradict it. So try that. That's all for this week. Next week I'm going to be talking about transformation. We had to get to renewal first. Renewal is the process. Transformation is the result. And as I already mentioned, that transformation comes a lot easier when you start the process properly. So start changing things in your life. Rebuild, renovate, renew. If you're like I was, and you're one decision away from losing everything, renewal is the process that keeps you from going over that edge. That's it for this week. Remember, Thursday there's going to be an interview episode. I'm speaking to I spoke with Mark Delfini. He is a has a powerful story on how he came to faith and how he wrestled with his faith for a long time. He had a few failures in his life. And he's actually it was a cool conversation because he's in the process of rediscovering his faith through a lot of failures. And he built, he helps entrepreneurs build business through the frame of faith. Really great conversation. I'll see you on Thursday. Stay strong, stay valiant, keep forging your path, and be blessed.